Crimes and Misdemeanors, 2010 (Failure to tweet?)

Because I have much beloved nieces who are 12 and 13, I tend to keep a close eye on what’s in the teen news – especially when it comes to anything that has to do with reckless behavior and danger. So, I’ve been all over sexting (and the criminalization of), the South Hadley death-by-bullying situation, the unspeakably horrific Deerfield Florida kid-on-kid crimes, and other topics du world-going-to-hell jour. (Good conversation starters, even though both girls are well aware that there’ll be no stopping the Auntie Moe quasi preach-a-thon that will be part of the conversation).

More amiably, because of the girls, I also – at least in a half-baked way -  tend to know who the reigning pop stars are.

Thus, if for no other reason, I am in passing familiar with Justin Bieber. (In truth, I can’t remember if he’s already yesterday in their eyes. I mean, come on, he’s no Ke$ha.)

Thus, I read the recent news about this week’s arrest of Bieber’s manager with keen interest.

For those not in the pop know, Bieber is a teen idol. (For those of a certain age, he appears more Ricky Nelson than Elvis, more Monkees than Stones, more Dr. Kildare than Ben Casey.)

Last fall, Bieber was scheduled to appear at a Long Island shopping mall – an event “canceled due to overcrowding.” (Source of info for this post: NY Times.)

Now, my one and only experience with teen idol overcrowding was experienced when I was 7 or 8.

Some of the Mousketeers were appearing at the Stop & Shop in our neighborhood, and my friend Bernadette’s aunt took us.

We go there early, and were, in fact, in the front row.

But we were roughed out of our position by a horde of early adolescent boys who were hell-bent on getting up close, if not personal, with Annette Funicello who was, by Mickey Mouse Club standards at least, a 1950’s hottie.

Distraught after being pushed to the back of the crowd, we milled around the parking lot, waiting for the bus to show up, grumbling about the unfairness of big boys who were too old to be Mickey Mouse Club fans pushing a couple of little girls and one middle-aged aunt around. (Little did we know about the allure Annette held to these boys. We just thought these boys were big-baby-bullies.)

Anyway, as it happened, the bus pulled up right in front of us, and we were able to see the Mouseketeers disembark.

All I remember was Jimmy Dodd’s big grin, and being shocked that Annette, who couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15 at the time, was wearing a full length leopard coat and a ton of makeup.

Needless to say, we didn’t know any teen-aged girls who looked quite like this. Not Bernadette’s older sister. Not my younger than Annette Aunt Kay. Not my big girl cousin Barbara. And not my babysitters.

I was completely and utterly shocked. (As I said, I didn’t get what the boys were getting.)

So I do know a bit about teen idols, teen idol idolatry, and the madness of crowds.

At the Bieber non-event, while a “’horrible disaster’” didn’t occur – kind of surprisingly, since I can imagine that the crowd might have gotten pretty darned ugly once they realized that the object of their affection was going to be a no-show – it could have.

And it was precisely to avoid said “’horrible disaster’” that the police demanded that Bieber’s appearance be called off.

There’s some additional complication involving the arrest at the time of someone from Def Jam, but this week’s Notorious Big Arrest was of Bieber manager Scott Braun. As The Times reported,

Police asked Braun to send out a Twitter message from Bieber's account telling fans not to come, but Braun refused, even changing the account's password so "he could control the event," the office said.

"By refusing to send out the cancellation Tweet and preventing others from doing so, he blatantly ignored police directives," said Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice in the statement, adding "a horrible disaster was averted."

Braun has surrendered, and Bieber is tweeting his support for his manager, who did, eventually, get the 140 characters out – just not soon enough to the liking of the police and the DA.

Braun had "endangered the very fans who came to see his client," Rice said. He faces up to one year in jail if convicted on charges of reckless endangerment and criminal nuisance, the District Attorney said.

Now, surely Braun should have co-operated with the police.

But it sure does look like the police were ceding responsibility for crowd control that they might have been able to take care of.

Did they not post officers or mall personnel at entrances to warn fans that the event was full (or being canceled). Could they not have worked to disperse the crowd?

I know, I know, it’s not easy to deal with a couple of thousand emotionally overwrought pre- and teenaged girls, who are convinced that their life would be perfect if Justin Bieber made eye contact with him. But wouldn’t you think that something could’ve been done that didn’t rely on tweeting?

Maybe the police did all of the above, and the tweeting was just a belt and suspenders thing. (Interesting, isn’t it, the assumption – likely correct – that most of the fans were signed up for Bieber-tweets and had cell phones?)

In any case, it will be interesting to see where this one ends up. (I’m sure betting on no jail time.)

And it does make me wonder what the police did when the bobby-soxers were swooning after Frank Sinatra. What they did when the pony-tailers were fainting for Elvis. What they did when the madras-wearing teeny-boppers were shrieking for the Beatles.

Meanwhile, is failure to tweet when so ordered by an officer of the law a misdemeanor or a felony?