Toy gun on transit bus leads to police investigation
Toy gun on school bus causes stir
Loraine Admiral King High School (in the Lorain City School District) has a zero tolerance policy on toy guns. Violators face a ten day suspension prior to expulsion.
Police and school officials will continue an investigation today to determine who carried the toy gun on the loop bus that was running from Lorain Admiral King High School to Longfellow yesterday at about 3 p.m., Schnurr said. No charges had been filed as of last night.
Schnurr said the school had been told about the toy gun before the bus pulled into the middle school.
When the bus arrived at Longfellow police as well as officials from the school and the bus company searched it and recovered the toy gun. The perp had abandoned the toy and left the bus but police and school investigations continue in an attempt to identify the culprit.
[School spokesman Dean] Schnurr said “Whoever had been carrying the gun had dropped it and left it on the bus when they got off. No one we’re aware of saw it being used in a threatening manner or being waved at anyone.”
A police investigation for an action that is not criminal, plus a school district investigation. The goal: to expel a student for posession of a toy gun that was not used improperly. Does this strike anybody else as ridiculous?
I can just see it now.
All across the country kids quietly dropping toy guns on school bus floors.
Make sure you wipe them down kiddies. Cause you know they will be fingerprinting the lot of you before long.
This is really a breath of fresh air, apparently crime has been eliminated there and the cops have nothing better to do then enforce a school rule against brining certain toys to school. Must be the safest place in America. However I do have to question the quality of education in a school that can’t even figure out who’s toy it was and needed to call in the detectives!
Pretty disturbing how often things like this keep happening lately… I’d have spent 5 years in jail for toy guns/swords/grenades and whatnot back when I was a kid.. ;P
So… what the commenters are saying is that toy guns are acceptable. Let’s run with that premise for a moment:
Are ALL toy guns acceptable? What about toys that look amazingly like the real thing, only are made of plastic (Glocks are plastic…) and don’t discharge bullets? Are those okay? How can you tell if a kid has a replica or a real gun in his locker? Don’t kid yourself, either, high school kids don’t know where the line is and many of them will bring such toys to muddy the waters. Are BB guns or Air Guns allowed? They’re toys to many people.
So, common sense would dictate that if a gun is obviously a toy (ping pong shooter), then it isn’t a problem.
Who decides on what is and is not a toy? An administrator? Another human being who has an agenda? Every parent whose kid gets busted for a look-alike gun will cry foul.
How do you solve it? Make rules that are not subject to itrepretation. No toy guns. Easy rule. Nothing that shoots a projectile. There’s no place for that in school.
So, you have rules that are no longer arbritary and someone breaks the rule… what do you do? Let people flaunt your rule? The next kid who brings the BB gun will cry foul if you selectivley enfore your rule.
Problem — some things look ridiculous on the surface, but are not in practice. No fair way to enforce this kind of thing… unless YOU are made supreme-enforcer-for-life. That way you can make all the decisions.
I know I don’t like other people with political or social agendas of their own deciding if/when my kid breaks the rules.
JAFO, you’ve perfectly described the procedure that got a kid expelled for having a Tweety Bird wallet (the little handle was a chain, therefore a weapon), numerous kids being expelled for butter knives, a 2nd grader being expelled for a bag of dirt.
Yes it can be difficult for an administrator to administrate. Having rules that must be administered logically and fairly can be rough. There will be borderline cases where a decision must be made, where it isn’t clear cut. People will get pissed. Then again, lots of people get pissed when a kid is expelled for possession of a plastic knife.
Arbitrary rules that forbid normal actions simply to save grief for an administrator are just plain wrong.
Jim,
Just as I said in my last post… if YOU are made supreme-decider of borderline cases, everything would be well.
Alas, someone else who has some kind of agenda (political, ambitious, self-serving, whatever…) is going to rule that my kid broke the rule when someone else’s kid did not. How many cries of racisim will there be? True or not, there is a fairly substantial percentage of this nation that will play the race card any time it is available.
When that happens, who looks like the bad guy? The school of course. The media will take their opportunity to slam the schools and drum up a little outrage.
The schools are in a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t position. They have opted for a rules based system that leaves arbitrariness out.
You don’t like it because of the high-profile screw-ups. You wouldn’t really like arbritray decisions made about your child’s academic future if the shoe was on the other foot, either.
Nobody wins this one. We’re a nation of armchair quarterbacks and over-zealous lawsuits. You just happen to be reporting your side… just like everyone else.
Maybe I’ll run for supreme dictator. I’m planning on running for the local school board in ‘08 (when my ward’s seat comes up for election) but supreme dictator sounds much more promising.
Until then, we are faced with tough decisions. Making a rule that eliminates decisions is not the answer.
You don’t want somebody with a possible agenda to decide your child’s fate. They already have. Instead of the possibility that your child will receive justice in a questionable situation zero tolerance policies guarantee punishment regardless of circumstance or application of common sense.
I would rather play the odds and have a possibility of fair treatment by possibly agenda ridden officials than simply write off all chances of a fair outcome.
JAFO missed an important point, or skirted it. Schools can have rules and can look for ways to enforce them. But since when it it good public policy to equate school rules with crime, taking police off the street to enforce a school rule. Suppose the police offiers involved had caught the little perp red handed. would they have been able to enforce any law, make an arrest, write a ticket? Maybe they could have shot the little bugger and solved the problem that way, but I suspect they would have had some problems with that too.
The point is, again, breaking a school rule is not a crime. Police are not the proper response to violation of a school rule about toy guns any more than they would be the proper response to a school rule about homework.
Up Next: Zero Tolerance policies on toys in general (because you can’t be too safe…)
I know Jim will think this comment is probably a bit ad hominem, but JAFO you are making hay rather than using the brain in your head. Which is the very problem in this article.
”Police and school officials will continue an investigation today to determine who carried the toy gun”
I would think schools and police would have better use of money and manpower than tracking toy users. It is completely rediculous to avoid thought by banning anything that might look like a gun…. because once again you will get a moron who thinks a chicken nugget is a weapon.
Laziness is something that life doesn’t allow us to get away with. You are excusing a lack of wisdom by implying that it is impossible to be fair. Setting aside the argument that life isn’t fair, I would rather some kid accidentally get the shaft once, than all kids getting shafted and teams of teachers and cops searching and interrogating students.
I must also comment on the very lucid point by Mike.
”The point is, again, breaking a school rule is not a crime. Police are not the proper response to violation of a school rule about toy guns any more than they would be the proper response to a school rule about homework.”
Why in the world are the cops being called in to these schools all the time now? This is not the only story where I have read how the cops have been brought in to settle a school issue. I don’t see why these teachers and administrators don’t just get a backbone and deal with issues directly.
Scott,
Let’s play pretend for a moment… You’re a principal. A student is in your office for having a plastic gun. It looks kinda like a real gun.
Someone says he was threating another student with it, but you can determine that conclusively. Someone else says that he was saying that he has a real one just like it at home and he’ll bring it in sometime. Also not substantiated.
What do you do about the student and the ‘gun’?
JAFO, that has nothing to do with this situation. In this case there was no threatening either with the toy or in reference to a potential real weapon.
Try a hypothetical response to this situation:
You are the principal. There is a report of a toy gun on an intra-school bus. Just in case the “toy” isn’t a toy, you ask the police to meet the bus at its next stop. The police and your personnel recover the abandoned toy gun. What do you do then?
JAFO seems to want to avoid a direct discussion of the facts in the case, or at least he facts as they were presented in the original post. The bottom line is still that police officers are hired and sworn to enforce the law. They are a public resource paid for by taxpayers for a purpose, and that purpose is to fight crime and enforce the law. There is no valid reason that schools could not hire professional of their own to investigate these matters if they think that is necessary. And if they find evidence of a crime, then they could call the police. They could even hire off duty police if they so choose. By bringing in police to enforce school rules that have no basis in law, to investigate violations of rules that were not promulgated by any legislative body with the power to establish law, the schools are in essence transferring the cost of enforcing their rules to another public body, thereby expanding their own budget for school operations by the amount of that cost. This way they can make their decision to have zero tolerance, and also have it enforced at zero cost. What other public entity do you know of that can pull that off?
Am I missing the point?
If what y’all are pushing out on me is true, then this statement should pass muster: The kid broke a rule by bringing a toy gun on the bus and it is therefore okay to issue disciplinary action according to the student handbook (a probable suspension).
There. I said it. My statement above does not involve the police. I’ve been on this particular train of thought because I don’t beleive the commenters on this thread would agree with that statement. Before dealing with red herrings like police involvement, I thought we’d break it down and deal with the root of the problem.
If you don’t agree with the root (diciplinary action for breaking the rule), and this really *is* all about police involvement, please accept my most humbe apologies and agreement with you. In many cases, the police do not need to be involved.
If you are of the mindset that a toy is just a toy and no damage was done, then the challenge of the hypothetical stands.
JAFO-I’ll agree with your statement that “The kid broke a rule by bringing a toy gun on the bus and it is therefore okay to issue disciplinary action according to the student handbook.†While I think that a good dose of common sense should be applied on the part of the BOE and the individual administrators in all cases, I also think that the proper venue to determine how to do that is with the BOE, not the courts. No crime was involved. At least on the aprt of the child. I’m not so sure this is true of the adults who may have acted to intimidate this child and others.
I agree that the BOE at least is a reflection of the local voters in most jurisdictions. Either the BOE runs the schools based on the will of the people, or based on the apathy of the people. If my local BOE was insane enough to suspend a little kid from school for sneaking a toy gun onto the school bus, make a bigger deal of it than was necessary for the good of anyone involved, and generally try to use the BOE position to further an anti-gun agenda in society at large, I’d have the option of working to remove members at the voting booth.
To other readers, if your local BOE is made up of these types of policy Nazis, it is because you either voted for them, or because you didn’t work hard enough to defeat them. What have you don’t lately to change that?
JAFO, your hypothetical wasn’t about a toy gun. It was about an unsubstantiated report of assault followed by an unsubstantiated case of verbal threatening. A toy gun is incidental to the alleged actions of the student.
To the basic point of breaking an established rule - yes, that should result in discipline. If the school handbook says no toy guns and a student brings in a toy gun then he broke the rule and should be disciplined.
I also agree that a rule against toy guns in school is reasonable. What I don’t agree with is equating a toy gun with an actual firearm. I also don’t agree with using the police for investigation into a school incident that was not a violation of the law.
Jim, Mike, et al:
My interest was in the root cause of the anger, which you have made clear. I was under a mis-impression.
In regards to my hypothetical, the unsubstantied threats or abuse are meant to add gravity to the situation, but are only what has been heard through the grapevine and are only as relevant to the decision as have as much weight as you allow. In this hypothetical, the assumption is that you wouldn’t dicipline the student based on rumors that he/she is actively denying and that you have no real witnesses or proof… this is only what you have heard. Given the student and your past interactions with him/her, you wouldn’t be hard pressed to beleive that either of these things may have happened.
The point of the hypothetical is this:
If you dicipline the student according to the handbook, you may well end up here on this site being made to look overbearing for suspending a kid for nothing more than a toy gun.
If you do nothing, or give a warning, there are two possible outcomes:
1. The next kid who brings in a gun that looks a LOT (indistinguishable) from a real gun that you bust calls foul for playing favorites and you end up here looking like a racist for busting one kid and not the other.
2. The kid brings in the real gun and shoots someone. When word gets out that you knew about the previous incident and didn’t take it seriously, you end up here and jobless.
The real point is that you’d be in a no-win situation. If anything bad happens, the press will give you no mercy and tell the poor student’s version of the story and you’ll be stuck having your secretary take phone calls from people about it and repeat your official statement to them.
That’s not a good place to be in, especially when you really just want to foster a safe and fair learning environment for your students.
This all assumes you don’t bother with police investigations and whatnot. Realize that if you don’t and the kid shoots people for real, it’ll be your ass again.
JAFO- You have just managed to provide the most honest and truthful description of the real purpose of ZT I have ever herd from a ZT proponent. It has nothing to do with any safety or security concerns for the children it victimizes, and it has nothing to do with reduced crime, better education or children left or not left behind. As you have pointed out, ZT is all about teachers, administrators and BOE’s looking to cover their own posterior from… what? Retribution from the students? Parents? The government? Like other things in life, when you see a situation that is so totally absurd that it defies any explanation, there is likely to be a lawyer at the bottom of it somewhere. IN ZT we are seeing children sacrificed on the alter of one-size-fits-all political correctness just because schools are afraid of being sued and/or attacked by the press if they don’t go along. So what does that say about the usefullness of ZT in fostering better education?
Mike,
I’m not a proponent of zero tolerance. I think having a rule that allows no discretion is insane.
That being said, problems exist in society and we litigate more and more. The press, ever since Watergate, is looking for the next big scandal and all societal issues are viewed through the prism of sensationalism and scandal.
Even if you don’t like what was represented in the previous e-mail, it isn’t less true. No matter what you say or do as the principal in that hypothetical, someone is going to be very pissed off at you and you may end up the target of a media character-asassination and possibly get fired over it.
Should all principals get fired at the drop of a hat or be media targets? No more than you should for doing your job.
Many of these policies are legislated and put in place by the school board. Everyone has to follow the rules put in place or they risk their livlihood.
There will always be some dumbass who oversteps his bounds and does something stupid… but as a whole, it isn’t principals, teachers, lunch ladies, or folks like them that are responsible for the problems. The state and federal legislatures, the school board, and the parents of students are squarely to blame for having things the way they are.
Principals and teachers are no more to blame for enforcing the law than cops are. Neither set makes the law, but people would hold them accountable for it.
JAFO- As a Park Ranger, I know a little about enforcement of laws, and enforcement of rules and the difference. I also know that the person responsible for enforcement does indeed have a great deal of discretion. I could make a hundred cases a day on some law or rule, if I wanted to, and if it were totally up to me. How often do we see a person going 1 mile per hour over the speed limit, rolling at a stop sign, etc.? I often see adults in parks who have been drinking. Many of them, maybe most of them, would test high enough to be arrested for public intoxication if there were a ZT policy like in the schools. A police officer who saw no discretion in day-in-day-out enforcement would soon be either nuts, or fired. Fortunately, there is a series of gatekeepers to the system that usually ensure that officers do not run amuck in a ZT mindset. The local prosecutor or DA gets to decide which cases will be taken to court, and then judges get to decide which cases merit a hearing. Since both of those venues are answerable to the voters, they usually make sure their systems don’t get off in the tall grass too far. Where is this safeguard in the school systems?
I just went back and re-read the original newspaper account of the incident and it looks like there really may be a spark of intelligence in the Lorain community after all. At the end of the story there is an account of a previous incident not school related, in which a 9 year old was arrested by Lorain police at gunpoint after they received a report from a passerby that the child was waiving what looked to the called like a real gun. The local Prosecutor later refused to take the case, which is the way it is supposed to work. Hopefully if the school Nazis find the little gangster that dropped his toy piece in the bus, the same Prosecutor will again bring the wisdom into the mix that needs to be there. It is that wisdom that is the real issue in these cases. People who have not got the wisdom to make rational decisions about such things as a kid with a toy gun, vs a gangster with a real one, should not be in the position to make the decisions in the first place.
Regarding, “The local Prosecutor later refused to take the case, which is the way it is supposed to work.”
I was at a hearing at the Texas state capital earlier this year, on the subject of school discipline, and a local judge gave a presentation. She says in their analysis of the statistics, over 80% of school-related arrest *requests* are either rejected by local police, the district attorney, or a judge. What they’re finding is that school administrators don’t, or are afraid to, apply common sense, and just don’t have the training or background to understand crime and criminal acts, ignore intent, and/or refuse to investigate whether accused students are being the victims of frame-ups and cruel pranks put on by other students, or perhaps just did something clumsily or accidently, instead of with harmful intent.
All this sophmoric nonsense, once it makes it to the criminal system with its years and years of precedence and checks and balances, is quickly rejected. Yet, it persists in the school systems, where due process is sorely lacking.
Yet not all schools are like this. Another interesting statistic this judge presented is that a majority (65% I believe?) of the arrest requests came from just 25% of schools in Texas. And, these weren’t the “dangerous” urban schools where you’d expect their to be a higher crime rate. They just seemed to be random schools with average behavior problems, but with overzealous (insensitive? incompetent?) administrators.
Interesting insights, from the establishment itself.
Mr. JAFO, I just now had a moment to read your questions for me.
”A student is in your office for having a plastic gun. It looks kinda like a real gun.”
Maybe I could lecture the kid about how cops shoot kids by accident when they carry guns that look real. But I would see it is a plastic gun and no harm could be done.
”Someone says he was threating another student with it, but you can’t determine that conclusively. Someone else says that he was saying that he has a real one just like it at home and he’ll bring it in sometime. Also not substantiated.”
Well, clearly this is way off from the original story, BUT, I would definitely have a talk with these ‘witnesses’ and the kid himself, as well as his parents — classmates and police at that point also, IF it seemed that the facts were leading me toward the kid having a real gun.
Now, I have answered your hypothetical. Why would I ever call the cops for a clearly fake gun and if a kid never threatened anyone? (Although it seems difficult to threaten someone with a bright orange cheap plastic ‘weapon’.)
I’m not sure why you are so in favor of adding complexity to this situation and giving so many crazy scenarios, ‘Well what about if the gun could shoot pellets, or what if the kid had a mean attitude, or what if other kids were scared, or what if the teachers were wusses?’
C’mon, let’s use our common sense. Don’t waste a cop’s time with stupid stuff like a plastic gun from Savings-Mart.
Scott,
> I’m not sure why you are so in favor of adding complexity to this situation …
Indeed. Let’s assume all situations are cut-and-dried since the news reports them as such. In your life, is anything black-and-white? If so, I have much to learn from you. I just don’t see the world as white-hats and black-hats.
Why would I add flavor to the hypothetical? Becuase that is the kind of thing that a real Principal deals with every day.
By way of your response — After you did the things that you mentioned, the kid and his a-hole parents would go to the media and complain loudly about how you interrogate youngsters for no good reason. Since there are no real witnesses and no one will substantiate anything, you’ll get a shitty write-up in the local paper about how you’re nothing more than a facist and a small-time dictator. You’ll probably make it on this site with your and your staff’s e-mail addresses posted so people like you can go off about how the kid didn’t do anything wrong and that you’re jumping at shadows and violating his rights.
Of course, you already know the media portrayal of the incident is one-sided (the kid’s) and everything is black-and-white in the article. You’ve been indicted, tried, and convicted in the local press.
You’ll ignore the yahoos that e-mail and call you because you have real work to do. It’s not like these people are going to actually do anything about thier percieved problem with you anyway and it’ll blow over in about two weeks.
Heck, if you’re lucky a reporter may actually find out the real scoop and get a tiny correction in the paper that no one reads.
That’s how the real world works. That’s why getting outraged here is pointless.
Kevin,
That’s really cool… and enlightening.
We could infer from what you mentioned that most schools are doing a fine job and trying hard. There are a few dumbasses out there ruining it for everybody.
Funny, that.
Isn’t that how it always is?
And here we are whining about how the ’system’ is broken completely and totally. Maybe it isn’t as broken as all that… some people just don’t use discretion as well as others.
I don’t think the system is totally broken, but these kinds of stories are too pervasive too assume nothing is wrong. Maybe it is a few dumbasses ruining the system’s reputation, but what is worse is ruining a child’s future as a consequence of that stupidity/arrogance.
As far as my personal emailing of these school administrators, I weigh very carefully if I ever email them. I believe I have only emailed once so far, and I always believe you should be very respectful in your tone to these people. I am not going to make things right by simply antagonizing someone.
In your hypothetical above, with me as the principal, I would be sure to document my conversations, and depending on the severity or situation, I would have another staff memeber present. But I still think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill here.
You would be right in asserting that every situation is different, but just arbitrarily adding nightmare scenarios might be good for contingency planning, but its a bit tedious for commenting in a blog.
Scott,
It seems like a nightmare scenario… but I’ve actually seen the inside of some of these scandals from the school side.
What I described is how they start. Everything may be documented like you suggested, but nobody gives a damn because the media paints the principal or teacher as a black-hat.
Sure, the school gets sued and administrators go to court with all the appropriate documentation and it gets neatly tossed out. And yet, it doesn’t stop the reporters who want a sensational story.
Sometimes it IS the school’s fault. More often than not, it is not. The stories are pervasive because they are sensational. Look what is happening to the poor, defenseless, kid! The press loves a good scandal. Here, you see them because you have someone collecting nationwide reports. If this site were devoted to Business Accounting Fraud, it would look like no business could be trusted, I’m sure.
JAFO- Are you trying to imply that it is acceptable for a school official to sacrifice a child’s future if that seems to be necessary to protect the official’s career, or just that it is understandable? I think the real problem here is that there is a tendency for education professionals to be myopic concerning their profession. I’m 53, and now have grandchildren in school. But I recall clearly that I had teachers that were fine, honorable and productive mentors. Some of those were role models that I still think of today when I face situations that require decisions based on character. But, I had others that were little better than ruffians themselves; who seemed to hate kids, their jobs and took obvious pleasure in looking for any excuse to drag someone to the dreaded office. Anyone who went to public school has had these experiences and knows there are teachers who really need to go into another line of work.
mike,
I’m not implying anything. The school system is full of regular, flawed human beings.
I’m saying that the view presented by sites like this and the press is skewed.
I have yet to see anybody read a damning story here or in the press and give the school the benefit of the doubt. If we gathered statistics on the real resolution to every story in the media and here, I bet we’d find the school system in the right a majority of the time. Why? Because we don’t know the whole story. No one is interested in reporting the whole story when it becomes available becuase it ends up being mundane. Only sensational items get reported… not the fact that a horrible injustice turns out to be just regular dicipline.
It’s easy to take a myopic view of a couple of cases where the schools actually are wrong and declare injustice and that the system is broken. People do it with our justice system all the time.
There is no rules based system that will stand up 100% of the time, but give the existing authority the benefit of the doubt.
Okay, I’ll give a school system the benefit of the doubt for you. In 1983, when I was 15, I was the first student to fall victim to my state’s shiny new zero-tolerance rule.
What I’d done was unbelievably stupid: I’d taken to school, in my purse, a nonfunctional but otherwise identical replica of a police .38. I didn’t take it there to threaten anybody, although considering how viciously I was bullied I’ve often wished I’d thought to do that; the result would’ve been the same in the end anyway. But no, I took it to show to a friend, because I thought it was cool. And because I was fifteen, and at that age one tends not to think too clearly, as you may remember.
My chemistry teacher caught my showing the “gun” to my friend and walked me down to the principal’s office. He called my parents and the police. They were actually fairly nice about it overall, even though the principal had some kind of grudge against me already. (I never did find out why. Before that day I’d never been in trouble in my life. I’d never even had detention.)
Anyway, the upshot of all this was that they suspended me “indefinitely” pending an expulsion hearing, and then I got arrested and had to go through that whole process.
Now, I don’t think the school or the police did anything wrong here. I really don’t. I fucked up in a huge, huge way, and even though everybody knew perfectly well that I was the world’s geekiest kid and in no way a danger to others, they had to go through the procedures.
In the end, it worked mostly in my favor. Two weeks later I turned sixteen and withdrew from school rather than wait for the expulsion hearing. The county declined to press charges. And I took the GED that summer and went to college a year earlier than expected. A juvenile arrest record isn’t that big a deal, although I expect I might get asked a few questions if I applied for a security clearance. Plus I get to tell people I got kicked out of school for having a gun in my purse, which makes for great cocktail party conversation. Okay, so every kid in the school found out and until I moved out of town people would point at me and whisper “that’s the girl with the gun!” to each other, but they never liked me in the first place. No big loss.
The next girl wasn’t so lucky. She got expelled for holding a pencil “in a threatening manner” because she pointed it at another student.
And that’s why zero-tolerance rules are bad. Because even though I agree with the school’s actions, and it *did* work in my favor in the end, it wasn’t necessary. No one but my friend and my teacher ever saw the “gun,” no one was threatened, there was no disruption. And that other girl hadn’t even done anything wrong. She had a *pencil*, for god’s sake. In a *school*.
If I’d actually been a danger to other kids, that rule wouldn’t have been necessary for them to know how to handle the situation. And its existence wouldn’t have stopped me — it didn’t even stop me when I *wasn’t* planning any mischief.
The reason these rules are bad is because they penalize good kids for the things bad kids do. The bad kids will do what they want to, regardless of what the rules are. Seriously, now, think about it: if you’re a kid who wants to bring a gun to school and shoot other kids, do you care whether it’s against the rules or not? Be honest.
A good kid with a butter knife shouldn’t have to feel like a criminal.
“most schools are doing a fine job … And here we are whining about how the ’system’ is broken completely and totally.”
JAFO, if our courts had a 80% failure rate, that is, 80% of the convicted cases were actually innocent, even if it was just 25% of the courts, and it persisted for years and years … well, yeah, we’d be damn sure yelling the system is broken, and send in the National Guard to straighten up those 25% of the courts.
Oh wait, but we did, back in the ’60s.
JAFO- I’m sure you are able to observe the similarities between the perceptions of others about the unfairness of ZT policy as it applies to school children, and the response to those policies in venues like this website. Your attempts to prevent having all school systems tarred with the same brush when only a few are actually guilty of wrongdoing are little different than the base argument of the anti ZT writers. It is unfair and unwise to establish a model in which all school systems and officials are held suspect in order to prevent any school official from doing something harmful; just as it is unfair and unwise to do the same with the students. You appear to take deep exception to any broad application of suspicion and distrust to the “existing authorityâ€Â, advising to give them the benefit of the doubt. I agree, but that is actually al that I am asking for the children too. It is precisely that civility of benefit of the doubt that ZT robs from it’s victims.
Maudite –
You start with a personal account. Good. You DID screw up bad, and by your own admission, the school did what it ought.
Next, you come back with hearsay about a pencil. At this point the argument transcends from ‘this happended and I know it because I lived it’, to ‘look what happened to this other person’. You don’t provide any accounting for the facts in the ‘pencil’ case.
You call up the ‘butter knife’ case as well. Were you there? Please, tell me your sordid first-hand knowlege about the butter knife.
The point here is that your argument moves from a place of knowledge where the school did the right thing to legends and stories and rumors.
I’m glad everything worked well for you. Even a kid who doesn’t think and means well should have a chance at redemption!
Kevin,
I’m sorry… I seem to have missed the source for your statistics.
Mine were speculation and nothing more… my argument wasn’t based on the stats, however.
Mike,
I’m always suspicious of the government. I also have some insight into human nature. Insitiutions are set up for doing poeple in. There is always some amount of power-grab and corruption in any instituiton anywhere and that cannot be helped.
Giving kids the benefit of the doubt is downright silly. Ever watch COPS? How many people that are on that show do you beleive are telling the truth to the authorities? I’m pretty sure it’s right around zero. Do you think the police should just give them the benefit of the doubt and let ‘em go… you know, just in case?
JAFO
Thank you for your willingness to bring this discussion down to the raw essentials involved. Actually, yes; I do think the police should give people the benefit of the doubt. If you read up the page a little, you’ll see that I revealed that I work as a Park Ranger, so you are discussing a subject I know a little about. When working in law enforcement, police are held to a standard that presumes innocence. While you may think it silly, it is one of the most fundamental safeguards that our society has against government abuse. This presumption of innocence concept is written into our Constitution. This is also why we are required to find probable cause to obtain a warrant from the courts rather than just an unsubstantiated possibility of a crime. In day-to-day law enforcement this is a constant frustration. We often “know†in our gut that a person is guilty, and that they are lying through their teeth. But would you really want to live in a society where it was more important not to frustrate the police that to have your own innocence presumed? And your reference to COPS is silly in this context. It was you who was against basing views on a concentrated source of information like this website. Are we to take the TV show COPS any differently?
JAFO,
Regarding my source for statistics: I specifically mentioned it was at a hearing at the Texas legislature, presented by a judge with Harris County. Sorry, my I didn’t jot down the name. But, for more general, nation-wide statistics, check our reports done by Judith Browne, of the Advancement Project (you can google for her). She also testified at the same hearings; very effectively too, because the Texas legislature agreed that things had gone too far at the school district level, and proposed several new bills (some of which passed) to correct the problem.
It’s not just the media.
>> a majority (65% I believe?) of the arrest requests came from just 25% of schools in Texas
25% of the schools are arresting 65% of the total arrests.
I think we can infer that each and every one was guilty as charged here, too… unless someone is implying that all arrests are invalid simply by stating stastics. That’s just in Texas. I wonder how it compares nationwide. Anybody can grab a skewed statistic to prove a point.
That’s low and minipulative and it reinforces my opinion of media. I’m glad I didn’t get killed in the chaos that was the Superdome. Oh wait…
Regarding, “I think we can infer that each and every one was guilty as charged here …”
JAFO, please re-read my original posts. That statistic, for what its worth, was the 80% of the arrest *requests* from school administrators were found to be invalid, and were rejected either by the police, the DA’s office, or the judge upon a first hearing. So, NO, the students were not guilty as charged — just the opposite: the system thought they were innocent, while the school administration thought they were guilty (hence they’ve expelled the students).
Why the discrepancy, you may ask? Well, beyond the statistics, theoretically I’d say it’s because the “system”, i.e., the criminal court system, has strong checks and balances, well-educated professionals, due process, and a tradition of precedence to guide their decision-making; school administrations are weak on all of the above, and thus decisions there are more likely to be decided on whim.
Mike,
Good points. While we have innocence until proven guilty clause (which I like), cops aren’t held to it. Probable cause is easy to prove. Cops search people and vehicles based on nothing more than suspicion of guilt. They even make arrests.
The courts throw out weak cases or arrests that are made incorrectly.
Point being, the enforcer of the law doesn’t have to determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s the job of the court.
So if you’re interviewing someone who smells like weed and you know has been smoking weed, as an enforcer you can ask for permission to search. Denial is good enough to get hauled in, and if you find anything, even a stem, seed, or a pipe, you can haul them in. Doesn’t mean it’ll stand up in court, but you have the opportunity.
All things being equal, good points.
JAFO- In the jurisdiction where I live and work, any officer who makes a habit of making arrests that later are refused by the prosecutor, or who behaves in a manner that makes him or her an easy target for defense attorneys who just pull out the failed case list to show a jury that the officer is known to overstep pc guidelines, will soon be on a desk, or worse. Yes, police officers can and do sometimes exceed their authority, but at least they are given a high level of training in these issues. I’d be less skeptical of schools being in the enforcement business if I thought they got even a fraction of the related training all American police officers get. I’d even feel better about it if there was at least one trained professional somewhere in the system to serve the case evaluation and qualification function of the prosecutor. One solution may be to require schools to call police each and every time they want to take any enforcement action, thus throwing all cases into the professional legal arena. There the truly guilty students could be punished and nut case school officials could be identified and weeded out. Of course this would further overload court systems. An much more effective and less costly idea might be to recreate the old fashioned communication between schools, students and parents. A funny thing we notice in my work is that even the toughest acting kids we encounter in enforcement actions; those who act too tough to be afraid of threats of jail, police records, etc., still act like they’d rather be shot than have us just hold them and call their Mom. Works about 99% of the time.
I have a lot to say about this issue. Kids will be kids, and a toy gun is not going to hurt anybody unless if a kid makes it look real. Schools should be focusing on education and other problems in school. They can just throw it away instead of having it all over the news. This makes me very angry. I bring stuff to school all the time and I get in trouble for it. I brung laser pointers, magazines, and a bible. And I got in trouble for those, and the teacher does not want me reading a bible in class. It is so stupid. The school should stop the investigation and focus learning, nobody was threatened or hurt.
“Giving kids the benefit of the doubt is downright silly?” My god, thats abhorrent.
The most retarded thing here is that they are arresting these kids who bring their plastic J.I.Joe guns to school, or the kids who are playing Cowboys and Indians who point a finger at each other and say “Bang! You’re dead!”. They are arresting the 2nd and 3rd graders who are doing this, expectiong that they KNOW discretion about these kinds of topics? I know I was never taught not to do that kind of thing at school, and I remember playing with J.I.Joes with my buddies all the time when I was younger. I mean gawd the things are probably what, two inches long at max.. and are green? How can police possibly arrest kids for not knowing any better, or for just being kids in general?… Yes I’ve heard that ignorance is not an excuse, but in those particular cases… YES.. it is.l
I understand from previous comments that, yes there are those kinds of guns that look real and whatnot that yes, should be banned from being brought into school, but see through, pink/green squirt guns… I mean common… the line’s got to be drawn somewhere it’s just that the authorities are too lazy to do it, therefore leaving the rest of us at the mercy of the a jury because some idiot decides he’s got nothing better to do with his time than to cause of fuss over something OBVIOUSLY poses ZERO threat…. And they try to justify it like, “Well we can’t take chances, because that one guy we might NOT report could be the real deal.”… See through blue squirt gun… in all honesty what the hell are you taking a chance on?…
By arresting these young kids, all they’re doing it setting an example to young adults who’re more 15-17 that “hey, we live in a world of fear and everybody’s a possible bad guy so treat everyone with prejudice under the impression that some 2nd grader is going to murder you”… How rediculous is this going to get?