It Has Not Been A Good Week For Successful Stings: A Two Part Blog Special- Part 2
In the second part of our two-part blog special: we go to an elementary school in Virginia, where a mother breaks a cardinal rule of spying. (CNN )When Sarah Sims' daughter complained she was being bullied in elementary school, the Virginia mother grew concerned.
Sims reached out to administrators at Ocean View Elementary School in Norfolk, Virginia, where her daughter is in fourth grade, but she said she got no response. In September, Sims decided to investigate on her own.
She sent her daughter to school with a digital audio recorder in her backpack, hoping to capture audio from the classroom. School officials found out and confiscated the device, which had been in her daughter's desk recording the school day.
Full article here.
Basically, Mom’s unhappy with how the school is addressing a bullying issue, and so she places a microphone into her daughter’s backpack. I won’t lie. I LOVE this. It's just an on-brand, pure mom move through and through. You’re not going to give me the information I want? Then I’m going to send my daughter to school wearing a wire, and I’ll figure out what’s going on myself.
I give mama bear an A+ for effort, and a D- for execution. I mean, come on, you’ve got to hide your wire better than that. You can't just put a microphone in a backpack and expect everybody to just ignore it. Did Billy Costello ever get caught wearing a wire? Hell, no! You get caught with a wire, you catch a bullet; that's just a common sting-phrase. And while I will admit that in my brief time teaching, I never once thought to check bags or desks for hot mics, apparently the administrators at Ocean View Elementary School in Norfolk, Virginia are more wary. Unfortunate news for this mother-daughter spy game duo, but that's a risk you have to account for.
A criminal charge does feel a little bit extreme though, no? Like at some point we’ve just got too many laws to keep track of. I know not to murder anyone, lie on my tax forms, or give any alcohol to the kids down the block, but that’s more or less it. Once we get into “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” I don’t know what’s going on or what that means. On one hand, come on school board, you busted Mom’s sting and she feels like an idiot; let’s leave it at that. On the other hand, nobody said spying was easy. You've got to be ready to take your knocks and do your time. In this case, I guess it's the daughter who messed up and outed her mom (or in spy-terms: her handler). That's a no-no spy move. Helloooooo? Ever heard of plausible deniability?
P.S. For those of you who think that blog life is more a gift than a curse, I now can't stop thinking about different ways to send kids to school wearing a wire.
