12 yo girl is facing criminal charges for using gun emoji.
Quote:
The 12-year-old from Fairfax, Va., has been charged with threatening her school after police said she posted a message on Instagram in December laden with gun, bomb and knife emojis. It read in part:
Killing 🔫
“meet me in the library Tuesday”
🔫 🔪 💣
A grand jury in New York City recently had to decide whether 👮 🔫 represented a true threat to police officers. A Michigan judge was asked to interpret the meaning of a face with a tongue sticking out: :P. Emoji even took a turn in the Supreme Court last year in a high-profile case over what constitutes a threat.
Police are trying to judge just how serious to take threatening messages using emoji, which are most often deployed in a light-hearted manner. Attorneys have argued over whether emoji should be presented to juries as evidence. Experts say the biggest problem is simply determining in court what a defendant actually intended by sending a particular emoji.
“You understand words in a particular way,” said Dalia Topelson Ritvo, assistant director of the Cyber Law clinic at Harvard Law School. “It’s challenging with symbols and images to unravel that.”
Ritvo said that some of these issues will likely play out in the Fairfax case.
It began on Dec. 14, when a resource officer at Sidney Lanier Middle School in Fairfax was made aware of the threatening Instagram post and others, according to a search warrant.
The officer began interviewing students and sent an emergency request to obtain the IP address of the user associated with the Instagram account. The investigation led to the 12-year-old, who was also a student at Lanier. The Post generally does not name juveniles accused of crimes.
The search warrant states the girl admitted to authorities she posted the messages on Instagram and did it under the name of another student. She was charged with threatening the school and computer harassment. A spokesman for Fairfax County schools said the alleged threat was deemed “not credible.”
The girl was scheduled to make her first appearance in juvenile court on the charges at the end of the month, but it is unclear whether the case has been resolved since the hearings are not open to the public.
Authorities have not released a motive in the case, but the girl’s mother said the girl posted the messages in response to being bullied at school.
Mess, I don't think it's that serious but a 12yo should know better than to make threats against their school.... once you're old enough to have a cellphone and navigate it, you should be old enough to practice critical thinking and decision-making! Hopefully she will learn from this
Mess, I don't think it's that serious but a 12yo should know better than to make threats against their school.... once you're old enough to have a cellphone and navigate it, you should be old enough to practice critical thinking and decision-making! Hopefully she will learn from this
This tbh. The court should research: did she have access to weapons? Or was she just being cheeky? If the latter, then suspend her and her bullies. If the former, well, that's a whole other mess.
once you're old enough to have a cellphone and navigate it, you should be old enough to practice critical thinking and decision-making! Hopefully she will learn from this
clearly she was a threat
