Wednesday, February 06, 2019

MCPS caught without surveillance cameras again

Twenty years after Columbine and two years after the Rockville High School rape scandal, Montgomery County Public Schools' leadership has been caught again without adequate security cameras and surveillance at its facilities. Two recent incidents in as many months at Richard Montgomery High School proved that once again. And along with a horrible record of school violence and fighting, teachers and staff sexually assaulting children, massive cybersecurity flaws revealed in a state audit, and a failure to even perform basic background checks on security employees, children attending MCPS schools remain unsafe under the system's current failed leadership.

The RM incidents - rearrangement of cups spelling seniors to instead spell a racial slur in December, and a swastika being painted on the school last month - should have been easily resolved using security camera footage. Police and school officials seem to know the general timeframe in which the incidents occurred. If cameras were in place, it would be a simple matter to look at all movements on the campus between those reference points. The fact that no photos of suspects or vehicles have been released by police by now speaks for itself.

How can this be, in the age of terrorism and mass shootings? The County Council and Board of Education clearly do not have student safety as a top priority, An examination of some of the truly frivolous expenditures by MCPS over the last two years proves that. So, too, did the 2017 County Council security camera procurement scandal, in which taxpayers unwittingly picked up the tab for a 4-camera security system worth less than $1000 for a whopping $22,000, putting the Pentagon's famous toilet seats to shame. Those cameras were for a County government building, not a school, to boot.

We can do better. Leadership, like the bad example and behavior of MCPS-employed adults that filters down to impressionable children in their charge, starts at the top.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

1. the police investigation found that no rape occurred at Rockville HS, you uneducated dope. How do you not know that?
2. How do you know there are no security cameras at Richard Montgomery? Are you a pervert who has first hand experience or are you just talking out of your ass?
3. As has been explained to you repeatedly, $1K security camera systems from Walmart have zero in common with commercial-grade systems. My condo building spent over $30K when we last upgraded our exterior cameras and added new ones to elevators.
4. What does any of this have to do with Bethesda or East County????

Anonymous said...

Which sounds more likely?

Tea-party Trumpnut Robert Dyer is seriously advocating for GREATER government surveillance OR he is using this non-story as just another pathetic excuse to attack the Council.

You decide

Anonymous said...

7:28am Dyer raised some legitimate questions. These incidents at schools should be solvable.

7:18am Dyer isn't the school blogger! You got the wrong guy.

Seems like it's in the interests of some to have these incidents occur but never actually investigate them.

Anonymous said...

But Robert won't report it because if he does, he will never be able to say "Hans Riemer got arrested" again.

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid. It is night now and there are vampires out and about in Bethesda...

Anonymous said...

6:35 PM LOL, I'm sorry to say, but no one cares about the cemetery. Everyone I recall who were trying to save the cemetery and ran last cycle, such as Dyer and Ficker, were soundly defeated. So, no one cares. The developer owns the land and the bodies...probably just bones now anyway.

The parking garage will be built so folks can get their new Starbucks and maybe a Panera if they're lucky. They were just slaves anyway, right?

7:00 PM Hans Riemer was arrested- what is your point?


Anonymous said...

You post, I'll decide.

Robert Dyer said...

7:18: 1) #FakeNews In fact, the police investigation determined there WAS a gang rape, and their detailed report led to rape charges being filed against both men. The, the State's Attorney threw the victim under the bus to help his political party locally and nationally.

2) You are the pervert who knows the exact number of feet you have to stay away from schools after your conviction. Sad the MoCo cartel has to hire sex offenders like you to handle their online Astroturf trolling. We know RM doesn't have cameras in the locations in question, because the police would have released the images of the suspects, or announced their arrest, or both. Neither has occurred.

3) Sounds like your condo board got snookered. I can get you a good deal on the Brooklyn Bridge, too. The technology has caught up in 2019. You probably are still impressed by electronic keycards.

4) There are MCPS schools in every part of the county, moron.

Anna said...

5:08 You are such an angry old man. I imagine you walking around the grocery store yelling "get off my lawn" at anyone in your way. Do you wave a stick?

You are dead wrong about Rockville HS. Show me some proof that it was politically motivated, and not for the myriad of other, more likely, reasons. How involved were you in the case? Did you talk with the various attorneys? You're talking like you're deep in the details.

You are undeniably wrong in the security camera costs. How about you show a detailed cost of what you came up with (model numbers, purchase costs, installation costs, maintenance contracts, monitoring costs) and we can compare it to what the county found. okay?

Anna said...

" The technology has caught up in 2019. "

Yeah, but that didn't happen in 2019. That was several years ago.

distractions, distortions and irrelevancies.

Anonymous said...

"The, the [sic] State's Attorney threw the victim under the bus to help his political party locally and nationally."

How would potentially being seen as "soft on rape", in the Age of #MeToo, possibly help the Democrats locally and nationally?

Anonymous said...

"We know RM doesn't have cameras in the locations in question, because the police would have released the images of the suspects, or announced their arrest, or both. Neither has occurred. "

If a security camera caught the student(s) who rearranged those Solo cups in a politically-incorrect way, with what would they be charged?

Anonymous said...

Most images of suspects captured by security cameras don't show enough details to clearly identify them (e.g. baseball cap visor pulled down, hiding face). If that is the case in the graffiti incident at Richard Montgomery HS, then it would not make sense for the school to risk revealing the location of their camera.

Robert Dyer said...

6:33: They could be charged with a hate crime and vandalism for the swastika.

6:30: Convenient memory loss - the issue at the time was the border and Trump's wall, not #MeToo. The case was showing Trump was right, and the County and City of Rockville were both trying to pass sanctuary bills at that moment. Now, we'll see if Lt. Gov. Fairfax gets the "zero tolerance" treatment or not.

6:16: You called me an "old man" on Rockville Nights, too, yesterday. You forgot which persona you were again. #Oops. I am deep in the details of the police report from the scene, and it totally disproves the alternate storyline of defense and McCarthy that it was consensual.

The Council overpaid for the cameras in 2017, and you (who magically just moved from a house to a condo - mixed up personas again! #Oops) overpaid in 2019. The tech had caught up in both cases.

Robert Dyer said...

7:03: Huh? These images are released all the time, without fear of "revealing the location of the camera" at the local convenience store or bank. They either don't have the cameras, or it's a hoax. Neither possibility speaks well of our local political cartel.

Anna said...

What are you blabbering about? You sound like a crotchety old man, complaining all the time and I called you out on it. You know, the old guy shaking his stick?

What do you mean "deep in the details?" That doesn't answer what I posted:
"Show me some proof that it was politically motivated, How involved were you in the case? Did you talk with the various attorneys? Reading a police report give you maybe 1/4 of the material.

Can you just stop accusing me of every little thing? Sheesh. It's so tiring. I read this blog. This one. That's all the clicks you get from me. Here. Posting under my real name. Here. This one blog. Got it? Can we finally move on from your baseless accusations?

Anonymous said...

The Republican majority leader of Virginia’s state Senate was the managing editor of a college yearbook featuring photos of people in blackface alongside other racist snapshots and slurs, according to a new report.

The revelation comes as the state’s Democratic leadership is in crisis, with Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring both facing calls to resign after they admitted to wearing blackface while they were college students in the 1980s.

State Sen. Tommy Norment oversaw the Virginia Military Institute’s “The Bomb” yearbook in 1968 — the same year the college first allowed black students to enroll, according to The Virginian-Pilot.

The yearbook includes several photos of people in blackface — including one at a costume party, and another of two men in the racist makeup while holding a football — as well as the N-word and a student from Thailand who is referred to as a “Chink,” the paper reports.

A photo of one man is captioned: “He was known as the ‘Barracks Jew’ having his fingers in the finances of the entire Corps.”

Norment refused to talk about the yearbook when queried by reporters Thursday, saying he would only discuss the state budget, according to the Pilot.

On Saturday, he demanded Northam resign after it was revealed that the governor’s page in the 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook featured a photo of a man wearing blackface next to a man in KKK garb, while his own 1981 VMI yearbook listed his nickname as “Coonman.”

Anonymous said...

Classic Dyer: make some bold, bullshit statement; get asked for proof or evidence; and then just repeat the same bullshit in an even more off-putting manner. Classic Dyer Journalism One-O-None!

Robert Dyer said...

8:07: We're watching some kind of psychotic episode here, folks. YOU are the one who used the phrase "deep in the details," not me. Also the repetition of phrases like "old man," which you started over on Rockville Nights. I'd like to see you call Beto O'Rourke an "old man." LOL

3:38: No clue what you're talking about, Bozo.

1:07: And your point is? You want Norment to resign? Great! Let him resign along with Northam, Fairfax and Mark "Haircut" Herring. Zero tolerance.

The big difference is that Norment isn't the future of Virginia or the Republican Party there. Fairfax and Marky Haircut were both going to run for Governor. Haircut may be the biggest scam of the three, because he is almost indistinguishable from Brian Frosh. It was the equivalent of Brian Frosh or Hans Riemer announcing they had worn blackface for Virginia Democrats.

Anna said...

"Can you just stop accusing me of every little thing?"
It seems your answer is "no."


One day, I'll get so flipping tired of it, so aggravated by it, I'll just out your actions towards me publicly. Write a nice little story about it, and, since I have no journalism history, sans a gossip rag I wrote in my 20's, I'll have someone with proven journalistic chops review it.

“Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.” Marcus Tullius Cicero, (106-43 BC)

Anonymous said...

Wait... Was Dyer offhandedly trying to compare himself to Beto O'Rourke? Now who's having the psychotic episode?

Robert Dyer said...

10:21: After you claimed I was an "old man," I pointed out that Beto-O'Rourke is around the same age and is proclaimed to be an energetic young candidate. You would have to call him "old," too, and then random Democrats around Bethesda Row would probably punch you. See how dumb you sound, Saul?

"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." - Saul Alinsky

Robert Dyer said...

6:10: You would then have revealed your identity, and could be charged for harassment and cyberbullying, as well as defamation.

Anna said...

My identity is not in question, except to you.

Why you can't believe me is your cross to bear. Whether it's that I'm female, or that I speak my mind, or that I post honestly...something in your makeup makes you obsess about it.

You're speaking fast and loose about defamation and cyberbullying. Someone in your position might want to back that down a bit.

I read this blog. This one. That's all the clicks you get from me. Here. Posting under my real name. Here. This one blog. Got it?

Anna said...

I wouldn't call Beto an old man. He's vibrant and transparent. Although, not my choice for Prez.
He's also younger than you.

And before you or one of the "Baaaa Brigade" attack me for knowing your personal info, I remember your age because you're 2 years older than the hubs.

Robert Dyer said...

7:32: Beto is only 1 year behind me - if I'm an old man, so is he, by your bizarre reckoning. We're the same era in every way.

Anna said...

Not only did you delete this innocuous comment when it first appeared, you deleted it again this morning... Why would you do that?


If you were 30 and acted the same way and I'd still call you old.
Like the "get off my lawn" guy, Grumplestilskin.

Age is a state of mind, where people can be old and act young and vice-versa.

Anna said...

Are you running around with your hands over your ears saying "I can't hear you, lalalalalala, I can't hear you, I can't hear you"

Because it sure seems that way. Are you really that easily triggered by the word "old?"

“A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.” –Saul Bellow