Well the hypocrisy never ceases to amaze me. In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, Barack Obama established a task force,
headed by Vice President Joe Biden, to come up with solutions to end
gun violence. However, one of the members of Biden’s task force has a
son that has been convicted, not just charged, but convicted, of
planning a mass murder at a high school in Massachusetts in 2004.
According to Boston.com:
Authorities learned about the plan in September of that year, when Nee went to police with two classmates and told officers that Kerns was planning a massacre at the school. Nee told police the plan involved taking ammunition and explosive devices into the school, securing the school’s exit doors with bicycle locks, and shooting students and staff.
Police arrested Kerns the following day.
Police didn’t arrest Nee until a month later, after friends of Kerns implicated Nee as the mastermind of the plot. The two youths were once close friends; Nee even lived at the Kerns’s home for a month during the spring of 2004.
Kerns’s father, Ben, said that the boys had a falling out and that he believed Nee was trying to frame his son.
A grand jury returned indictments against Nee and Kerns in October 2004, charging both with conspiracy to commit murder, promotion of anarchy, and threatened use of deadly weapons at a school. Kerns and Nee pleaded not guilty to the charges.Boston.com also reported of the first incident where Nee was seen with a .40 caliber Glock in his waistband by a female student as she was getting off the school bus and how she had heard Nee talk about “how the school was going to be shot up.” Apparently the firearm was his father’s service weapon.
Boston Police plan to contact authorities investigating the alleged Columbine-style attack plot at Marshfield High School to determine if a gun that one suspect allegedly showed to another student was a .40-caliber handgun issued by Boston Police.
A female student told Marshfield Police that Joseph T. Nee, one of the two suspects in the case, pulled what she thought was a black, .40-caliber handgun from his waistband as she was getting off a school bus this past spring and told her “how the school was going to be shot up,” John P. McLaughlin, an assistant Plymouth district attorney, said at Nee’s arraignment Monday.
Nee is the son of Thomas J. Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the city’s largest police union. Boston police officers carry .40-caliber Glock handguns, according to a department spokeswoman.
Yesterday, Boston Police Lieutenant Kevin Foley said news reports that Joseph Nee was carrying a .40-caliber handgun “was really the first we’d heard of that particular allegation.”Nee isn’t the only questionable person serving on the task force. Attorney General Eric Holder is also on board, despite the ongoing investigation into gunwalking at least 2,500 firearms into Mexico which has left hundreds of people dead on his watch, including two federal agents.
UPDATE: Nee was sentenced to six months in prison for his role in the plot, as was Kerns. Again, from Boston.com:
Joseph Nee was handcuffed today moments after being given a sentence that will keep him in prison for six months for his role in plotting a Columbine-style ambush at Marshfield High School in 2004.
Nee sat silently as the Plymouth Superior Court clerk outlined his fate: The total sentence spanned 2 1/2 years and included 2 years probation. Judge Charles M. Grabau ordered Nee to spend 9 months of that in the Plymouth House of Correction, but gave him credit for 92 days he has already served. The remaining 21 months of the sentence was suspended.
Nee’s lawyer, Thomas Drechsler, vowed to appeal. His client faced up to 20 years in prison. Nee, who has been free on $20,000 bail since January 2005, was taken into custody.
The sentence came after a four-day bench trial that included testimony from a dozen witnesses. Nee was acquitted of two other charges: promotion of anarchy and threatened use of deadly weapons at a school.
Kerns was tried and found guilty of threatening to use deadly weapons and conspiracy to commit murder. In November, he was sentenced to 10 months in jail. He is being held at the Plymouth House of Correction.In 2010, even after serving the six months, Nee was appealing his conviction.
