Sunday 20 September 2009
Plot to blow up school?
On 20th April 2009, Matthew Swift and Ross McKnight were accused of plotting to blow up their school due to allegedly beoming obsessed with Columbine killers Harris and Klebold. However on Wednesday 16th September, after spending 6 months in prison, the boys were found not guilty of trying to blow up the school. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) based much of the case on journals and diaries kept by the pair, which were full of rants against society. However none of their writing was no more then a fantasy and I think that the prosecution was dealt in the wrong way considering the evidence and I think that it was judgemental and it stereotypes teenages as very negative!
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Then again... if you compare the writings of Swift and McKnight with those of the two Finnish adolescents who DID follow through (one of who is expressly name-checked by Swift), you can see the quandary the police and the CPS were in: if push had come to shove in Audenshaw (and let's face it, nobody EXPECTS kids to act out their fantasies until they do), the public would have ripped the police a new one fast than you can say "bang-you're-dead".
The fact that the British public have been so sanguine about the idea that one (or two) of theirs could plan such a thing smacks of innocence ready to be given a rude awakening.
It is, of course EXACTLY the viewpoint held in Finland prior to Jokela and Kauhajoki, and the reason why a Finnish police officer is now facing negligence charges over the Kauhajoki shootings.
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