Nasty Little Brats They May Be, But You Don't Make Death Threats To Children

It’s fair enough to call for a group of teenaged boys to be punished for mercilessly picking on an old lady on the bus. Even to identify them publicly and shame them. But sending them death threats? Threatening to attack them and their families? They are 12 and 13 year old children, for Christ’s sake.

Here’s the actual video of the four boys tormenting bus monitor, Karen Klein. It goes for ten minutes and is way beyond the vast majority of bad teenage behaviour. Yes, they are utter brats who need a belting they’ll remember, but it is in no way acceptable to send death threats to children.

All the brave people making anonymous threats and espousing some perverse and grossly disproportionate version of vigilante justice would almost certainly not be so “courageous” if they couldn’t retain anonymity and the support of a mob.

Additionally, they appear to be completely oblivious to the irony of 1,000 people anonymously bullying a 12 year old boy with death threats for his bullying of an old lady. At least he did it to her face.

I suspect a lot of the highly invective responses to the video have come from people who had a hard time at school themselves. Now they believe they can find the support and approval of a large group, they feel safe to take out their angst on a bunch of kids, thereby proving that they still are the pathetic, cowardly weeds they were at school, which is why they were picked on.

If such people really had any substance, they would be trying to engage in constructive debate about how we, as a society, return some meaningful discipline to obviously out of control, teenage brats, without returning to the Victorian era.

One question which immediately struck me on watching the video of the abuse is: Why didn’t Karen Klein do anything? Isn’t she employed as the bus monitor? Doesn’t that job involve disciplining students? What does she believe taxpayers are paying her for? Riding the bus?

When Karen Klein is subsequently interviewed on television, the interviewer says: “I was amazed at your self restraint … the fact that you did not jump up and yell and talk back to them, that you sat there for this amount of time … how did you manage to do that?”

Don’t praise her for her inaction, you idiot! It’s not self restraint: it’s failure to do your job. She doesn’t deserve respect for not disciplining out of control children, which is part of her job as a bus monitor, as she would know, having formerly been a bus driver. The interviewer should be asking her why she did nothing.

It appears from the interview that this abuse has been going on for some time, possibly in revenge for her dobbing them in for something. These little turds have tried it on, seen that she won’t fight back and just kept on attacking. They won’t stop unless there is an authority figure who can scare them into submission, fear being the only language they currently understand (that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily be that way forever).

At the first instance of unacceptable behaviour, particularly serious swearing or insults, a credible bus monitor would have immediately stood up and told the boys very clearly to sit down and shut up or they’ll be explaining their behaviour to the Principal. If they responded with rudeness, she should have walked down to the front of the bus, asked the driver to stop and then told them they are on report and any further misbehaviour will result in them being thrown off the bus.

The bus operators should be able to ban children from the bus for repeated, serious violations of the rules. Faced with being told by the Principal and a bus company representative that they will have to drive their brats to and from school each day, their parents will have no choice but to take responsibility for their children’s behaviour.

Of course, the nanny staters have probably brought in some child safety policy which prevents children from being thrown off the bus, or banned from it. Tear that up immediately. Pass legislation to prevent anyone suing if they are thrown off the bus, as long as the expulsion was legitimate and there is evidence to support this.

This situation needn’t have happened, because things should never have been allowed to escalate to this degree. The fact that there is a bus monitor in the first place indicates an ongoing discipline problem, so employ someone who will actually instill that discipline, not some frail, old woman looking to supplement her pension.