Teen Expelled From School For Turning In Found Gun

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http://cbs2chicago.com/local/local_story_348001946.html

Plainfield Student's Parents Say The Punishment Doesn't Make Sense

CBS) PLAINFIELD, Ill. A 13-year-old Plainfield boy and his parents are stunned and outraged after the teen found a gun in school and turned it in to authorities, who then expelled him.

CBS 2's Dana Kozlov reports Ryan Morgan's parents and supporters attended the school board meeting Wednesday evening to try to fight the expulsion. They believe the punishment, and the subsequent alternative school option, are not the proper responses to a mistake made by a teenage boy.

Ryan Morgan, 13, says he pocketed a pellet gun he and a friend found in their school's bathroom to keep people safe. Morgan's mother says a short time later Morgan gave the gun to the Troy Middle School assistant principal.

"I told him maybe that wasn't the best decision, to remove that gun, but it did lead to you finding the culprit, he was arrested and to put my son in alternative school -- he has no behavior problems," Audrey Morgan, Ryan's mother, said.

The Morgans say there was no reasoning with the principal or with the school superintendent.

"He said, 'The board can give your son full two-year expulsion, I'm asking you not to go before them,'" Audrey Morgan said.

They went anyway, saying they had nothing to lose, only to see the meeting minutes already recommend expulsion.

Roy Morgan says he can't accept that, but accepts his son's decision.

"He said 'I'm going to turn this in' and you know what, I commend my son for making that decision. It was the right decision," he said.

School board officials issued a statement Wednesday night saying due to confidentiality reasons they can't discuss the specifics of this case, but that "purposeful possession of weapons is a serious offense and deserves careful consideration by the administration and the school board."

(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
 
Proof that common sense is not so common

This is proof that common sense is not so common.

Note the statement about the anticipated recommendation to expel. By whom was that made? I assume it was the administration. If it were indication of the Board's discussion prior to the hearing we would have some due process issues.

This is truly a shame and a sham. The sequence and the substance of this matter does not meet the criteria for zero tolerance.

Doc2005
 
thats just wrong. kid did what he thought was the right thing. i hope they fire that school board.
 
STOP.... don't touch... tell an adult.:banghead:
They should sue the school for failing to train him to deal with the situation much like LEOs who sue their department.
 
I'm pretty sure that NC law has a specific exemption in the "no guns in school" :rolleyes: law for people that find a gun and turn it in to someone...

Still, that may not have helped this kid.

The Eddie Eagle message sure would have helped this kid a lot, but at least it could have been worse (if he had been careless while handling the gun).

The inmates are running the asylum in the public school system, courtesy of a little thing called "zero tolerance"...:barf: I pray this kid and his family find justice from the bonehead "powers that be" there...! :cuss:
 
Well those who wonder about the logic should notice that this happened up by Chicago... :uhoh:

And the boy and all of his friends have learned a lesson. If you find a gun don't tell anyone - especially someone on the school staff. This at the same time that the schools claim they are trying to gain the student's trust so that they will tell them if they hear anything about someone having a gun, proposing a shooting, whatever.

Only today's public school authorities(?) would think they could have it both ways. :cuss: :banghead:

Sad to say, but the public schools in your community might be the same way. If you have kids attending one it might be a good idea to find out. Then you can instruct your children as to what they should do, and if the school is as brain-dead as the one in this thread, you should tell your children to walk away and ignore the gun and have nothing to do with it and to report it to no one. Could this lead to serious consequences? Absolutely! But it's the school's policy that will be to blame, and not your kid.
 
looks like the only lesson that this kid will learn is not to trust adults.
Click to expand...

And if expelled, he'll have no future. And people who have resentment of authority AND no future are likely to become what sort of people? :banghead:
 
All that judgement...

after reading one side of the story. As is often the case in situations like this, the school authorities are prohibited from giving their side of the story. You are reading one side of the story. These parents have a high motivation to twist the thing around to their point of view. They will now probably have to transport their child to the alternative education site and will be forced to actually be involved in their child's life.

Everyone seems to be assuming the kid found the gun and immediately took it to an administrator. A scenario that is just as likely is that he found it, put it in his pocket, ran around doing the "check this out" thing for a goodly period of time and then turned it in when a school staff member wandered over to see what a group of students were so engrossed in.

We don't know which scenario is real. There are parents that will say ANYTHING to keep their kids from suffering the consequences of their actions. I have personally witnessed an incident where a parent watched a student pull a bag of weed out of his pocket only to ask 30 seconds later where the bag of pot came from and why was the school staff trying to frame her son.

A small toast seems to be in order: Here's to hoping that if any of you ever go to trail for a self defense shooting that your jurors wait until they here both sides of the story before deciding if you are guiltly or not.

But I guess any reason to demonize pubic school staff is sufficient around here.

migoi
 
Ryan Morgan, 13, says he pocketed a pellet gun he and a friend found in their school's bathroom to keep people safe. Morgan's mother says a short time later Morgan gave the gun to the Troy Middle School assistant principal.
Click to expand...

i think what migoi is saying is that we don't know how long a "short time later" was (a few minutes or a few hours), and what may have transpired in that time period.

i know a cop who stopped a uniformed security guard on his way home in California. cop asked the security guard where he was headed. security guard said he was headed home. the security guard appeared very nervous. the officer had the guard step out of the car and patted him down. he found a switchblade on the security guard. the security guard said he had confiscated it from someone while on the job earlier that evening and was going to bring it to the police department. but he just said he was on his way home. cop did not arrest the security guard, but obviously didn't buy his story either. cop ultimately confiscated the switchblade and advised the security guard that he did not have the authority to confiscate anything and should have immediately notified law enforcement had he located something illegal, instead of putting it in his pocket. possession doesn't mean ownership.

we don't know if the kid was about to get stopped and searched by the school administration or the SRO, and then all of a sudden reported it and turned it in. we also don't know if the kid was unjustly suspended or expelled from the school. no sense in rushing to condemn either side.
 
I'm pretty sure that NC law has a specific exemption in the "no guns in school" law for people that find a gun and turn it in to someone...
Click to expand...
The kid who got expelled for turning the gun in wasn't charged with anything, as he committed no crime under NC law. The kid who DID bring the gun to school was arrested.
 
I think that if the school's staff had heard something to the effect that this boy had a gun and went looking for him, and then found it, he would have been arrested and charged - not just been expelled.

"I told him maybe that wasn't the best decision, to remove that gun, but it did lead to you finding the culprit, he was arrested and to put my son in alternative school -- he has no behavior problems," Audrey Morgan, Ryan's mother, said.
Click to expand...

It would seem that the school's staff did learn who the person was who brought the gun to school (most likely another student) and they were arrested.

Therefore it would be reasonable to conclude that they boy's story about finding the gun and turning it over to the principal, and not the other way around, supports his story. :scrutiny:

And bashing public schools that do this sort of thing is indeed justified. Their absolute stupidity will likely insure that no one in the student body is going to tell any of the staff about anything they might know about what other students might be up to. Then if a shooting incident does occur the brain-dead staff will say, "why we never suspected..."

Indeed they didn't. :fire: :banghead:
 
What does Eddie the Eagle teach kids to do in situations like this ???????

1. The boy was wrong to pocket the gun, but he did bring it to school authories so that no one else would/could get it.
2. The school board/administrators are wrong to expel the boy for turning in the gun he found. Did he do wrong, yes. But a very very minor wrong.The appropriate punishment: Have him teach/escort/coordinate an Eddie the Eagle seminar for the whole school.

But then the NRA would be involved and that's BAD, so it's easier to use the "We're not smart enough to weigh the facts and evidence and make a decision so - Zero Tolerance" policy and damn everyone involved.

Critical thinking/logic is dead in public schools.
 
I'm not rushing to anything...

I'm simply making an observation that this news story is one-sided and lacking many details.

To summarily declare the student completely innocent and the school administrators idiots that should be run out of town based on a parent's view of what happened and a news story that runs all of 300 or so words seems a bit rash to me.

migoi
 
i know a cop who stopped a uniformed security guard on his way home in California. cop asked the security guard where he was headed. security guard said he was headed home. the security guard appeared very nervous. the officer had the guard step out of the car and patted him down. he found a switchblade on the security guard. the security guard said he had confiscated it from someone while on the job earlier that evening and was going to bring it to the police department. but he just said he was on his way home. cop did not arrest the security guard, but obviously didn't buy his story either. cop ultimately confiscated the switchblade and advised the security guard that he did not have the authority to confiscate anything and should have immediately notified law enforcement had he located something illegal, instead of putting it in his pocket. possession doesn't mean ownership.
Click to expand...

:scrutiny: :rolleyes:

More brain dead, zero tolerance, terminally stupid, police state, moronery.

Sequel........Seargant confiscates switchblade from officer and tells him that just because he confiscates some contraband from some person who has no power to confiscate is not justification for not arresting the confiscatee and keeping the contraband for himself.

Then seargant keeps contraband for himself.........till he gets caught with it by the LT.
 
This is not right.

By the school boards logic, I should have been expelled twice. once for turning a big sack of weed that I found. and once for finding a .38 revolver, not a bb gun, a real .38 specail in the prop cabinate of the theatre, leftover from an old production along with a box of blanks.

I saw that the cylinder was empty, picked it up by the trigger guard and broughte it directly to the teacher and put it on his desk. the weed I took to the office and put on the secratarys desk. that was it, they thanked me for turning it in and I went on my way.
 
Quote:
"I'm not rushing to anything...

I'm simply making an observation that this news story is one-sided and lacking many details.

To summarily declare the student completely innocent and the school administrators idiots that should be run out of town based on a parent's view of what happened and a news story that runs all of 300 or so words seems a bit rash to me."
----------------------------------------------------
Quote from news story:
"School board officials issued a statement Wednesday night saying due to confidentiality reasons they can't discuss the specifics of this case, but that "purposeful possession of weapons is a serious offense and deserves careful consideration by the administration and the school board"
-------------------------------------------------------
**The same school officials had a chance to state their reasoning and logic, but passed on that chance, instead hiding behind more of their blind "policies". It's always easy to defend one's actions or decisions when it's decided "we can't discuss anything about anything, we have a policy...."
I'm not declaring anyone innocent or guilty, but a young man's (without behavior problems) future is at stake here. I just think a little more consideration is in order considering the circumstances. At least if they really want to get to the truth, instead of trying to cover their butts.
Zero policies = zero common sense, more often than not.
just my two cents.
 
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