Cops bust water-balloon pranksters
Three men were arrested in downtown Cincinnati for dropping water balloons from atop an eight-story building. They allegedly targeted rubes who stopped to pick up a dollar bill that the pranksters had glued to the sidewalk. The police used a helicopter to nab the suspects who were documenting their prank on video. On Friday, one of the men, Rodney Smith, 22, pleaded no contest "to inducing panic and disorderly conduct." He faces up to 180 days in jail and likely will have to repay the money spent to bust him. His co-conspirators, Dan Schmidt, 23, and Brandon Meyer, 22, pleaded not-guilty. From the Cincinnati Enquirer:
David Mast, an associate professor of physics at the University of Cincinnati, said a balloon thrown from eight floors up would be traveling 60 mph when it hit the ground.Link (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)
"It wouldn't be pleasant" if it hit someone, he said. "It's worse if the balloon bounces and doesn't break. That would be like a golf ball hitting you.
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Good bust. They've got no business dropping water balloons on a public street, much less dropping them eight stories.
Yep .. I bet the guys that fight it get a worse sentence than 180 days in jail. (And really, how many of those 180 days will he serve if he's well behaved?)
I live in Cincinnati and a few nights ago I watched as a thug stole someone's beautiful Vespa. I called the police as I watched, telling them exactly which direction the thief was headed, what he was wearing, and what the scooter looked like.
So riddle me this: if the city of Cincinnati finds it prudent to send a helicopter after some shitheads dropping water balloons, surely they'll send the Cincinnati Mecha Warriors after a thief, right?
Ah, wrong, of course. Four hours later a police officer arrived at my apartment and wanted to know what "my" scooter looked like. A houseguest staying with me said something along the lines of: if you'd come when we'd called, you could have seen the scooter for yourself.
The cop's exact words: "There was something else going on."
Water balloon terrorists, perhaps?
One story, I'd laugh. Eight stories, the guys are dangerous idiots. 180 days plus probation sounds fair if they're otherwise clean. I hope they don't get tagged as terrorists for this.
"Dangerous idiots" just about covers it.
I think the physics prof's math is a bit off. Wikipedia says a storey is between 8 and 14 feet, typically 10. That puts the total height at about 80 feet. Add 5 feet for the arm-height of the people dropping the balloons and that's about 85 feet. If the balloon accelerates at 32 feet/s^2 it's in the air for 2.3s, putting it's final speed at 74 feet/s or 50 mph, and that's ignoring air friction, which would slow it down even more. Getting the balloon to 60 mph would require at least another 20 feet probably considerably more to overcome air resistance.
It would still really hurt to be hit by one of these things. And yes, I have too much time on my hands.
Merc: You forgot the initial velocity. Odds are they didn't gently release the balloons -- they likely chucked them downwards.
Oh man! I was arrested for something very similar (though much less dangerous).
In college, a buddy and I climbed up onto the roof of my house on the corner of a pretty dead street. Whenever a car would pull up to the stop sign, we'd throw a water balloon at its back windshield. Pretty harmless-- the car was stopped, and any passengers were shielded by the car itself-- but fun for a couple drunk college kids.
Anyway, apparently someone in the car did NOT think it was funny and called the cops, which led to FOUR cars (8 cops) arriving with guns drawn (!). They told us to put our hands over our head and climb down from the roof (good logical thinking there). Once down, the cops threw me and my buddy on the ground giving both of us bruises and spraining my buddy's wrist. There were lots of cursing and threatening and very abusive behavior on the cops' parts especially after one of their number attempted to climb to the roof and fell on his rather large ass (they had to call another cop to bring a ladder).
They handcuffed us, took us to jail, but eventually just charged us with "drinking in public".
I love seeing my tax dollars at work.
Sorry, but this just seems to me more hysteria, part of the whole over the top health'n'safety risk-aversion schtick that has become another excuse for The Authorities to get all heavy with helicopters and what have you. Dangerous? Well...yes... -ish.
Confession time - as students back in the 60s, we used to sometimes lob water-filled condoms off the 12th floor of our college building. Never hit anyone, maybe scared one or two. However, because condoms cost money and we had better things to do with them, we mostly made origami-style water bombs - very effective, and I bet 'safer' than balloons. I long ago forgot how to fold these - anyone out here know how?
Using a helicopter may seem over the top (don't no the details so I have no opinion on whether that was justified), but really, this is no joke. I once dropped a water balloon from the 5th storey (would be 6th storey in the US, we don't count the ground floor over here) onto a lawn, under controlled conditions (i.e. people on the ground making sure nobody walks onto the lawn). The result was a basketball-sized patch of completely uprooted, obliterated grass. This is no more fun than trying to hit people hard on the head with quartz gloves on.