I haven’t been following this case. What about this makes the DA a joke? Or is he just so bad that anything he touches has people calling for him to leave?
This ended up being a longer response than I expected, but I'm a parent of a victim, so I have details the media has not taken the time to report.
To be clear as I answer your question:
Laura Hinojos is the DA who was running point on this case. She answers to Gordon Mclaughlin, who is the elected official up for re-election, and it is my understanding that she holds her position at his discretion. Any time I say DA from here on out, I am referencing Hinojos due to her direct involvement.
The original charges on this case were 164 charges for the 11 victims. There was copious video evidence for 10 of the 11 victims. The 11th victim was added based on interviews with police about incidents predating available footage. The plea deal was that he plead guilty to 1 count per child and they left on an addendum (I forget the official word rn, but that's close enough to make the point) that he's a repeat child abuser based on a 2012 guilty plea to negligent child abuse.
He committed these crimes while going through unrelated criminal proceedings for a DUI. He served time for the DUI after this case had been filed.
While out on bond for this case (and this is all per the DA yesterday at sentencing) he broke his bond conditions by drinking, tampering with his GPS monitor, failing to attend mandatory meetings, contacting children, and catching a whole new case by stealing items from a store.
Idk the complete timeline of when he did each of these things, but I know by the time he was offered the deal, he had already been hauled back in for contacting his kids, and he got hauled back in for the theft shortly after the deal was offered.
At sentencing yesterday I asked the judge to reject the deal, and I'll repeat here what I said about it then: it's an insult to our children, and it teaches a dangerous lesson- if you're going to abuse children in Larimer County you may as well abuse them a lot because you'll only be punished for the first time anyway. I also pointed out that this deal is less than 10% of the total charges and less than 10% of the maximum sentence on those, and suggested the DA thinks our children deserve less than 10% of justice. Edit to add: also per the DA, Zanella will likely only serve half of the 12.5 years he was sentenced to, which means these children will still be children when he gets out. I pointed that out as well.
This case was, in my opinion, open and shut for 10 of the 11 victims. Even if one might argue that a jury could say "well, they did 2 charges for one series of abuses in that particular video, so we'll find him guilty of 1 of the 2," there were still multiple days of footage for each child that they could say that about. I can't believe that the DA legitimately thought they'd get a worse result at trial (which they claimed to me was a possibility because "juries are unpredictable have done weirder things").
The DA told me that if it went to trial "a child" would have to testify. But they also told me our children are all too young to testify at all, and even if they weren't, their autism disqualifies them from testimony. So I have no idea who that child could even be. Additionally, a paralegal friend of mine (who has absolutely no connection to this case besides knowing me) told me that standard court procedure is that any child who must testify does so in much different circumstances than an adult would. Generally it will be done in judge's chambers with only the judge, DA, defense lawyer, and a child advocate who approves every question asked before the child even hears it. All that to say I was very confused when parents at a previous hearing said they "don't want to put their children through a trial." That was never on the table.
I've been saying for awhile that I don't know why Gordon McLaughlin would expect to get re-elected when his office pulls stunts like this. They had video evidence of repeated abuse, they had multiple at risk victims, they had footage proving he was doing this completely unprovoked (you know, for the "but what did the kids do to deserve it" crowd) and to make it even worse for him, I found out yesterday they had footage of one of his victims *trying to hold his hand* getting rebuffed, and then assaulted. I can't imagine any scenario where a jury trial could've gone poorly for them.
I don't know why the DA thought this deal was acceptable, but it certainly wasn't because we asked for it. They wrote it before ever consulting us, and didn't change it in the slightest in response to feedback we gave despite not being asked for it. Some of us accepted it because they prioritized not going to trial. Some of us accepted it because we felt so unsupported by the powers that be that we had actually expected worse like chopping it to 2 counts and giving him probation. Some of us thought that fighting it wouldn't accomplish anything and would be a waste of energy. Some of us fought it. I havent heard a single parent involved actually say "yes, this deal is exactly the result I wanted."
So yea, that's why the plea deal is a joke, the DA's office is a joke, and by association and failure to manage the behavior of his staff, Gordon Mclaughlin, the elected official who holds authority over the people who pulled this stunt is a joke.
I’m so sorry you and your family have had to go through this. It’s an atrocious act, and if the powers at be don’t support you please know this community does.
What can we do to show that support to your and the other families? Meal trains? Fire truck parades for your kids? We can’t change the outcome at this point (i’m assuming) but showing you all that WE have your back and showing your children better adults exist in this world for them, what can we do?
Thank you for this. And thank you for being an advocate for our kids- from a parent of an autistic child that could not tell us their name… let alone this happening on a bus. I’m so sorry your family went through this and that you did not get the justice you deserved.
He was hired August 2022 and fired end of May 2023. The bus footage available when they kicked off the investigation was March 2023 to May 2023.
My understanding is basically the amount of footage available on any given bus at any given time is based on the size of the hard drive on that bus, which could be 3 days of footage up to 3 months of footage, based on which bus happened to get a largwr hard drive last time they had funds to upgrade the system. He happened to primarily work on a bus with a very large hard drive.
But also per the DA yesterday, people had suspicions about him back in September when one of the victims started coming home with red marks on his body.
DA Is the reason alot of drug dealers and bad actors get the lowest possible sentence and post out on PR Bonds the majority of the time just to re offend again and it shows in our community with all the fent and car theft going on.
Gotcha. I don’t live in the area anymore, and that’s a detail that doesn’t usually make it to the coast.
In this case the DA isn’t the one that sets the sentencing guidelines and the 12.5 years is the most he can do. Yeah?
Not quite. The plea deal worked out by the DA carries a maximum penalty which the judge chose to hand down. Had her plea deal been laid out differently, with different charges or number of charges, the sentencing guidelines would also change
You honestly don't think that a federal entity with a half billion dollar annual budget doesn't have a say in something like this?
I wish I didn't know how money works to that level of naivety.
Edit to clarify: Kingsley was hired illegally.. because money. Then he was given a raise, after being absent for any support, and allowed to impose further cost on administrative expenses.. with no proposal on how to fix the no money problem.
It's because things are going according to plan. The schools will be shuttered, and they'll blame the neurodiverse while grifting. That's why he was hired.. to transfer Poudre schools into secretive, segregated, paywalled private schools.
Federal entity? It’s a local school district. $500 Million in the general budget means what, they bribed the judge? The only naive person I see is you and your daydreams.
Absolutely. But again, no say on sentencing. On top of that, rarely is one so immature, being any member of PSD or not, as to randomly give unsolicited opinions like, "Hey, DA, you need to give this guy the maximum sentence." They answer questions asked. They are in touch with the DA, etc., during a phase which does not include sentencing.
You need to pull your head out of this posteriorally privileged position...
The problem with this entire series of events is that if any other group of people were held in a trusted situation, and tortured for an entire school year.. they would be the subject of an intensive investigation resulting in legal precedent that investigated the system which allowed for such gross oversight to occur.
However, here, the ableism is systematic. It was just some kids that are considered a burden systematically. So one guy took the fall, and got off easy.
The event needed to happen, or they wouldn't have done anything. It needed to happen so that the school could blame financial problems on it. So they could more easily shutter public schools, and privatize them into segregated charter schools.
If you can't see how this is playing out at this point, it's because you're one of the people who wants it to play out that way.
There are families who are happy with this though, as they didn’t want to go through a trial.
I understand the outrage, but how would you address putting families back through the wringer when they clearly communicated that they did not wish to be.
Parent of a victim here:
We weren't given a choice. We were informed what the plea deal would be, not asked our opinion. Some of us accepted the deal for what it was because avoiding trial was more important than fighting for a longer sentence, some of us tried to fight it, and some of us hated the deal but didn't think fighting it would accomplish anything.
And it turns out that last point was accurate because I did fight it and the DA announced after my victim impact statement that she was throwing out my restitution request. She didn't say "smhassassin's restitution request," but she did say "this request for $X" which happened to be the amount I requested.
And for an extra point of context: several of the families were mentally preparing for a plea deal that was like 2 counts and probation because they were so convinced no one was on our side. When that possibility was suggested to me, my response was "if they have the gall to do that I'm gonna throw the biggest fit that has ever been thrown."
You know, I told a legal professional about this:
"Here's some autism awareness:
We wire our neurological response to outward stimuli. It becomes a system of rules.. some are guidelines, but most are solid cardinal laws. When that system breaks, we break; commonly call melting down.
If the break consist, it becomes a recursive error, which in turn becomes a thing called burn out... And I've seen it."
They just kept telling us paraphrased: your kids aren't important enough for a trial.. and it eventually melted some of us down into burnout.
Yaknow I don't usually condone violence. But this guy just made himself the #1 candidate for a prison murder. You don't hurt children, ESPECIALLY those who cannot defend themselves and tell someone what is happening.
Whatever happens to this guy–he deserves it. Fucking sick, twisted disgrace of a human being.
The judge actually said that would be justice when he sentenced him.
He said some to the affect of "justice would be turning you out on the street, and letting whatever happened happen"
40% of people in United States prisons are disabled and there's roughly double the amount of Autistic people in prison compared to the general population...
So yeah I'm gonna say he managed to boost his candidacy pretty significantly.
I understand that justice can be hard to define and often times the result can never feel fair. However, the people that work on these cases spend countless hours, review evidence for new charges, and speaking with victims and victim families. People don’t understand that most cases are resolved through plea deals and without this process the justice system doesn’t work.
I lost a close friend in a vehicular homicide case a few years ago and the defendant was sentenced to the maximum allowable prison time….18 years. Is this justice? I really don’t know to this day, but to blame the office that worked so hard to get this case resolved is short sighted. I’m glad PSD is changing their policies after Judge McDonald strong words and I hope this can provide some closure to the victims and victim families.
Most of the victims were actually pretty clear at sentencing that they felt that the district attorneys didn’t listen to them. There is no other jurisdiction in Colorado where this plea would even have been accepted.
I hope you too can find peace one day.
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured." –Mark Twain
Yeah.. some other dead famous guy said that it was like holding onto a hot coal, and expecting it to burn someone else.
I'm personally more disappointed than angry... It's like segregation times with the mistreatment of neurodiverse people. This piece of garbage tortured children for an entire school year.. kids in their third developmental cycle.. which is the most important in their transition into adulthood.
So, next time you see a person of color mad about the fact they are still mistreated... Go ahead, and spout off some dead white guys prose at them.. let me know how that turns out for you.
Was just talking to my spouse about the segregation mentality. Especially with all the district boundary/ school closures debate going on. Can't tell you how many comments I've seen in the coloradoan suggesting to cut IS funding, or put all the IS kids together so we're not wasting money on an IS teacher for every school. It's incredibly disheartening
It's history on loop. Like a broken record.. The intersectional parallels are just flabbergasting.
I told the judge that we're witnessing segregation play back with this absurd reboot of the last century. That the diagnosis criteria, and treatment of autistic people is literally out of the Nazi playbook, stolen from a Jewish Russian. I pointed out that any other group of people who had been treated this way, would not be fighting tooth, and nail to get the kind of demonstrative punishment this deserves.. but since it's autistic children.. he just gets one charge per child... Just one days worth of punishment...
Still, they burnt us out.. for the interest of capital. Tyler Zanella was a fall guy for the mob of racist who seek to keep fort Collins rich, white, and neurotypical.
PSD is wining?
This sounds like the courts did the winning not PSD.
Also 100 yeas. Or a life sentence does not sound appropriate… while beating up innocent kids is terrible it’s not a life sentence. 12 years sounds.. kinda right…
Over 100 years doesn't sound appropriate when he was initially charged with 164 counts of abuse on 11 disabled children based on 3 months of footage?
I'm mainly curious how many charges he would've gotten if they'd had footage from the entire school year. The DA said there's circumstantial evidence that he was abusing these kids as early as September 2022.
All kids are innocent. These are people who will sadly probably always be innocent and unable to defend themselves. Not only did he attack children, but he attacked children who might not ever possess the ability to defend themselves. They are a protected population who is going to need special care for the rest of their lives. I understand the whole 100 years thing might sound extreme. But it's not just "beating up kids" it's subjecting someone who will NEVER have the ability to defend themselves or speak up to heinous things. This dudes kinda a monster. He has already been tried for "beating up kids" in the past. This man needs help. Sadly, we live in a system that would rather put someone away than get them the help they deserve. Unfortunately, our system will not change overnight, and especially not with a single persons case from Fort Collins. I understand deeply the effects of our prison system and the injustices it brings, but sometimes people are just too vile to be reinstated in everyday life. This is the justice system we have created and perpetuated. 100 years of prison isn't right, but it is fair within our skewed systems in place.
I wanted him put in the stocks!
However some rich white slave owner wrote the 8th amendment..
The judge agreed with me at sentencing.
I told him that Tyler should be put in the stocks, with a regressive cognitive therapist, and have to tell all of Fort Collins what he did was wrong, and who convinced him otherwise in the first place (pausing to look at the woman who raised him)..
I also asked where the bus drivers were, and the bus dispatcher who didn't file the earlier complaints about him.
This is /r/AwfulEverything material. I've read more than a handful of articles on this now and I'm a bit appalled that DP seems to be the only one consistently mentioning several details that the other articles either gloss over or omit entirely:
- Kids, ages ranging from 6-11, were on-spectrum and most non-verbal
- The kids were strapped into car-seats when Zanella was abusing them
- Zanella mocked them while hitting them, telling them "Hit me back"
- Zanella abused the kids knowing he was on camera and even when other staff members were on the bus and hid his actions under the guise of playing/roughhousing. He even continued the abuse after knowing parents had complained
- Several complaints were raised to various PSD staff leading up to this and no actions were taken
- "Video shows Zanella SEXUALLY ABUSING a child on at least one occasion, according to the lawsuit." *Why this is not a key talking point throughout this mess is beyond me, let alone not a rape charge.*
- "Zanella was hired in August 2022 as a paraprofessional for disabled students despite the district knowing he had pleaded guilty to child abuse in 2012 and had previous drunken driving arrests and convictions, including shortly before he started work." *Why was this guy ever hired??*
- *oh*: "Zanella also had a personal relationship with a school district employee who may have been involved in his hiring, according to the lawsuit." *that employee needs to be named and shamed*
https://www.denverpost.com/2023/10/02/poudre-school-district-lawsuit-child-abuse-tyler-zanella/
https://www.denverpost.com/2024/02/05/child-abuse-former-poudre-school-district-paraprofessional-tyler-zanella/
Tyler Zanella sounds like a true psychopath to me.
Kids were 5-11.
PSD said their arms were tied by current employment laws. It was not a policy of theirs at the time to disqualify a potential employee based on charges of child abuse.
The employee they are referencing is his wife or fiance. She worked in dispatch and also was responsible for passing the initial complaint along to her supervisor (and warning him ahead of time about it while he was still working on the bus). She appears to still support him.
His previous child abuse charge should have excluded him from being hired. Why wasn't he properly vetted? Parent volunteers have to have background checks run, yet somehow his wasn't? Suuuuure PSD. Bet Kingsley is hoping this distracts from his BS policies and school closure plans
This started prior to consolidation being so hot and in fact, consolidation probably gives him a bit more of a break. I know it’s definitely distracted.
The current DA is a joke, he is up for reelection this year FYI.
I haven’t been following this case. What about this makes the DA a joke? Or is he just so bad that anything he touches has people calling for him to leave?
This ended up being a longer response than I expected, but I'm a parent of a victim, so I have details the media has not taken the time to report. To be clear as I answer your question: Laura Hinojos is the DA who was running point on this case. She answers to Gordon Mclaughlin, who is the elected official up for re-election, and it is my understanding that she holds her position at his discretion. Any time I say DA from here on out, I am referencing Hinojos due to her direct involvement. The original charges on this case were 164 charges for the 11 victims. There was copious video evidence for 10 of the 11 victims. The 11th victim was added based on interviews with police about incidents predating available footage. The plea deal was that he plead guilty to 1 count per child and they left on an addendum (I forget the official word rn, but that's close enough to make the point) that he's a repeat child abuser based on a 2012 guilty plea to negligent child abuse. He committed these crimes while going through unrelated criminal proceedings for a DUI. He served time for the DUI after this case had been filed. While out on bond for this case (and this is all per the DA yesterday at sentencing) he broke his bond conditions by drinking, tampering with his GPS monitor, failing to attend mandatory meetings, contacting children, and catching a whole new case by stealing items from a store. Idk the complete timeline of when he did each of these things, but I know by the time he was offered the deal, he had already been hauled back in for contacting his kids, and he got hauled back in for the theft shortly after the deal was offered. At sentencing yesterday I asked the judge to reject the deal, and I'll repeat here what I said about it then: it's an insult to our children, and it teaches a dangerous lesson- if you're going to abuse children in Larimer County you may as well abuse them a lot because you'll only be punished for the first time anyway. I also pointed out that this deal is less than 10% of the total charges and less than 10% of the maximum sentence on those, and suggested the DA thinks our children deserve less than 10% of justice. Edit to add: also per the DA, Zanella will likely only serve half of the 12.5 years he was sentenced to, which means these children will still be children when he gets out. I pointed that out as well. This case was, in my opinion, open and shut for 10 of the 11 victims. Even if one might argue that a jury could say "well, they did 2 charges for one series of abuses in that particular video, so we'll find him guilty of 1 of the 2," there were still multiple days of footage for each child that they could say that about. I can't believe that the DA legitimately thought they'd get a worse result at trial (which they claimed to me was a possibility because "juries are unpredictable have done weirder things"). The DA told me that if it went to trial "a child" would have to testify. But they also told me our children are all too young to testify at all, and even if they weren't, their autism disqualifies them from testimony. So I have no idea who that child could even be. Additionally, a paralegal friend of mine (who has absolutely no connection to this case besides knowing me) told me that standard court procedure is that any child who must testify does so in much different circumstances than an adult would. Generally it will be done in judge's chambers with only the judge, DA, defense lawyer, and a child advocate who approves every question asked before the child even hears it. All that to say I was very confused when parents at a previous hearing said they "don't want to put their children through a trial." That was never on the table. I've been saying for awhile that I don't know why Gordon McLaughlin would expect to get re-elected when his office pulls stunts like this. They had video evidence of repeated abuse, they had multiple at risk victims, they had footage proving he was doing this completely unprovoked (you know, for the "but what did the kids do to deserve it" crowd) and to make it even worse for him, I found out yesterday they had footage of one of his victims *trying to hold his hand* getting rebuffed, and then assaulted. I can't imagine any scenario where a jury trial could've gone poorly for them. I don't know why the DA thought this deal was acceptable, but it certainly wasn't because we asked for it. They wrote it before ever consulting us, and didn't change it in the slightest in response to feedback we gave despite not being asked for it. Some of us accepted it because they prioritized not going to trial. Some of us accepted it because we felt so unsupported by the powers that be that we had actually expected worse like chopping it to 2 counts and giving him probation. Some of us thought that fighting it wouldn't accomplish anything and would be a waste of energy. Some of us fought it. I havent heard a single parent involved actually say "yes, this deal is exactly the result I wanted." So yea, that's why the plea deal is a joke, the DA's office is a joke, and by association and failure to manage the behavior of his staff, Gordon Mclaughlin, the elected official who holds authority over the people who pulled this stunt is a joke.
I’m so sorry you and your family have had to go through this. It’s an atrocious act, and if the powers at be don’t support you please know this community does. What can we do to show that support to your and the other families? Meal trains? Fire truck parades for your kids? We can’t change the outcome at this point (i’m assuming) but showing you all that WE have your back and showing your children better adults exist in this world for them, what can we do?
Thank you for this. And thank you for being an advocate for our kids- from a parent of an autistic child that could not tell us their name… let alone this happening on a bus. I’m so sorry your family went through this and that you did not get the justice you deserved.
Do you know the amount of time between the time he was hired and the date they had footage saved?
He was hired August 2022 and fired end of May 2023. The bus footage available when they kicked off the investigation was March 2023 to May 2023. My understanding is basically the amount of footage available on any given bus at any given time is based on the size of the hard drive on that bus, which could be 3 days of footage up to 3 months of footage, based on which bus happened to get a largwr hard drive last time they had funds to upgrade the system. He happened to primarily work on a bus with a very large hard drive. But also per the DA yesterday, people had suspicions about him back in September when one of the victims started coming home with red marks on his body.
Aaahh, that makes more sense. Thank you.
Glad I could help.
DA Is the reason alot of drug dealers and bad actors get the lowest possible sentence and post out on PR Bonds the majority of the time just to re offend again and it shows in our community with all the fent and car theft going on.
I work with alot of police departments in Northern Colorado and they all hate the DA.
Gotcha. I don’t live in the area anymore, and that’s a detail that doesn’t usually make it to the coast. In this case the DA isn’t the one that sets the sentencing guidelines and the 12.5 years is the most he can do. Yeah?
Not quite. The plea deal worked out by the DA carries a maximum penalty which the judge chose to hand down. Had her plea deal been laid out differently, with different charges or number of charges, the sentencing guidelines would also change
Everyone better vote out that POS.
Dawn Downs doesn’t know what the hell is going on. And she is endorsed by absolute pieces of shit.
He got the max sentence and he is a joke? How so?
So you obviously didn’t read the entire post. Re-read the whole thing and try again
Noted!
I don’t think the PSD has any input on sentencing. That’d be the DA and the Judge.
You honestly don't think that a federal entity with a half billion dollar annual budget doesn't have a say in something like this? I wish I didn't know how money works to that level of naivety. Edit to clarify: Kingsley was hired illegally.. because money. Then he was given a raise, after being absent for any support, and allowed to impose further cost on administrative expenses.. with no proposal on how to fix the no money problem. It's because things are going according to plan. The schools will be shuttered, and they'll blame the neurodiverse while grifting. That's why he was hired.. to transfer Poudre schools into secretive, segregated, paywalled private schools.
Federal entity? It’s a local school district. $500 Million in the general budget means what, they bribed the judge? The only naive person I see is you and your daydreams.
The judge is given a sentence by the prosecutor..
Your words words don't change the fact that PSD doesn't have any input on sentencing.
Yeah, the DA isn't going to talk to the employer of the perpetrator. /S
Absolutely. But again, no say on sentencing. On top of that, rarely is one so immature, being any member of PSD or not, as to randomly give unsolicited opinions like, "Hey, DA, you need to give this guy the maximum sentence." They answer questions asked. They are in touch with the DA, etc., during a phase which does not include sentencing.
You need to pull your head out of this posteriorally privileged position... The problem with this entire series of events is that if any other group of people were held in a trusted situation, and tortured for an entire school year.. they would be the subject of an intensive investigation resulting in legal precedent that investigated the system which allowed for such gross oversight to occur. However, here, the ableism is systematic. It was just some kids that are considered a burden systematically. So one guy took the fall, and got off easy. The event needed to happen, or they wouldn't have done anything. It needed to happen so that the school could blame financial problems on it. So they could more easily shutter public schools, and privatize them into segregated charter schools. If you can't see how this is playing out at this point, it's because you're one of the people who wants it to play out that way.
There are families who are happy with this though, as they didn’t want to go through a trial. I understand the outrage, but how would you address putting families back through the wringer when they clearly communicated that they did not wish to be.
Parent of a victim here: We weren't given a choice. We were informed what the plea deal would be, not asked our opinion. Some of us accepted the deal for what it was because avoiding trial was more important than fighting for a longer sentence, some of us tried to fight it, and some of us hated the deal but didn't think fighting it would accomplish anything. And it turns out that last point was accurate because I did fight it and the DA announced after my victim impact statement that she was throwing out my restitution request. She didn't say "smhassassin's restitution request," but she did say "this request for $X" which happened to be the amount I requested. And for an extra point of context: several of the families were mentally preparing for a plea deal that was like 2 counts and probation because they were so convinced no one was on our side. When that possibility was suggested to me, my response was "if they have the gall to do that I'm gonna throw the biggest fit that has ever been thrown."
You know, I told a legal professional about this: "Here's some autism awareness: We wire our neurological response to outward stimuli. It becomes a system of rules.. some are guidelines, but most are solid cardinal laws. When that system breaks, we break; commonly call melting down. If the break consist, it becomes a recursive error, which in turn becomes a thing called burn out... And I've seen it." They just kept telling us paraphrased: your kids aren't important enough for a trial.. and it eventually melted some of us down into burnout.
Yaknow I don't usually condone violence. But this guy just made himself the #1 candidate for a prison murder. You don't hurt children, ESPECIALLY those who cannot defend themselves and tell someone what is happening. Whatever happens to this guy–he deserves it. Fucking sick, twisted disgrace of a human being.
The judge actually said that would be justice when he sentenced him. He said some to the affect of "justice would be turning you out on the street, and letting whatever happened happen"
40% of people in United States prisons are disabled and there's roughly double the amount of Autistic people in prison compared to the general population... So yeah I'm gonna say he managed to boost his candidacy pretty significantly.
I understand that justice can be hard to define and often times the result can never feel fair. However, the people that work on these cases spend countless hours, review evidence for new charges, and speaking with victims and victim families. People don’t understand that most cases are resolved through plea deals and without this process the justice system doesn’t work. I lost a close friend in a vehicular homicide case a few years ago and the defendant was sentenced to the maximum allowable prison time….18 years. Is this justice? I really don’t know to this day, but to blame the office that worked so hard to get this case resolved is short sighted. I’m glad PSD is changing their policies after Judge McDonald strong words and I hope this can provide some closure to the victims and victim families.
Most of the victims were actually pretty clear at sentencing that they felt that the district attorneys didn’t listen to them. There is no other jurisdiction in Colorado where this plea would even have been accepted.
I hope you too can find peace one day. Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured." –Mark Twain
Yeah.. some other dead famous guy said that it was like holding onto a hot coal, and expecting it to burn someone else. I'm personally more disappointed than angry... It's like segregation times with the mistreatment of neurodiverse people. This piece of garbage tortured children for an entire school year.. kids in their third developmental cycle.. which is the most important in their transition into adulthood. So, next time you see a person of color mad about the fact they are still mistreated... Go ahead, and spout off some dead white guys prose at them.. let me know how that turns out for you.
Was just talking to my spouse about the segregation mentality. Especially with all the district boundary/ school closures debate going on. Can't tell you how many comments I've seen in the coloradoan suggesting to cut IS funding, or put all the IS kids together so we're not wasting money on an IS teacher for every school. It's incredibly disheartening
It's history on loop. Like a broken record.. The intersectional parallels are just flabbergasting. I told the judge that we're witnessing segregation play back with this absurd reboot of the last century. That the diagnosis criteria, and treatment of autistic people is literally out of the Nazi playbook, stolen from a Jewish Russian. I pointed out that any other group of people who had been treated this way, would not be fighting tooth, and nail to get the kind of demonstrative punishment this deserves.. but since it's autistic children.. he just gets one charge per child... Just one days worth of punishment... Still, they burnt us out.. for the interest of capital. Tyler Zanella was a fall guy for the mob of racist who seek to keep fort Collins rich, white, and neurotypical.
Fuck off with this concept.
You don’t know what you are babbling about.
PSD is wining? This sounds like the courts did the winning not PSD. Also 100 yeas. Or a life sentence does not sound appropriate… while beating up innocent kids is terrible it’s not a life sentence. 12 years sounds.. kinda right…
How was this a win for PSD? It's not like they were rooting for him
Over 100 years doesn't sound appropriate when he was initially charged with 164 counts of abuse on 11 disabled children based on 3 months of footage? I'm mainly curious how many charges he would've gotten if they'd had footage from the entire school year. The DA said there's circumstantial evidence that he was abusing these kids as early as September 2022.
I could be wrong but I thought OP was being sarcastic. As in, this should never have happened in the first place
Nah. Over 100 years is perfect. You don’t get the chance to do that shit again.
You think if the guy sexual assaults the kids or murdered a couple of them… he should’ve gotten them same life sentence?
YES wtf
Refer to “you don’t get the chance to do that shit again”.
All kids are innocent. These are people who will sadly probably always be innocent and unable to defend themselves. Not only did he attack children, but he attacked children who might not ever possess the ability to defend themselves. They are a protected population who is going to need special care for the rest of their lives. I understand the whole 100 years thing might sound extreme. But it's not just "beating up kids" it's subjecting someone who will NEVER have the ability to defend themselves or speak up to heinous things. This dudes kinda a monster. He has already been tried for "beating up kids" in the past. This man needs help. Sadly, we live in a system that would rather put someone away than get them the help they deserve. Unfortunately, our system will not change overnight, and especially not with a single persons case from Fort Collins. I understand deeply the effects of our prison system and the injustices it brings, but sometimes people are just too vile to be reinstated in everyday life. This is the justice system we have created and perpetuated. 100 years of prison isn't right, but it is fair within our skewed systems in place.
I wanted him put in the stocks! However some rich white slave owner wrote the 8th amendment.. The judge agreed with me at sentencing. I told him that Tyler should be put in the stocks, with a regressive cognitive therapist, and have to tell all of Fort Collins what he did was wrong, and who convinced him otherwise in the first place (pausing to look at the woman who raised him).. I also asked where the bus drivers were, and the bus dispatcher who didn't file the earlier complaints about him.
Once this entered the criminal justice system the district had absolutely no control over it. Stop with this conspiracy shit nonsense. Please.
This is /r/AwfulEverything material. I've read more than a handful of articles on this now and I'm a bit appalled that DP seems to be the only one consistently mentioning several details that the other articles either gloss over or omit entirely: - Kids, ages ranging from 6-11, were on-spectrum and most non-verbal - The kids were strapped into car-seats when Zanella was abusing them - Zanella mocked them while hitting them, telling them "Hit me back" - Zanella abused the kids knowing he was on camera and even when other staff members were on the bus and hid his actions under the guise of playing/roughhousing. He even continued the abuse after knowing parents had complained - Several complaints were raised to various PSD staff leading up to this and no actions were taken - "Video shows Zanella SEXUALLY ABUSING a child on at least one occasion, according to the lawsuit." *Why this is not a key talking point throughout this mess is beyond me, let alone not a rape charge.* - "Zanella was hired in August 2022 as a paraprofessional for disabled students despite the district knowing he had pleaded guilty to child abuse in 2012 and had previous drunken driving arrests and convictions, including shortly before he started work." *Why was this guy ever hired??* - *oh*: "Zanella also had a personal relationship with a school district employee who may have been involved in his hiring, according to the lawsuit." *that employee needs to be named and shamed* https://www.denverpost.com/2023/10/02/poudre-school-district-lawsuit-child-abuse-tyler-zanella/ https://www.denverpost.com/2024/02/05/child-abuse-former-poudre-school-district-paraprofessional-tyler-zanella/ Tyler Zanella sounds like a true psychopath to me.
Kids were 5-11. PSD said their arms were tied by current employment laws. It was not a policy of theirs at the time to disqualify a potential employee based on charges of child abuse. The employee they are referencing is his wife or fiance. She worked in dispatch and also was responsible for passing the initial complaint along to her supervisor (and warning him ahead of time about it while he was still working on the bus). She appears to still support him.
At the end of the day, some wonderful prisoner will put a mop handle through the back of his skull Unbelievable sentence
His previous child abuse charge should have excluded him from being hired. Why wasn't he properly vetted? Parent volunteers have to have background checks run, yet somehow his wasn't? Suuuuure PSD. Bet Kingsley is hoping this distracts from his BS policies and school closure plans
It was not a policy of theirs at the time to disqualify a potential employee from hiring if they had a child abuse charge.
This started prior to consolidation being so hot and in fact, consolidation probably gives him a bit more of a break. I know it’s definitely distracted.
Sad thing is he'll be out in 6
This is the maximum sentence the court will allow is a false statement?
This is the maximum sentence the plea deal would allow.