Kirby Smart has lost control, or something.
Two Georgia freshman early-enrollees were arrested overnight on two felony counts, according to Athens-Clarke County jail logs.
Defensive lineman Julian Rochester and cornerback Chad Clay were booked early Tuesday morning at 12:13 on two felony counts. As of this story’s publication, both were still incarcerated. Both are being charged with possessing a weapon in school zone and with criminal damage in the second degree.
Not good, fellas. At least you could have waited until the campus open-carry law passed.
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UPDATE: This is so Georgia.
Looks like the latest make nice overtures to Jimmy Williamson the local constabulary are having the effect you might expect. Which is to say, none.
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UPDATE #2: Speaking of effects you might expect…
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UPDATE #3: Bernie, for the win.
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UPDATE #4: Time for the lawyers.
According to Athens attorney Kim Stephens, the players apparently were shooting solo cups in their dorm room with a BB gun, which left marks on the door and in other areas of the room. The way the statute reads, anything that shoots a projectile — “including a straw and spitball” — fits the definition of a weapon on campus.
“Every kid eating with a steak knife in the campus dining hall commits a felony under the statute,” Stephens said.
He’s no Huntley Johnson, but that’s a pretty good line.
Get The Picture 
Things looking up for Auburn’s defense.
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If we just love on them some everything will be better.
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Wow! I thought kids graduate high school early because they work hard and are intelligent?? I’m honestly at a loss for words.
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Did you really think that?
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Does this really sound crazy and dangerous to you? It sounds like good clean fun to me.
The crazy and dangerous part is that someone can come and arrest you for a felony for such triviality.
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Not if they were in their rooms, no. Problem is that I’ve seen 3 different stories and one says they were shooting at occupied vehicles. I’ll just wait and see what happens.
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I think the report may have intimated that a weapon similar to a pellet gun or air rifle was discharged in a dorm room. If that is the case, this whole thing is overblown and the charges will be reduced.
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Forget it, Jake. It’s Athens. 🙂
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Possession of a bb gun just doesn’t make as nice of a headline as “felony weapons charge.”
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http://www.wsbtv.com/news/2-investigates/uga-alumni-director-likely-committed-crimes-but-wont-be-charged-prosecutors-say/192415042
Not exactly on topic, but I believe we have briefly discussed this around here before and the idea that UGA and the UGA police so thoroughly botched the case that the AG can’t continue seems right at home in this thread.
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I guess Kirby needs to invite Jimmy to more practices.
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I know. How is this possible, because, you know, The Process????
I guess the system isn’t completely in place.
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Well I went to the AJC (sic) website and it wasn’t plastered all over the home page as breaking news, so maybe that’s a plus. I actually had to scroll down to see the article
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Not anymore. If you go to their site right now, it’s featured at the top of the page. The headline says felony. Have to read the article to find out t was a BB gun.
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Header currently reads “Two Georgia players charged with felonies after BB gun incident”…
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A BB gun?? F’n AJC and Jimmy Williamson!! This whole thing is as absurd as when I thought it was about a real gun. Even more so
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To be fair, can’t hang this one on ol’ Jimmy. ACC sheriff nailed ’em.
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I stand corrected.
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That’s not what the AJC said Senator
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I stand corrected Senator, Schlabach said it.
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They had to get the info from the booking at the county jail. The arrest was made by the Campus Cops so it’s covered by the new law, the sheriff isn’t. That’s why the tears from the press are so tasty, they can get most of what they really want but they have to break a sweat to get it and sportswriters are perhaps the laziest people in journalism.
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I know you’re rolling here, but the new law hasn’t gone into effect yet.
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This is just part of the “environment” of Athens. I never really hung the stupid arrests on CMR. I just hope CKS will better defend his players against the media and have a better product on the field.
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wasn’t Rockers nickname for Rochester something along the lines of…”fat-ass” ?? This could be an epic next few practices for Julian.
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When Rocker gets finished chewing it, I doubt Julian will have much ass left.
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You want these kids to stop and think before they act out like this? Don’t do anything to Julian. Make him sit and watch as his position-mates run until they puke their guts up. As Julian sits and watches, I bet he’ll think twice about doing this again. It’s a killer tactic; but it will work.
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What teenage boy hasn’t sat around and shooting plastic cups with a bb gun? Completely ridiculous
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Outside? Many. In their bedroom dormitory, probably not a lot
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there was a group of guys in my law school class at UGA (all probably well known to the Senator) who liked to put on ski google, helmets and lots of layers of clothing and then go outside and shoot each other with BB guns. One of them is now an Episopal priest, the others are silk stocking, big firm partners. Guess they all dodged a bullet, metaphorically.
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we did it with nothing but the clothes we had on when I was 10, rule no 1 aim for the body not the face and rule no 2 you can only pump your gun once. I have a buddy that has a bb in his gut now from ~35 yrs. ago. It is a miracle I survived childhood.
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A long hallway, throw away baseball cards, and a bulletin board…all you needed for a marvelous indoor BB gun range.
+100 on the one pump rule. BB gun fights were paintball before there was paintball.
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Huh. Today I learned that my buddies and I in good ol’ Lipscomb Hall freshman year were committing felony weapons violations when we would shoot my hallmate’s BB gun out the window at cans or occasionally at friends walking by.
I was pretty upset about this until I found out it was a BB gun. I have no real problem with the fact that they were arrested. Sometimes when you’re doing stupid stuff as a college student you get caught and you get in trouble. I don’t think this is something that would necessitate getting kicked off of the team or anything. Just stupid stuff that happens.
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No that’s way to thoughtful and reasonable, this type of thinking must be banished from our University.
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I could be wrong here but I believe the charge rises to the level of felony based on the amount of damage done to property. The report details about $1,000 in damage. I think that’s the reason we’re talking about a felony.
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Rocker may quote Ezekiel. http://youtu.be/x2WK_eWihdU
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Well, SOS may have retired but his comment about wanting to play UGA early because of suspensions sadly still stands. We’re not even past spring practice yet.
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#SOLOCUPLIVESMATTER
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Okay, that’s funny.
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This is damn ridiculous. The officer should have told the guys to stop it, to put the BB gun in their car, and to repair whatever damage was made to the room. Tell them if it happens again, they will end up in the ACC justice system … Then, let Smart, Tucker, Rocker, and the S&C staff have their way with them for about a week.
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Not true with The Georgia Way.
Zero tolerance playbook states felony = immediate dismissal.
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I agree … zero tolerance programs never work.
I’m saying what the officer should have done. Tell them to stop it before someone gets hurt and then notify Smart, Bryant Gantt, or whomever to get it taken care of.
My point is that this should have never seen the light of day in the Athens police blotter.
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This case could be ridiculous enough to finally put an end to The Georgia Way zero tolerance sham.
One can dream…
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True, time for Morehead to separate trivial actions from those that truly harm students. This incident makes them all look like morons. Excellent example of an incident that should be handled internally with some brief counseling and a few extra laps. Judge should throw the case out and lecture the DA’s office to not waste the court’s time. Some laws need a wiser person to insure the intent of a law is not twisted out of context.
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spot on!
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Thank Dawg they weren’t pointing chicken fingers at each other in the dining hall and yelling “bang.” No telling what 5.0 would have done about THAT.
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Stupid…stupid…stupid. And, no, I’m not talking about the players.
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they probably scratched off the serial number so they could ride dirty.
thUGa!
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#INCROWELLWETRUST
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Not a voter in Clarke County but they obviously have too many deputies with too much time on their hand, and a DA who lacks perspective. The voters should have a recall petition.
Having a fake ID to buy a beer at age 19 or 20, and a BB gun are not issues worthy of the legal system’s time. There is serious crime going on at any given time in the county that deserves more attention. Now illegal possession of a deadly weapon on campus, or fake papers to cover up really serious illegal activities should be enforced. This looks like a DA trying to make an issue about legalizing weapons on campus, he cannot seriously be upset enough about a BB gun incident to force the issue this far. And yes, I realize that some BB guns look enough like real weapons to cause other problems. Run the extra laps, then ridicule the law enforcement officials for such pettiness. We have very serious problems that should be discussed before this childish behavior takes the time of adults in our legal system.
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This is all part of the Athletic Departments support for the Open Carry Law and a way to lobby Gov. Deal to sign it. The Governor doesn’t understand how much signing this bill into law will help UGA win a National Championship. I mean we just cannot compete with the other states around us. Be good Georgian, Nathan Deal, sign the Open Carry Bill so we can win some National Championships in football.
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Beat me to it.
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Re: update #4, I guess that seals the campus carry law. Nate Dawg ought to be signing that thing retroactively to tomorrow now. /sarcasm
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Lucky they didn’t point the bb gun at the officer or they both might be dead.
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Mark Richt gave them the guns, told them it was ok to use in their rooms, and left Gus Malzahn’s number in case “anything goes wrong”.
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At least they were not like the USC basketball players who shot at an occupied car. I guess the FOIA covered the wrong department. I wonder who called in the complaint. ACC does not routinely patrol dorms. Was it ACC instead of UGA police because it was gunshots heard?
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Liberalism run amok. A felony for shooting BBs at Solo cups. Mush for brains college kids who vote for Obama, Clinton, Sanders etc. get what they deserve.
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The Georgia Assembly has long been the home to leftist elitist politics, but you can’t blame them since they are only a reflection of the Bolshevik voters that have populated the state for the past century. The voters get what what they want and what they want are Leninist revolutionaries. Its a damn shame really. If we could only get a conservative elected in Georgia, amirite?
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LMAO.
Try Googling “tough on crime” sometime. It’s what politicians of all stripes do because they think it will get votes. And you know what? It usually does.
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It’s also what police departments do to justify the heavy budgets.
Someone explain to me how a culture where police are required to charge whatever they can vs. what they should is part what it means to ‘serve and protect.’
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Sanders is NOT in your camp on this one. He swims against the stream.
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What the absolute hell are you talking about?
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Liberalism at work:
John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s White House domestic affairs adviser (1969-1973), bluntly responded that the so-called war on drugs was started to disrupt and imprison anti-war protesters and black people.
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked Dan Baum, who was writing a book about politics and drug prohibition, according to an essay written by Baum in the current Harper’s magazine. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people.”
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman continued, according to Baum. “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Nixon and Erlichman = communists.
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Not communists, but definitely assholes. Atwater and Reagan just cranked it up.
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Yep. So glad Clinton FINALLY ended the drug war.
No, hang on – I mean so glad Bush…hmm…no?
Well at least Obama ended the…
…well…hmm.
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Obama did at least end the 100-1 crack cocaine to powder cocaine ratio in 2010. That was probably the most racist criminal “justice” policy since Jim Crow. Many democrats wanted it to be the same punishment i.e, a 1 to 1 ratio whether it was crack or powder. Republicans insisted on keeping at least some racism in the criminal code and agreed to the compromise of and current law that has a 20-1 disparity. There were few opposed to the change away from 100-1:
The opposition to changing the law in any respect:
“Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, was the only lawmaker to speak against the bill, saying that the 1986 law was enacted as the crack cocaine epidemic brought a sharp spike in violence to minority communities and that it would be a mistake to change it.
“Why do we want to risk another surge of addiction and violence by reducing penalties?” he asked. “Why are we coddling some of the most dangerous drug traffickers in America?””
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Simple way to end these “racist criminal justice policies”, don’t use crack cocaine.
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Same solution to the “driving while black” problem: if you’re black then just don’t drive cars. Simple.
If you had a functioning cerebral cortex you might have thought: why can’t whites avoid using powder cocaine or face the same punishment as their crack cocaine using counterparts? Of course, we all know you aren’t burdened with either a brain or thoughts.
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I did not realize BB guns were such a hot thing. These kids thought they were playing in the ACC. Jameis Winston got away with shooting BB guns. NC State had the problem too. http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/10/13/6969603/nc-state-bb-gun-players-suspended-louisville
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Looks like the players were sincere when they said the culture hadn’t changed much.
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After reading the details of the four day investigation I think the music for week clearly should be Arlo Guthrie
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Come on there kids! It’s not drugs or booze!!!!
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