Lake Taylor High School senior Corey Benton was released from jail on Friday, May 5th, after spending four days in jail. If you’d like to know what crime he allegedly committed, you’re out of luck, because, while he did commit the acts he was accused of, not one of those acts was a crime.
Benton was arrested after “bringing a gun to school”, according to reports. But that phrase brings to mind a scenario far different from what actually occurred. The gun was properly secured (and unloaded) inside the trunk of Benton’s car. He appears to have been in complete compliance with state law. And it took four days to figure that out.
I’m pretty sure there’s a method to how police work should be done. First, it should be determined whether or not a crime was actually committed. Then, after it’s known that there was, in fact, a crime, the person suspected of committing that crime should be arrested. Instead, what appears to have happened is that police decided that Benton had done something “bad”, he was arrested for it, and then, they set out to learn whether the “bad” thing was actually, you know, illegal.
While there are many aspects here that I could comment on (but Ravenwood, from whom I got the story, does it better than I could), I particularly liked this bit from the story, because it’s a good example of how our “unbiased” media works:
On Friday he was freed from jail after four days behind bars because according to state law, he did nothing wrong. Now Corey’s father is speaking out.
(Emphasis Mine)
I’m pretty sure that the words “according to state law” indicate that the reporter believes that Benton did do something wrong, even if it wasn’t technically illegal. I have to ask: What, exactly, did Benton do wrong?
I have a bit of a problem with assuming the worst of people, so I could very well be wrong, but I suspect the reporter is trying to imply that bringing the gun to school was inherently wrong. Note that Benton didn’t threaten anyone with the gun. He didn’t have it loaded. There’s nothing in the story at all to imply that he had any violent or hostile intentions when he placed the gun in his trunk. For the reporter to imply that it was somehow wrong for Benton to simply have this gun with him is misguided, but it’s typical of the way the media handles everything.
Just something to keep in mind the next time someone tells you our media is unbiased.