Another Man’s Rants on Facebook leads to his Arrest

It is never a bad thing to have pride in something whether it is pride in your country, your race and even yourself but when that pride turns into arrogance, therein lies that quiet snake ready to bite.  This arrogance is what I think lead to this story titled “Man Arrested After Threatening to ‘Kill Cops and Innocent White Kids.’ But a Friend Downplays It All as ‘Speaking His Mind.’ written by Dave Urbanski for The Blaze.  In it Mr. Urbanski reports that “after a suburban Chicago man made threats on Facebook that he would “kill cops and innocent white kids,” police searched a home he sometimes stays at and arrested him on weapons and other charges, WLS-TV reported. While Aries Woodfin, 33, wasn’t charged with making threats, a friend who owns the Ford Heights, Illinois, house where Woodfin was arrested downplayed his Facebook threat.  She said it was a reaction over the grand jury decisions in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City where white police officers weren’t indicted for their roles in the deaths of unarmed black men.  “He was speaking his mind,” Beatrice Franklin told WLS. “He was expressing how he felt, which is what everyone else was doing on Facebook as well, expressing themselves. They were ranting and they were raving.”  Woodfin allegedly posted photos of white children on his Facebook account along with the threats, WMAQ-TV reported. When he was arrested Friday, Woodfin allegedly told officers he was a “warrior” and the “streets would run red with blood,” a source told WMAQ.  Franklin disputes the gun charges against her friend, saying the gun police found belonged to her: ”I am a licensed FOID card holder and I have paperwork stating that it’s mine,” she told the station. “So no, it’s not his.”

At first, after reading this article I was under the impression that Mr. Woodfin had the weapon in his possession and if that was true then his friend Ms. Franklin should face some type of penalty since she cannot seem to maintain control of her weapon but after reading it again, this may not be the case, but if the title of this article sounds familiar to those who follow me at Manns Medium, it should.  This is the very same thing that happened to another person I reported on before.  Taking to Facebook to vent your anger and frustration should be well known by now as not the smartest thing you could do.  While social media is a good thing, too much of anything can be bad and in this case of ranting and raving nothing is more true and provable than this.

Whether you are angry, upset or just plain bored, making better decisions of what you put in print is quite prudent especially when you write inflammatory things that could be easily considered as a threat.  Now there will be times where what some may consider a threat is anything but however when it is clear what you mean then you will have a tougher row to hoe.  Take for another example the step-dad of Michael Brown now looking at possibly being charged by simply saying “burn this mother-***cker to the ground” and a few minutes later all kinds of things are set ablaze.  America, do we not think it is better to take a few minutes to think about what you want to say before saying it because once you hit post or enter, it will be might hard to get it back.