Zero Tolerance Weapons Policy strikes again!

[Green Lantern]

The poor kid gets a felony charge and won't be carrying guns for the rest of his life now

That's ONLY if he's *convicted,* right???? I hope so. I also hope that the judge/jury/WHOEVER holds the kids fate in their hands, has more common sense than the fools that write these policies. I know if *I* were on the jury that heard his case, that the devil would be using a snow shovel before I found him guilty of a felony!

No offspring of mine will ever set foot in a public school....

(of course, I never plan on having kids anyway...)

...but if I DID, then home or private school all the way!

I move that we open up "THR Academy." A private school where your kids will NOT be treated as a 'subject.' Do I hear a second?

 

[MachIVshooter]

Jeebus ... I remember making billy clubs on the lathe in Jr. High shop class ... I seem to recall I got an A for mine.

We made BOWIE KNIVES in high school metal shop and there was no problem, and that was only just over a decade ago. I remember before moving out of state, I brought some non-alcholic beer to class to celebrate with my buddies. That was in the fifth grade, and the teacher simply asked us to put it away during school. No suspension, no criminal charges. Not even a repremand. I imagine that'd get you expelled today.

Yet another reason I really don't want to have kids.

 

[Rumble]

Just the other day, we found out that my son had slipped one of his GI Joe toys into his backpack before school (he was going to a friend's house after school, and wanted to take his toy - perfectly understandable). Well, it turned out that this toy had some very nicely rendered plastic guns with it (a little 1911, and a combat shotgun, and so forth).

And, in this day and age, we had to tell him that he could never take those things to school again, because they might get him kicked out.

He asked, "Why?"

We answered, "We don't know. Because there are stupid people making dumb rules every day. Please don't take the toy to school anymore, even if the rules are dumb."

It is absolutely ridiculous that we even had to formulate the thoughts that led to the request that he not take postage-stamp-sized toy guns to school, lest he be expelled.

 

[MinnMooney]

So Alabama has 'zero tolerance' for police batons?
(As per 35Rem back on post 6)

Wouldn't a baseball bat be as (or more) deadly? How do 'they' let students use baseball bats on school property without charging them with a felony?!? And you can only imagine the charges that would be heeped upon anyone carrying an umbrella (w/a pointy end, no less!).

 

[frogomatic]

good grief, when I went to highschool(95 graduate) we MADE knives in shop class(still have mine, been with me on every hunt since I made it). Hell, I made a replica of an ceremonial indian warhammer(netted me an A, woot!). Nobody batted an eye. I wretch every time I'm reminded how far we've fallen in just my short lifetime.

@machIVshooter: makes me not want to have kids either. Unfortunately, I know the responsibility we have to bring better young men and women into this world. America doesn't need gun-control it need breeding-control. I'm going to run for president on the 'no kids for morons' platform.

froggy out...

 

[IA_farmboy]

Now, you can't even smoke in a bar?

Oh how I wish that was more common. I very much dislike going to bars because I come out at the end of the night smelling like an ashtray. I could only tolerate the smoke as long as I was properly, um, sedated. While I could tolerate the smoke after a few drinks it made hitting the dartboard a bit difficult.

Many restaurants have "non-smoking" areas which happen to be just on the other side of a short wall from the "smoking" area. That can make an enjoyable night out with friends turn into one hell of a literal headache. I don't care if you want to suck down that crap, just don't do it in my air.

Back on topic...

I remember looking through the high school yearbook one of my older siblings had. There was a picture of three students dressed up in turbans and robes holding plastic machine guns "skyjacking" the principal. Yep, the principal posed with the students, with a huge smile, while they pointed plastic guns at him.

This was the same principal I had when the school adopted many "zero intelligence"... oops, I mean "zero tolerance" policies. My how things can change so quickly.

They were cracking down on drugs and had the policy that any pills you were taking had to be dispensed by the school nurse. That is one policy I broke often. If I had a cold I'd put cold tablets in my pocket before going to school. I was almost hoping to get caught. Never did.

These "no weapons" policies are quite idiotic. I've heard of several times where a sharpened pencil made a very effective weapon. Belts, books, shoes (or at least the laces), even a chair. Here's an idea. Let's have the students wear a uniform, one of those jumpsuits so they won't be wearing a belt. Can't be having any pockets to hide a knife... or a Tylenol. Slippers on the feet. Make sure the desks and chairs are bolted to the floor. All pens are to be on a chain connected to the desk. I've seen places like this, and the sign out front didn't say "high school".

 

[arizona-hermit]

Insane, Inane, Lunacy...I Mean Current Policies

When I was growing up (yes, it was a long, long time ago), it was not uncommon to have pistols, rifles, shotguns, slingshots, fishing poles (whatever was needed) scattered throughout the school (in lockers) to be used before or after school for hunting/fishing.

I usually had a .22 revolver or rifle in my locker from the 6th through the 12th grade and no one could have cared less. Many kids did and nothing 'bad' was ever thought about it. I lived in a rural community and 80% or more of the students were hunters or fishermen.

There were never locker inspections or shakedowns and metal detectors had not even been invented yet.

Life was much simpler.

You could see any number of weapons hanging in the back window of pickups in the high school parking lot.

Course back then, many schools had shooting classes as part of gym (PE or alternative anatomical foundational functioning enhancement for you youngsters).

Where did we go wrong as a country? Guess that would be a whole new thread.

 

[Ready2Defend]

My kids have knives at school everyday (the boys are 10 and 11 years old). Some days (with the principal's permission) they dry fire lever action rifles and a single action pistol - 357mag working firearms(no live ammo in room, rockwall backstop, supervision by adult. )




















OK - We home educate our children, and I am the principal.

 

[Gaucho Gringo]

This is getting to the point of absurd. When I went to high school in the mid 60's I carried a 4 1\2" pocketknife. I also had my Winchester Model 06 .22 in my closet since I was 12 with the ammunition and I never went on a killing rampage. I also knew where my fathers guns and ammunition were but I never touched them. My father was a Marine Sargent and veteran of WWII & Korea. He taught me how to shoot when I was 6 or 7 and also taught me the difference between right and wrong and a lot of other things too. He never had to worry about me doing something wrong because he had told me what would happen if I did. I have tried to do the same with my children who are now in their early 20's and I enjoy shooting with my son. My Winchester model 06 is now being shot by the 4th generation of my family and hopefully in a few years my granddaughter will make it 5th generation. I hope she will not be the last.

 

[Geno]

This is truly troubling, and appears, at face-value, to be illegal. There are two issues: 1) zero tolerance and 2) search and seizure.

Zero tolerance requires that the student:
1) knowingly bring a weapon to school
2) the item must truly be a weapon (not a picture of)
3) the student must have brought the weapon with the intent to commit harm to people and/or property.

Regarding the auto search:
Regarding the leaving campus w/o permission and returning, thus subjecting to a search, I point to T.L.O. V. New Jersey, in which the court said the administrative team had "en loco parentis" power(in place of the parent). This means that when the child is at school, the staff and administration have the power over the child to do as a "reasonable and prudent" parent would do. Depending on circumstances, a reasonable and prudent parent might search their child's belongings, i.e. backpack, locker, pants, jacket, even car. Body cavity...hang it up!!! Call the parents and a doctor.

Would a reasonable and prudent parent search the child's car? Perhaps. But, usually there must be indication that a rule was broken. Step 1 is met. He left campus w/o permission. The next step is to ask is it reasonable to assume he left to get a weapon? Perhaps. Was there recent conflict? But, this matter became a mute point, because it is adopted policy...read publicly and adopted by the Board. That makes it local law, literally. The policy should be in the student handbook.

However, let's take a pragmatic look here. IMHO the Zero Tolerance was not met. Period. Not from the information that I have seen. Regarding the search, that is a different matter. I personally would NOT, would NOT have done the search. I find the policy offensive and over-intrusive, i.e. no reasonable and not prudent. If they feel this strongly, suspend the student, but prosecute? That is wrong. It doesn't even seem to me that it meets the standard of a weapon per the state's laws.

Regardless of outcome, this child is now marked for life! That is wrong.

Doc2005 (Former High School Principal; Current Grad. Prof. of Educ. Administration)

:banghead:

 

[Pilgrim]

When he came back onto the grounds, a school resource officer searched him and his car, which is standard operating procedure when a student leaves campus without permission.

As I recall, SCOTUS said school officials can search a student and his belongings if they have a reasonable suspicion a student is violating school rules or the law. Reasonable suspicion has a lower threshold than probable cause. I wonder if the school resource officer had authority from the school official to search this student or is acting on general orders. It could make a difference.

Pilgrim

 

[The Lone Haranguer]

Originally posted by Sistema1927:
We used to carry 4" Buck Knives in belt sheaths as part of the unofficial young man's "uniform" when I was in High School.

I was not one of them, but I remember, from when I went to high school in the mid 1970s, a sort of clique of guys who wore Levi's big bell bottoms, engineer boots and a Buck 110 in a belt sheath. They would spend many hours slicking up the action so the blade would flip out with a hard wrist flick (not easy to do with that knife.) Nobody ever got cut.

Originally posted by Robert Hairless:
... I belong to a generation in which part of the rites of passage to manhood was the gift of a good pocketknife.

Just like my first Boy Scout knife. I cut myself with it, too, even still bearing the scar 40 years later. My parents just bandaged me up and told me to be more careful with it next time.

Originally posted by FieroCDSP:
... Zero Tolerance is simply an excuse to avoid making decisions you might have to stand up for.

Good point, I had not thought of it like that.

"Zero Tolerance" is something that sounds and feels good, until the literal meaning of it is actually applied.

 

[Regolith]

This reminds me of a story I was told about my great-grandfather, who lived on a farm in the Willamette valley in Oregon.

Every day he and his brother would ride their horses to school, and on the way they'd bring a .22 pistol of some kind or another to shoot rabbits if they saw them. This was a fairly regular occurrence.

Then one year the tiny little one room schoolhouse got a new teacher, from somewhere back east. One day, my great-grandfather was getting a book out of the horse's saddlebags when the teacher saw the pistol. She punished him for having it (can't recall exactly what happened, but I believe he was sent home sans pistol).

Anyway, the school board was informed of what happened, and the teacher was fired within a week.

Ah the good ol' days.

Hell, as recently as 6 or so years ago my PE class went to the firing range for a week or two every spring to be taught basic marksmanship and gun safety. Of course, that was only a few years after Columbine, so we also had a zero tolerance policy in effect. That was hardly ever enforced unless the student who was caught was a trouble maker, though, at least for knives. Guns would have been a different manner (I once saw a kid almost expelled for simply joking that he had a rifle in his truck -- he didn't).

 

[evan price]

Way back when I was in high school our school gave each of us every year a folder with the rules printed inside it and we had an assembly where they were gone over with everyone.. if you stayed there you obviously had 4 consecutive lectures one for each year..with a question & answer session for the freshmen after each bullet point.

The weapons section (which said it was for examples and was not considered complete or final just a guideline) had a line that stated "...knives, spears, or sharpened sticks..."

My Junior Year I stuck my hand up and asked if sharpened sticks included pencils?

As fast as that I had a week's detention for not taking the stuff seriously enough.

The last laugh was on them- since the year was brand new the custodians had nothing to do so "detention" consisted of hanging out in the custodian's lounge in the boilerhouse playing Euchre and smoking with the other detainees and the custodians. (Where, may I add, no teacher or staff except the principal had a key!!)

 

[Loucks]

Apparently there was a form (quite a few different ones) at the beginning of the year that you had to sign in order to go to school that authorized them to do this anywhere at any time. From what I gather this still goes on today. No reason at all to search, just something they decide to do randomly.

My younger brother's high school tried this a few years back. My folks drove over and showed the adminstrators their ACLU cards. The form was waived almost immediately.

 

[Warren]

My Mom was on the Rifle Team at her high school. I have her yearbook somewhere and there is a team picture and my mom is right in front IIRC holding some sort of bolt action.

Of course this was the late 40s early 50s.

 

[Geno]

I wonder if the school resource officer had authority from the school official to search this student or is acting on general orders. It could make a difference.

Correct, school personnel go by the standard of "reasonable suspicion" versus the police standard of “probable cause". There is a huge difference. The difference of the officers searching versus administrators searching lies in the fact of who made the request.

If the administrator requested the search, reasonable suspicion applies even though the officer did the search. If the officer made the request of the administrator, probable cause applies, even if the administrator does the search. You read that correctly. This issue became extremely important in one school/court case in which I was a witness. The judge had one concern, and one concern only: "Who requested the search, me or the officer?"

Herein lies the key factor: because I had made the request, the officer acted on behalf of the administrator (lower standard). If the officer had made the request of me, he in effect would have “deputized” me, I lose "reasonable suspicion" as the standard, and have to stop the search until I receive a warrant to search. IMHO, it is never a good idea for the administrator to involve the police in the search until the search is done and over. While the difference may sound trivial, it can make the difference of disallowing evidence discovered in the search.

Doc2005

 

[Walkalong]

I know this is not news, but we routinely carried pocket knives in gradeschool. No big deal.

 

[Owens]

I wonder if attending school board meetings (en mass) and calling the administration on the carpet would have the effect of reigning in some of this lunacy? Just a thought.

 

[hemiram]

One of my friends has a son who is a Jr in HS. We were talking about how insane these crazy rules are getting, and we mentioned to the kid that we did the following:

1. Carried large pocketknives to school every day, sometimes several!
2. Took our own pills, when we wanted to, shared them, and nobody cared.
3. Often took cap and blank pistols to school when we were in grade school to show them to friends. I had a copy of a S&W model 19 that looked totally realistic. It was solid metal, and weighed more than a real one. Sadly, I never saw one like it again. I bought it in Chicago. One of my teachers saw it and just played with it all day doing all kinds of dumb stuff with it. I dropped it and broke it when I was in HS.
4. Had BB guns in our cars in HS.
5. Were allowed to leave school for 90 MINUTES from 11:30, until 1:00 by OURSELVES every day for lunch! When we were SIX!

And we thought they had crazy rules then. I'm so glad I'm not in school now, and don't have any kids in school, I know I would be in trouble for one reason or another, if I did.

 

[Geno]

Owens:

It could (possibly) help to attend Board meetings in that the Board determines how follow state and federal law, via implemented policy and procedure (P&P). The P&P determine how agressively the adminhistrators follow the policy of enforcing these laws. Note the difference between the law and the policy as detailed herein. It's a classic case of if 2 Aspirin are good, 4 must be great!

Gene

 

[Owens]

Doc 2005:

Correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand from reading prior posts, the law:

Zero tolerance requires that the student:
1) knowingly bring a weapon to school
2) the item must truly be a weapon (not a picture of)
3) the student must have brought the weapon with the intent to commit harm to people and/or property.

The P&P (in practice):
Pictures = nope!
Plastic army men with guns = nope!
Looks like gun, must be gun = yep! Outa Here!

It is the administrators of the P&P that need some time in the woodshed with a hickory switch, not the students.

I am only deducing and possibly wrongly, that you are either active or ex administration. If so it appears that you would be exempt from the woodshed

 

[Steve499]

The poor kid gets a felony charge and won't be carrying guns for the rest of his life now

As long as he's not 17 yet, any record he gets out of this won't count against him. The only time kids have an adult record for offenses committed is when they are declared adults for legal purposes, always due to some particularly heinous crime. I have been generally opposed to the way nothing a kid does, criminally, seems to have any real consequences, but in a case like this one, it's a good thing.

 

[SteveS]

I guess I came out of a great place. We had a no tolerance weapons policy at my school, but i carried a knife from day one of Kindergarten through Graduation. Almost daily in high school my knife was borrowed by a teacher. I wound up giving him one when I graduated. I just graduated in 2003 also.

I just read through my daughter's school handbook and a knife like the one described in the OP would have been ok to carry under current school policy.

 

[Zen21Tao]

How about these golden nuggets:

http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/zerostup.html

I was going to post a few, but I just couldn't choose which ones were the best. They are all utterly ridiculous, to the extent that they would be funny if they weren't true.

Some of the Rampant Stupidity
* Fifth-graders in California who adorned their mortarboards with tiny toy plastic soldiers to support troops in Iraq were forced to cut off their miniature weapons.


* Rubber bands are a controlled item at Young Middle Magnet School of Mathematics, Science & Technology in Tampa FL.In a December newsletter, the Buffalo Bulletin, administrators warned parents and students ...

"There have been recent incidences of students at our school using rubber bands as a method of projecting objects at other people."

"Rubber bands are not permitted at school. If students are in possession of rubber bands for any reason they will be subject to consequences that may include out of school suspension."

"When rubber bands are required for classroom use, they will be provided and collected."

What's next, banning of ball point pens and soda straws as the students switch to deadly spit balls?


* "A 13-year-old student in Orange County, Fla., was suspended for 10 days and could be banned from school over an alleged assault with a rubber band..." "Robert Gomez, a seventh-grader at Liberty Middle School, said he picked up a rubber band at school and slipped it on his wrist."

"Gomez said when his science teacher demanded the rubber band, the student said he tossed it on her desk."

"After the incident, Gomez received a 10-day suspension for threatening his teacher with what administrators say was a weapon..." "The district said a Level 4 offense includes the use of any object or instrument used to make a threat or inflict harm, including a rubber band."


* "Two boys, ages 9 and 10, were charged with felonies and taken away from school in handcuffs, accused of making violent drawings of stick figures."

"The boys were arrested Monday on charges of making a written threat to kill or harm another person, a second-degree felony. The special education students used pencil and red crayon to draw primitive stick figure scenes on scrap paper that showed a 10-year-old classmate being stabbed and hung, police said."


* VA: Joyce Heath said her 8-year-old son returned to school yesterday after a seven-day suspension for carrying a butter knife to school with his lunch. Nicholas, a third-grader, initially was suspended for 10 days and faced the possibility of being placed in disciplinary classes for a year."

Heath said she packed a butter knife in her son's lunch along with a package of peanut butter and jelly on Oct. 1. 'I didn't think about it,' she said.

(Caution - In Some California Schools, Posession of a Peanut is grounds for expulsion - honestly ... )


* A Texas school district tried to expel a 16-year-old high school student for a year when a butter knife was spotted in the back of his pickup truck.


* Wisconsin: A sixth-grader gets suspended because of a science project. The project involved cutting an onion. He brought a kitchen knife to school.


* Texas: This zero-tolerance idiocy comes from Ft. Worth. Cory Henson plays baseball on the Diamond Hill-Jarvis baseball team. In the trunk of his car is his baseball equipment, including aluminum bats. In the front seat of his car we have a souvenir baseball bat. It is made of wood and 8” long. That’s not as long as a piece of copy paper is wide. Ft. Worth government school officials decide that the 8” bat is a weapon! The real aluminum baseball bats aren’t.


* Missouri: It is just a month after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. A fifth-grade student draws a picture of an airplane flying into a building. Suspended.


* A third-grader has a brother serving in the Army in Afghanistan. The proud third-grader draws a picture of his brother. The drawing shows his brother with a gun. Suspended.


* Havre [MT] Public Schools Superintendent Kirk Miller said an 11-year-old student brought an unloaded .22-caliber pistol to Sunnyside Intermediate School with the intent to turn it over to school authorities. The child immediately took the weapon to the school principal, Miller said. The gun was missing a part and could not be fired.

Havre police responded at 8:51 a.m.. and took the juvenile to the police station for questioning. He was issued a summons on a charge of possessing a weapon in a school building, police said."


* Seven fourth-grade boys in Centennial, Colo., were sent home from Dry Creek Elementary School for pointing their fingers at each other like guns in a game of army-and-aliens on the playground.


* Three seventh-graders in a South Side Chicago public grade school were charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver after school officials found them selling plastic bags of purple powder for a quarter each.

It was grape Kool-Aid powder. They told school officials it was grape Kool-Aid to no avail, said their attorney, Michelle Light.

"They were rounded up and hauled off down to the police station," Light said. "No one ever suggested it was anything but grape Kool-Aid."

Even when a lawyer from the national firm of Baker & McKenzie stepped in, prosecutors refused to drop the charges and wanted the boys to agree to counseling. After three months, prosecutors finally agreed to test the purple powder. It was Kool-Aid. Charges against the boys were dropped.


* A Florida high school student tape recorded a chemistry lecture against school policy. Was she reprimanded and sent back to class with a stern lecture? NO! She was criminally charged under the state Wire Tap law.


* A 12 year old girl gets a year in custody for sexual assault for going on a "Play Date" with two 11 year old girls.


* Schools are banning dodge ball and tag because the games encourage "violent behavior."


* Some schools are removing any references to the military from their libraries, and some high schools are banning military recruiters.


* Elementary students in Texas and Louisiana have been suspended for pointing pencils and saying "pow" and drawing pictures of soldiers. A fifth-grader in St. Petersburg, Fla., was arrested for drawing pictures of "weapons."


* Students in Mississippi were held in jail for throwing peanuts at one another.


* "Terrorist threat" criminal charges were filed against two 8-year-olds in Irvington, N.J., for "playing cops and robbers with a paper gun."


* A young boy is suspended from elementary school for pointing his finger at someone and saying "Bang." It seems the school's Zero Tolerance rule extends to "Pretend" guns, including fingers.


* Another school will let kids point fingers, but only if they have a "Permit."


* 6 year old tossed out of school for bringing in his father's pager for show and tell. It seems it's classified as drug paraphernalia.


* A Boy Scout (excellent 'A' student) returning from camp was suspended from school because he left his axe and knife in his car along with the rest of his camping gear.


* An 11 year-old girl was suspended for 10 days from Garrett Middle School in Atlanta. It seems that the (10 inch 'bead type') chain connecting her key ring to her Tweetie Bird wallet was in violation of the school's "Weapons Policy."