Tampa teens accused of assaulting homeless people because they were ‘bored’ charged with attempted murder
https://www.fox13news.com/news/tampa-teens-accused-assaulting-homeless-people-because-were-bored-charged-attempted-murderOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
5 replies
So Florida has arrests as public record, but since when are minors allowed to listed by news agencies like this. Did they perform these crimes, we don't know... There has been no conviction. Blowing up a 13 year olds life for good when a judge/jury hasn't found them guilty seems like Fox is intentionally trying to hurt these kids
I thought Florida man was a meme precisely because media from Florida is not allowed to disclose the identity of detainees until charges are formally brought up. Wouldn't this be like, a blatant violation of that law, or has anything changed recently?
You have it backwards. Florida's law governing arrest records' publication ("Sunshine Law") is such that there's much more information given than most other states, which makes for easy clickbait journalism of "Florida man [details of arrest record]." They do name them in the CRAs as well as in the articles, but if you put "John Doe [incident]" in a headline it doesn't describe where it happened. Eventually the "Florida man" headline became a meme of its own which drove even more clicks.
https://www.wusf.org/text/politics-issues/2025-10-20/florida-sunshine-law-how-to-request-public-records
Ah, that makes sense.
I guess this boils down to public safety versus juvenile arrest obscurity. At a certain point you have to pick one over the other. Alleged murder feels like a good reason to alert the public to the danger of associating with these kids. Obvious examples of the opposite include shoplifting, trespassing, etc.