The L.A. Times reports:
... Rachel Lee, 19; Diana Tamayo, 19; Courtney Ames, 18; and Alexis Neiers, 18 ... were arrested last week on suspicion of burglary in several of the cases....
Most of the group were classmates at Indian Hills High School, a continuation campus in Agoura Hills, set atop a leafy incline in an upscale neighborhood next to a traditional high school. BMWs and Audis were parked in the student lot Monday, and some of the nearby roads mark off horse trails for equestrians.
So... apparently children of privilege. How could this happen?
Blair Berk, an attorney who represents some of the victims, blamed "paparazzi shots and magazine coverage" for "increasingly prying into the private homes, schools and personal possessions of stars."
"There are only so many shot of a star's back gate before someone, be it a stalker or burglar, goes through it," Berk said.
Damned paparazzi, enabling us to see things we might want. Once you see what you want and where it is, it's just a short leap to stealing it.
At least one of the accused had her own aspirations for television stardom. Neiers was set to appear with her family in a reality-TV pilot about aspiring actresses on the cable network E!, and she was arrested on the set of the show, police said....
Reality is really biting us in the ass this month, isn't it? Balloon Boy, and now this. Is everybody in L.A. working on a reality show? Too bad criminal activity — so far, at least — hasn't become acceptable subject matter for reality TV shows. But the line between crime and reality shows is getting blurred. There seems to be some serious overlap in the kinds of people that are draw to the 2 things.
A young woman who identified herself as Neiers' sister said at the family's Thousand Oaks home Monday that the accusations are untrue. "My family is in so much debt," she said. "If this TV show falls through, you don't know how bad this is going to be."
How many families out there are hanging by the thread of a possible TV show? All it takes is one kid in the family to screw up... or can they edit out that kid — kind of like the way
Aimee Osbourne was kept out of "The Osbournes" — except that Aimee was the sensible person who simply preferred not to be a reality show kid.
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23 comments:
a continuation campus
There's the problem right there.
Reality is biting everywhere these days. Living illusions only lasts as long as the people around you are willing to keep supporting your habits.This is becoming the theme for today: Disillusionment.
"Once you see what you want and where it is, it's just a short leap to stealing it."
That's the entire Democratic fiscal plan in a nutshell.
I thought poverty caused crime.
Too bad criminal activity — so far, at least — hasn't become acceptable subject matter for reality TV shows.
The last (posthumously published) "Dortmunder" crime novel by Donald E. Westlake is an amusing take on that premise.
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/w/donald-e-westlake/get-real.htm
Fortunately, the latest Katy Perry album contains no coded messages about the approaching race war.
When the story broke last week it said they attended a school for troubled teens- a PC term for juvenile delinquents.
I guess because of declining property values they changed it to "continuation campus". What a joke.
Peter, "continuation campus" has been around for a long while. It's not necessarily juvenile delinquents, in the legal sense.
Basically, it serves the function that Catholic schools do in some areas. Takes in students that for whatever reason aren't making it in regular public school, be it for discipline, grades, illness, pregancy, whatever. Kids who get kicked out of public school, or don't show up. It's the law that kids have to be educated up to 18, so continuation schools lump all the various issues and causes together. Every district has one or two or more.
Paddy O,
Excuse my PC ignorance. A school for kids who can't play well with others.
Wed have them where I live. The kids are Juvenile Delinquents. But, hey, what ever floats your PC boat.
They sound like gamblers sitting at the tables waiting for that big hit that'll save them. Long-shots and desperation.
Is everybody in L.A. working on a reality show?
No. Some of the LA denizens are working on screenplays.
But I agree with one of your points: It's only a short time 'til a Reality Show includes actual criminal activity.
Cops is a great reality show based on criminal activity. However, it's probably not much of a career jumpstart for rich teenage girls.
wv: prowized
what happens to you when Buffy and her friends break into your crib.
It's the law that kids have to be educated up to 18, so continuation schools lump all the various issues and causes together.
Agoura Hills is nice, but the children are no more privileged there than the children of Madison, Wisconsin. In fact, Ann, a law professor, might well live there if she worked at Pepperdine instead of UW.
The point of mentioning the "continuation campus" here is that the young women were formerly troubled teens. Not even the privileged are exempt from producing troubled children.
My district has a continuation campus for the troubled, and a tiny high school for the pregnant and young mothers.
Peter, would you call cancer patients whose treatment prevents them from regular attendance at public schools juvenile delinquents?
Having something that lumps together all kinds of students in a common setting that may or may not have to do with intentional behavioral problems is useful.
Maybe this is PC, and certainly these girls are the definition of juvenile delinquents, but I just have a hard time calling special needs students delinquents. But, you know, whatever floats your hard-assed boat. I know! Let's send out the truancy officer out to the speakeasies to round up all the rapscallions and slackers.
Yeah, fls is right.
Plus, the school is in Agoura Hills but at least one of the girls is from Thousand Oaks. Which again is very nice, but not what one would necessarily label 'privileged'.
None of the actors named as victims of the robberies live in the area. They live about 20 miles away in the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, and Los Feliz. I do wonder if this bunch is responsible for the recent Kardashian robbery.
I thought poverty caused crime.
Criminals cause crime.
And the parents(who should be bitch slapped) of the criminals who indulged the little criminals until they could become big criminals, cause crime.
Crimes of necessity like stealing bread to live are barely excusable when we have all sorts of support systems today...... versus crimes because you are just "bad", have no excuse. Those cross all economic lines.
Paddy-- the kids with cancer don't get sent to 'alternative' or 'continuation' schools. In most places, the kids too sick for school get a private tutor sent to their homes. No parent would allow her medically fragile child to be sent to 'continuation school!'
Now, there is a problem with throwing the school-skippers in with the knife-fighters, IMO.... but maybe that can serve as an incentive not to skip!
Boredom also causes mischief and that mischief can take the form of crime, out-of-control drinking/drug use and/or promiscuous sex.
Take workaholic parents who given only token effort to paying attention to their kids, plop the whole family down in an area with little for teenagers to do and you have trouble.
LA can be a great place for 20 somethings, but many of its neighborhoods suck for kids and teens. The upscale, sprawling sterile neighborhoods may mask problems of the dense neighborhoods, but that's all.
This is a big reason I moved from Los Angeles (that and the traffic.) Many of the outlying communities, like Simi Valley, are still family friendly but becoming less so.
Deirdre, in my school district, if I remember correctly, the continuation school was more of a broad range of independent and class study that was able to be responsive to various student needs. Which means for some students when they couldn't go through the regular high school for whatever reason (and in my school some because of acting) they worked out their curriculum through the continuation school. My dad used to do this, meeting students at their home or somewhere to assign and review homework. All through the county/district, not part of the actual high school. A physically fragile student need not be in close proximity to the miscreants while still working with the continuation school.
School districts are required to teach children and that means working with the patterns and schedules that are possible. Continuation schools in local districts are the means that publicly funded education can work with a large variety of dysfunctions.
There's a looseness to the "continuation" part that doesn't imply just behaviorally misbehaving delinquent kids. It certainly was often the delinquents who went there, but it's not limited to those, and so continuation isn't just a PC euphemism.
The "serious overlap" comment is very sharp. What the two groups have in common is wanting goodies without working for them, at least not in the usual, delay-of-gratification way. What they don't have in common is that reality-show people want attention; burglars don't.
Once you see what you want and where it is, it's just a short leap to stealing it.
What a weird thing to say.
If that's a short leap for you, you are conscience-impaired.
Someone's working up a script based on this incident. The girls may end up more famous than if they were on a reality tv show. If any of them are genuinely good looking, their fortunes are made...The moral of the tale is that Hollywood tales have no morals.
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