Most of us have experienced having to painfully roll out of bed to make an early work shift after a late night of drinking the night before. It’s always a struggle, but no matter how slow time passes, the shift comes to an end and you can return to bed and nurse your hangover. But this is not the case for every early morning shift. When it comes to arriving to work to co-pilot a commercial airline flight for hundreds of passengers, there are much graver consequences.

Saturday morning, a pilot for an American Airlines flight headed from Detroit to Philadelphia was arrested for failing a breathalyzer test.  A TSA agent was the first person to notice the pilot “acting suspiciously” and minutes before the flight was to take off at 7 AM, the airport police were notified. The Wayne County Airport Authority administered a breathalyzer test, which the pilot failed and resulted in the airport police taking him into custody. The pilot was then “turned over to Romulus police, where he failed another breathalyzer test.”

The Federal Aviation Administration recommends that pilots wait at least 24 hours from their last sip of alcohol before flying. However, the FAA requires that “no person may operate or attempt to operate an aircraft” within eight hours of having consumed alcohol or “with a blood alcohol content of 0.04 percent or greater.” Though this unnamed pilot’s blood alcohol content has not been released, Michael Conway, Director of Public Affairs at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, reported that the pilot’s BAC was over the 0.04 percent limit. Conway further commented that this is an “extremely unusual” situation and said the pilot has been released as authorities determine whether charges will be filed.

Due to this pilot’s irresponsible drinking, the American Airlines flight was cancelled. Despite this airline’s bad reputation with canceling flights without offering accommodations, under these unique circumstances, American Airlines offered other flights for its passengers. Many of the passengers, on their way to enjoy their spring break in Philly, had to postpone or cancel their spring break plans. Though I am sure they were all shocked and disappointed, especially the spring breakers who had to postpone their spring break dreams, this will probably be a story they will never forget.

Ashlyn Marquez

Ashlyn Marquez received her law degree from the American University, Washington College of Law and her Bachelor’s degree from The New School. She works in immigration law and has a passion for worker’s rights, tacos, and avocados. Contact Ashlyn at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Spring Breakers’ Plans Ruined Due to Pilot’s Apparent Drunken State appeared first on Law Street.

Omegle is an anonymous chat site commonly used by teens. With a tagline like “Talk to Strangers,” it’s no wonder the site has quickly become known for its rampant sexual, creepy, and flat-out weird interactions. However, one anonymous user began a chat last week with a frightening message revealing the latitude and longitude of Julissa Romero’s body, a 12-year-old girl the user claimed had missing for about five months. The message was met with a swarm of feelings by the online community  Reddit.com, where a screenshot of the chat was first posted.

Thanks Reddit

I later found out that it was all a hoax, but I have to admit, upon first learning about the message, I didn’t know how to react. Should I be outraged? Should I be saddened by the supposed death of this young girl? Should I be relieved that her family and friends might finally be able to have some closure and begin the healing process? Or, like the majority of the users on the thread, should I merely scoff and shrug it off as simply another faceless internet user yearning for some spotlight? Well as I soon discovered, this is the internet, and in the words of quite literally everyone with half a brain and an IP address, you just can’t trust it.

The problem is that there are more and more incidences of people saying stupid stuff online that gets them in trouble and requires police resources to solve. Remember the 14-year-old Dutch teen who was arrested this April for tweeting terroristic threats at American Airlines? This bored, little girl had no idea her information would then be sent to the FBI via American Airlines for a thorough investigation.

I was dumbfounded by the entire thing. She created a mysterious posting as a member of Al Qaida, and thought we’d all have a nice laugh while she got retweeted approximately a bajillion times? Did she really not think anyone would care?!

Thanks Mashable

Keeping that type of general stupidity in mind, I read through the Reddit thread hoping there would emerge some sort of answer to whether this heinous Omegle message was in fact real or fake. But as I continued scrolling, it seemed to become more and more apparent that the skepticism the internet has brought to the online population is winning out in most people’s minds. Posts quickly drifted toward sarcasm with references to bad 90’s horror movies, in which the cast is always full of dumb high school or college students and even touched on the necessity of the “token black guy.” And for a while there before I knew it was all a hoax, I actually forgot about the little girl in the story, who had supposedly been missing for almost half a year.

Thankfully, Henry Gomez, commander of the Salinas Police Department, confirmed later that afternoon that the Omegle chat clue was all a giant hoax. In fact, it couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only was there no dead body at the coordinates listed in the chat message, just as the amateur google-map investigators of Reddit figured, but the “missing girl” wasn’t really missing. Although at one point earlier this year she was listed as missing, authorities investigating the case have assured the public that Romero is now “alive and accounted for.“

While everyone can now breathe a sigh of relief knowing young Remero is still alive, the sensationalism created by this Omegle prankster and the desperate Dutch teen should not be overlooked. Although both scenarios ended up being hoaxes, they didn’t just disturb online communities, such as Reddit and Twitter. While the Omegle incident only involved one police department, the American Airlines threat took the attention of the FBI. Does no one else see the problem with this? Besides the fact that kids as young as fourteen are turning to false terrorist threats to amuse themselves, their “pranks” are taking the resources of crime-fighting organizations away from actual crimes. If you ask me, it’s time we encourage our young people to find some new hobbies.

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Erika Bethmann (@EBethmann) is a New Jersey native and a Washingtonian in the making. She is passionate about travel and international policy, and is expanding her knowledge of the world at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs. Contact Erika at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Mike via Flickr]

Erika Bethmann

Erika Bethmann is a New Jersey native and a Washingtonian in the making. She is passionate about travel and international policy, and is expanding her knowledge of the world at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs. Contact Erika at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Omegle Murder Confession: Don’t Trust Everything You Read appeared first on Law Street.

On Sunday night, this puzzling exchange happened on American Airlines’ Twitter account: 

American Airlines Twitter via USA Today.

The tweeter in question is a 14-year-old girl named Sarah. She has since told the press that the tweet was a joke — because apparently Sarah has no idea what a joke is.

After American Airlines tweeted that they were sending her information to the FBI, she tweeted about how scared she was, and that she was “just a fangirl pls I don’t have evil thoughts and plus I’m a white girl.”  It really does seem like a ploy for attention though, given that she also tweeted to the world her number of followers and pretty much her entire experience with the fallout. She has since been arrested, and American Airlines released a statement saying, “At American, the safety of our passengers and crew is our number one priority. We take security matters very seriously and work with authorities on a case by case basis.”

Well, clearly Sarah isn’t very bright. But most people should know that tweeting terror threats at a major airline is an incredibly bad idea, right?

In actuality, since this story broke, about a dozen different people have sent similar threats to American Airlines, as well as a few have to Southwest Airlines, a completely unrelated company. And there were other inflammatory tweets sent out in support of “Plus I’m a white girl” Sarah. I can’t get over this, really. Why in the world would anyone ever think it’s a good idea to say these things. I cannot imagine that young people who are savvy enough to use Twitter don’t understand how IP addresses work. It’s really pretty easy for law enforcement to find pretty much anyone.

And this Sarah girl is by no means the only person her age to say something exceptionally stupid on the internet. There have been countless similar incidents. For example, last February, a teen from Texas got into an argument with a friend on Facebook over a video game. He ended up commenting something to the effect of “Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head, I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts. LOL. JK.” That young man, Justin Carter, ended up getting arrested for the comment, which was charged as a terror threat. 

And in one of my favorite cases, a few weeks ago, a particularly oblivious teenager lost her parents about $80,000. Her father, Patrick Snay, won a lawsuit against his former employer, a private school in Miami, in which he alleged age discrimination. Part of the settlement included a confidentiality clause — Snay and his wife weren’t supposed to share the information with anyone other than their attorneys and other pertinent professional advisers. But just a few days later, their daughter posted this message to her 1,200 Facebook friends: “Mama and Papa Snay won the case against Gulliver. Gulliver is now officially paying for my vacation to Europe this summer. SUCK IT.” And of course, that breaks the confidentiality agreement, and cost the family the $80,000 settlement.

There are plenty of incidents of young people getting in trouble because of the incredibly stupid stuff they put up on social media. I don’t know why that is. Maybe we don’t treat social media platforms as the fully public forum that they are. Sometimes when you’re sitting on your couch in pajamas and getting into a debate with your friends on Facebook about something stupid, it’s easy to forget that everyone can see it. Or maybe teenagers have been very stupid for years, and it’s only now that they have a microphone for that stupidity, and thus we get things like Twitter threats to airlines. Either way, let this serve as a reminder to watch what you say on the Internet. It may come back to haunt you, big time.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Sandy via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Newsflash: Tweeting Terror Threats is a Terrible Idea appeared first on Law Street.