Remember when Justin Bieber’s manager was arrested for not tweeting quickly enough? Let me refresh your memory. Back in November of 2009, Bieber was scheduled to have an autograph signing in a Long Island mall. About three times more people than expected showed up, creating what authorities deemed to be an unsafe environment.
A record label exec, who was involved in the organization of the event, was arrested for not tweeting (a would-be crowd control attempt), upon police orders to do so. Newsday quoted one of the cops involved as saying, “”We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message…By not cooperating with us we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.”
The whole thing raised an interesting debate about whether or not police have the authority to make people tweet. In March 2010, Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, turned himself over to authorities on two misdemeanor charges – reckless endangerment and obstruction of governmental administration, based on accusations, that he failed to tweet himself, in a timely enough fashion.
We talked to Braun’s lawyer in March, as they were awaiting arraignment. “I think that public safety is job number one, not only for police, but for district attorneys, entertainers, and managers of entertainers…” he told us.
Now, according to reports, Braun has struck a deal with prosecutors, which would see Bieber’s label (Island Def Jam) plead guilty and pay $8,000 to cover crowd control costs. According to TMZ, Bieber also agreed to star in a public service announcement about cyber bullying for schools in the area.
@scooterbraun
Scooter Braunlife is never simple….
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This wouldn’t be uncharted territory for Bieber. A few months ago, he partnered with MTV and Facebook on a cyberbullying awareness initiative, which included the following PSA:
In other news, Bieber is a brat according to CSI star Marg Helgenberger. In fact, this is currently such hot news, “marg helgenberger” is number 2 on Google’s top hot searches list in the U.S. “60 minutes,” which last night aired an exclusive interview with President Obama about the killing of Osama bin Laden, is number 17.