Let My People Go
August 20, 2007 by Run Up The Score!
A handful of criminal charges against PSU safety Anthony Scirrotto have been dropped, according to WMAJ’s Joe Boland:
According to the station, Scirrotto has been cleared of charges of burglary, simple assault and criminal trespass in connection to a downtown fight that occurred April. 1. The station said Centre County Common Pleas Judge Charles Brown dismissed the charges recently after considering testimony presented in a hearing last month.
However, WMAJ reports that a felony charge of criminal trespass and non-felony charge of harassment are still pending vs. Scirrotto.
Good news for Scirrotto, the team, and Penn State fans. Bad news for our precarious position as Fulmer Cup frontrunners (less like a yellow jersey, more like an orange jumpsuit), a spot that will now be assumed by Ron Zook’s Fighting Illini. They really are getting better and better!
mp3:
Tesla — Gettin’ Better
N.E.R.D. — Things Are Getting Better
Petey Pablo — Get Me Out Of Jail (Dirty)
Johnny Cash — Folsom Prison Blues
In other news, Anthony Morelli, Terrell Golden, and Dan Connor (who no longer wants to know if there’s a John in the house) are your 2007 team captains.
If you prefer the real Safety Dance video, here you go. My questions:
1. Why is he so serious? His mannerisms are more Mudhoney than Men Without Hats.
2. What is the Safety Dance? I realize it’s making a big S with your hands, but what is the actual concept here? Am I missing something?
3. Is the girl in the video hot, in that kind of cracked-out, hippie sort of way? Can I get a ruling on this?
4. Seriously, what’s with the fucking midget?
Midgets - they are in ur sootcase, givin u oral
Since I didn’t actually go to Penn State, can I say this looks like a case where maybe the prosecutor got a little overzealous without getting hammered?
’cause it does.
I think that’s a fair assessment. If everyone would’ve been charged with some stinging but ultimately harmless stuff — summary offenses or misdemeanors, like simple trespass, harassment, disorderly conduct, simple assault, etc. — I think everyone would’ve paid their fines, done their community service, and gone home. Case closed.
I personally don’t like the fact that the prosecutor went for the felony charges. First of all, he couldn’t prove them. I mean, that’s why these charges are getting tossed and it’s why the Centre County D.A. sent his newest assistant, barely out of law school, to get dumped on at the recent hearing. She was taking one for the team, and I hope she gets a raise sooner than later.
Second, with all of the harsh sentencing guidelines these days, sometimes a prosecutor has to know when to not trying to ruin otherwise productive young lives with felony charges, especially for something as stupid as what happened that night. I know what the statutes say “burglary” is, but really, felony charges for something like a drunken fight where nobody was seriously injured?
Finally, with how bad the District Attorney’s office has looked in these sorts of cases over the past few years, why in the hell would they try to reach for the stars? If the goal is really to make a public spectacle of arresting football players, charge them with something to which they’ll conceivably plead guilty.
I’m going to stand firm here, as if you couldn’t guess. But I’ll ask you to look at it from another angle:
You’re in your dorm room. Some angry big guys break down the door and start punching people. One of the people that got punched is you. You spent the night in the hospital. You learn later they were coming after some guy that one of your friends had let in the party. What do you do?
If you say you don’t press charges, I say you’re a fool.
This was NOT “a drunken fight”. That’s what happened down at the street (and if Scirotto et al had kept it down on the street, but even serious hurt this Bernd asshat, I’d be first in line writing it off as “just a fight”).
But this was actually “round up the posse, break into private property, and deal out some justice”. I resent so many otherwise well-intentioned people making this misrepresentation.
M1EK - Well put. I agree that the fact pattern here has been distorted both by people who believe that the football players are drawing special treatment or additional fire.
Easy to do when the facts are complex (i.e. multiple altercations) or when one has an agenda…
As above, I think your analysis is spot on and I wish people would learn to discuss this topic on those terms.
// But this was actually “round up the posse, break into private property, and deal out some justice”. //
Absolutely, and they should have been appropriately charged and/or punished for it. I’m not saying otherwise. Once it was revealed that nobody was seriously injured and there were no weapons used, I still believe a more level-headed strategy by the authorities could’ve been useful for everyone. Considering the amount of people who were in that immediate area (the apartment, hallways, lobby, etc.) there was a surprising amount of discretion used that evening.
From a political / P.R. standpoint, why not just charge the offenders with misdemeanors of various degrees that can actually be proven? People get punished. D.A. and cops look and feel good and get their positive press. No lives are ruined because of felony charges from some punkassed, glorified bar fight in which nobody was really hurt. Paterno and OJA get their whacks afterward. I’m just legitimately curious as to why it wasn’t handled differently. I can’t think of anyone who has actually come out of this looking good.
As the same time, I don’t believe the State College or University Park police are out to get the football team. That’s just a silly conspiracy theory. I think that people who have been away from a college campus for a long fail to realize how much security is necessary at a place the size of today’s Penn State. Most people (especially those of us who graduated from such a large University in the last ten years) have either been in or around enough trouble that sometimes, the cops are just standing right behind you when you’re doing something stupid. It’s a giant college campus in a tiny college town. There are cops everywhere.
“No lives are ruined because of felony charges from some punkassed, glorified bar fight”
For what seems like the tenth time, it’s not “a bar fight” when you break into somebody’s home to deal out retribution. That’s the kind of stuff that justifiably gets people shot.
was this a good situation. no. Is everyone involved lucky that no one was seriously hurt. you bet. But guess what - I wasn’t one of the people Anthony called that night (I would have thought it was an April Fools joke anyway), nor was I on the street or at the apartment. I have no idea what happened or how it happened - I have to go by the reports that have been presented and draw my own conclusions - Are my conclusions going to affect the situation in any way. No. I’m disappointed beyond words at the players’ behavior - but I don’t get to discipline them - and I’m not going to stop being a PSU fan because of the piss poor judgement of some 20 year old kids.
“I have to go by the reports that have been presented and draw my own conclusions”
And the thinking that leads you guys to draw the conclusion that it was just a drunken streetfight and should thus be excused is, I’ll remind y’all again, exactly how Miami got so out of control in the 1980s. Once again: put yourself in the shoes of the apartment-dweller rather than just homering out.
Drop the Miami comparisons, wow that apple sure is similar to this orange, WTF?
Nick,
When bonehead homers downplay their athlete’s non-minor transgressions as no big deal, it damn sure is apples-to-apples.
Nobody is saying that it isn’t a bad thing or that the kids shouldn’t be punished. I don’t think anyone has ever said that.
What you guys keep saying is “it was just a fight”. That’s exactly the kind of thing the Miami fans said to excuse their program’s slide into thuggery. Remember - I lived through it, in south Florida, at that time.
It wasn’t just a fight. Somebody breaking into a private residence is an order of magnitude worse than a fight in a public place. If it was your residence, you’d get it, I bet. And the law does, too, which is why the charges are so much more serious - the fact that they apparently don’t have enough evidence to convict doesn’t change that it isn’t just “some punkassed, glorified bar fight”.
Yes, glorified. It was two steps above a pair of drunk assholes slugging it out at the Rathskellar and two steps below the gang fight you’re portraying it as. Until players are getting rung up on weapons and heavy drug charges, I think you can give the Miami stuff a rest.
Thank you Run, Miami was a lack of institutional control on all levels, clearly not what is being demonstrated by or can even be inferred from this singular case.
So if you cut me off in traffic; I observe you going home to your friend’s house and make a note of your friend’s address; and I come back an hour later with a bunch of my friends, bust down your door, and start trashing the place and attacking you and your friends - this is just a “glorified road rage” incident, right?
You guys aren’t getting it. Excusing shit like this as “glorified bar fights” is how Miami STARTED getting out of control. The weapons and drug charges FOLLOWED. And allowing the football players to think of themselves as a gang was the enabling force. (That’s why I think Paterno’s tactic of making the whole team scrub the stadium is stupid - it reinforces the gang mentality - I’d have rewarded those who apparently tried to break it up and heavily punish those most directly responsible).
Okay, nobody gets it except you.
It may have started one way, but you are making one HUGE leap of assumption. Like feeling a drop of rain and immediately running home to board up your windows because a hurricane is coming through or building an ark because the flood is coming.
If you guys can stop posting shit like “it was just a fight” or “a glorified bar fight”, we can simply agree to disagree about what it MEANS; but if you can’t, this ain’t ever going to stop - because homers are bad for everybody.