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Winthrop man to face charge for allegedly beaming laser at his daughter's hockey opponents
By adamg on Tue, 03/06/2012 - 6:17pm
Joseph Cordes, 42, will be summonsed into East Boston District Court for disturbing the peace at a Winthrop hockey match on Feb. 29, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office and Winthrop Police announced.
According to police and the DA's office, Cordes, sitting "all alone in the upper bleachers" pointed a green laser toward the helmet of the goalie on the Medway girl's team in the third period of a game at Larsen Rink, "disrupting the game play and eliciting a highly emotional reaction from players and parents alike." Cordes was ejected from the game.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
Laser use in Winthrop, eh?
I wonder whether we will find out that this guy is also one of the idiots who likes to point lasers at the cockpits of aircraft that are are arriving or departing KBOS. If so, this guy will have much, much bigger problems and we'll all be better off.
Disturbing the peace
is such a cop-out charge. If I see that in someone's CORI, I'm going to think that the person got a little loud and did something that's no big deal and doesn't reflect heavily on a person's judgment.
If convicted, shouldn't this guy have something on his record that indicates that he did something premeditated that showed a disregard for the safety of a child's eyes, that he thought it was a good idea to jeopardize his own child's sense of security and respect in her community, and that he has a lack of boundaries and morals and thought it was acceptable for an adult to help children cheat at a sporting competition?
Why isn't this an assault charge?
You can do serious damage to someone's eyes with a laser.
Right!
And one can be charged with assault without having caused damage, as long as someone did something that might reasonably cause injury and that there was no reason to have done.
Deep Breath
Your average pocket laser doesn't pose a threat to your eyes unless your actually staring into it and resist the instinct to blink. The chances of blinding someone with a hand-held laserpointer in the bleachers is like giving someone a papercut by throwing a deck of cards at them.
Yes, I know this
But to use that as a defense, he'd need to show that the laser had been determined to be perfectly safe for shining in eyes, was approved for that purpose, etc. Because otherwise, he's shining something into someone's eyes that might cause damage and has absolutely no reason to be doing so.
Also, it could have startled her, made her fall, etc. A trip wire itself doesn't hurt the person, but those aren't OK to stick places just because you feel like it.
bzzzt, wrong
Green laser pointers are usually rated for 10mW, which is 2-10 times the light output of a typical red laser pointer, and places them well into class IIIb, for which specular reflections alone can cause eye damage. This dipshit was aiming it at the kid's head.
Worse, cheap green laser pointers have found to produce significantly *more* IR than green light because the assholes making them leave out the IR filter. And guess what your blink reflex doesn't react to?
Yeah. IR.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25597/
Dangers of green laser pointers:
http://news.healingwell.com/index.php?p=news1&id=5...
Laser classes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_safety
There used to be an electronic surplus store
in Woburn (Electronic Surplus Supply?) that sold warning signs that read
What's in a label?
If the item in question had been described as a "Military grade laser blinding weapon" instead of a "green laser pointer" people might feel differently about the charge --- and the difference is only a few milliwatts.
What is it?
What is it that makes a grown person take a high school sporting event so seriously that they resort to reprehensible behavior such as this? We hear about this sort of thing all the time. Parents getting in physical altercations with other parents at high school sporting events, parents getting into physical altercations with the coaches or the high school athletes themselves. All sense of perspective seems to get lost. It's a high school game people, not a matter of life and death. I just don't get it.
Winning is the ultimate
Winning is the ultimate cologne. You play to win the game!
You don't know Winthrop hockey ;-)
I didn't grow up anywhere near Winthrop, but I'm well aware of the town's fanaticism for it's high school hockey team.
Meh, might be a stretch with an assault with a weapon charge.
If he blared out an air horn, would the damage to peoples ears be the same?
As far as the CORI goes, I look at these in all sorts of ways. Disturbing the Peace in a case like this is probably worse than an assault with a dangerous weapon where someone kicked another person in a mutual fight.
Then there is the whole outcome of the actual case. That basically means nothing (in terms of reading the record).
green laser pointers can cause permanent damage
Don't dismiss the dangers of green laser pointers. The cheap ones are strong enough to do permanent damage to eyes.