Commenting on comments is next to useless.
To put this in sequence from the various news reports:
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, Feb 2012.
Four year old Neaveh Sansone drew a picture of a gun at school. When a teacher asked about the gun, the girl replied, "That’s my daddy’s. He uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters."
So the school staff called Child Welfare to report a gun in the house accessible to children.
Alison Scott, executive director of Family and Children’s Services:
“From a public safety point of view, any child drawing a picture of guns and saying there’s guns in a home would warrant some further conversation with the parents and child.”
Insp. Kevin Thaler, Waterloo Regional Police: The police received information that
“a firearm was in a residence and children had access to it. We had every concern, based on this information, that children were in danger.”
...some further conversation with the parents and child...
As routine, Jessie Sansone arrived at school to pick up his kids and was summoned to the principal's office where three officers were waiting. He was arrested at the school for "possession of a firearm", handcuffed and taken to the police station where he was strip searched.
Steve Zack, school principal:
“Police chose to arrest Jessie here. Nobody wants something like this to happen at any time, especially not at school. But that’s out of my hands.”
The authorities took the three children from the school to Family and Children’s Services to be interviewed. Police went to his home and took his wife to the police station. Hours later, Sansone was released with no charges, but was asked to consent to a search of his home. The search of the house (while wife Stephanie was being questioned at the police station) turned up no evidence of an actual violation.
Insp. Kevin Thaler:
"What we were investigating was a drawing of a handgun at the school and subsequently through the investigation, the officers identified the weapon that was being drawn was, in fact, a replica toy gun in the residence."
Clear plastic toy gun that fired plastic darts!
Stephanie (Jessie's wife):
``I just think they blew it out of proportion. It was for absolutely nothing. They searched our house upside down and found nothing. They had the assumption he owned a firearm. The way everything happened was completely unnecessary, especially since we know the school very well. I don’t understand how they came to that conclusion from a four-year-old’s drawing.’’
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...at-school-after-daughter-draws-picture-of-gun
Dianne Wood, Waterloo Region Record, "Kitchener dad arrested at school after daughter draws picture of gun", The Star, 24 Feb 2012
http://www.anorak.co.uk/313388/news...daughter-draws-picture-of-gun-at-school.html/
"Dad arrested and strip-searched after daughter draws picture of gun at school", Anorak
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2012/02/27/pf-19433936.html
Kris Sims, Parliamentary Bureau, "Kitchener officials sticking to their guns", Canoe Network, February 27, 2012
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My impressions lean to sarcasm:
The evidence for all this was a 4-yo girl's drawing and her explanation: "That’s my daddy’s. He uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters."
One would think that the police could have searched their records to see if Sansone had been involved in any shootings of bad guys. Or does Canada have a closed season on monster hunting?
Everyone in this fiasco (school, child welfare, police) ran on autopilot following the manual (see quotes above and amplified in the stories linked) without stopping to think.
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Added: Sansone admitted in at least one of the newspaper interviews that he had an assault and attempted burglary conviction five years earlier (when he was 21); however, the school, child welfare and police were not quoted as even mentioning that as a reason.