Unless I misread this, the reason he was incarcerated to begin with:
> Asheem was charged with conspiracy in the third degree. The evidence was the gun charge to which he had already pled guilty, and photos, which he says dated back to the time when he was 14 and 15, showing him and other boys under the banner of Goodfellas.
> Alethia says that in Asheem’s case, the judge told him he was looking at a possible sentence of 15 to 30 years. It was a frightening length of time that convinced Asheem to take a plea deal that could range from 16 months to 4 years instead.
The gun charge just upped his prison sentence to 6 years instead of 1-4.
edit - Also, we all read the same article. You cannot claim the same article we all read as an extra source of information revealing knowledge that the article itself would have you believe otherwise. Well, you can. But it is bullshit.
> "Nobody wants to see 14- and 15-year-old kids getting locked up," says Chris Watler, Project Director at the Harlem Community Justice Center. "But if a kid is picking up a gun, or shooting other kids, we need to stop them from doing that. If you have a kids posing online with a gun, what is the obligation of law enforcement? There is a legitimate public safety concern."
And that's a freaking community-justice type talking.
To be fair to New Yorkers, they probably don't get to see the good sides of guns, like the time someone's Aunt Daphne got saved from a bear, or something.
In a city guns are for murder. They serve no other purpose.
But until the US stops celebrating guns like some religious totem that supposedly defends the common folk from a nuclear armed superpower, guns will be in US cities.
edit - I don't think guns should be banned, but I think they should be licensed. And to put it in perspective, I think that a gun license should be harder to get than a car license but easier to get than an explosives license.
> Asheem was charged with conspiracy in the third degree. The evidence was the gun charge to which he had already pled guilty, and photos, which he says dated back to the time when he was 14 and 15, showing him and other boys under the banner of Goodfellas.
> Alethia says that in Asheem’s case, the judge told him he was looking at a possible sentence of 15 to 30 years. It was a frightening length of time that convinced Asheem to take a plea deal that could range from 16 months to 4 years instead.
The gun charge just upped his prison sentence to 6 years instead of 1-4.