Legal

Bieber to campaign against cyberbullying to have charges dropped

By | Published on Monday 9 May 2011

Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber has agreed to make a public service announcement against cyberbullying in exchange for having 2009 charges against his manager Scooter Braun and Def Jam’s Jame Roppo dropped.

The charges relate to an incident which brought Bieber to the attention of many outside the US for the first time. As previously reported, 3000 fans turned up to see the pop star in person at a New York shopping mall and went a bit crazy while waiting for him. So crazy, in fact, that police shut the event down and told them all to go away before Bieber had arrived.

Fans refused to leave on the grounds that many of them had seen a tweet from Bieber announcing “on my way to Roosevelt Field Mall in Long Island, NY to sign and meet fans! I’m pumped, see you there”. Police then demanded that either Bieber or someone from his team send out a new tweet confirming the cancellation, initially asking Roppo to send it, who said he didn’t have access to the account, and then Braun, who said he couldn’t because he didn’t have access to a computer.

The police claimed that neither Roppo nor Braun took the issue seriously. When Roppo was arrested, Braun did eventually manage to send out a tweet informing fans of the cancellation. Roppo was later charged with a series of misdemeanours, including endangering the welfare of children and obstructing governmental administration. Braun was formally charged also, and reportedly faced a year in jail if convicted.

On Friday, prosecutors informed a judge that they were dropping these charges after Bieber agreed to tell kids to stop bullying each other on the internet (presumably that includes not publishing the mobile numbers of your adversaries for your millions of fans to hassle).

Although an unusual move legally speaking, a district attorney told QMI that getting Bieber to speak out against cyberbullying was “invaluable”. Meanwhile, Braun’s lawyer actually said these words: “We started the week by bringing bin Laden to justice and we’re ending on a happy musical note”.



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