Submitted by Mike
Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
The sickening transformation of these United States into an
authoritarian police state with an incarceration rate that would make Joseph
Stalin blush, has been a key theme of my writing since well before the
launch of Liberty Blitzkrieg. One of the posts that shocked and disturbed
readers most, was published a little over a year ago titled:
American
Police Make an Arrest Every 2 Seconds in 2012. In the event you
never read it, I suggest taking a look before tackling the rest of this
piece.
Fast forward to fall 2014, and the
Wall Street Journal has
a powerful article about how children in schools systems across the U.S. are
being arrested or turned over to police custody for doing things that children
have always done since the beginning of time. Things such as wearing too much
perfume, sharing a classmates’ chicken nuggets, throwing an eraser or chewing
gum.
As a result of our insane societal obsession with authority and
disproportionate punishment, the WSJ reports that “
nearly one out of
every three American adults are on file in the FBI’s master criminal
database.”
USA! USA!
From
the Wall Street Journal:
A generation ago, schoolchildren caught fighting in the corridors,
sassing a teacher or skipping class might have ended up in detention. Today,
there’s a good chance they will end up in police custody.
In Texas, a student got a misdemeanor ticket for wearing too much
perfume. In Wisconsin, a teen was charged with theft after sharing the chicken
nuggets from a classmate’s meal—the classmate was on lunch assistance and
sharing it meant the teen had violated the law, authorities said. In Florida, a
student conducted a science experiment before the authorization of her teacher;
when it went awry she received a felony weapons charge.
Over the past 20 years, prompted by changing police tactics and a
zero-tolerance attitude toward small crimes, authorities have made more than a
quarter of a billion arrests, the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates.
Nearly one out of every three American adults are on file in the FBI’s master
criminal database.
Did you catch that too? “Zero-tolerance attitude
toward small
crimes.” Indeed, the big criminals go to Wall Street, crash the economy
and then receive trillions in taxpayer bailouts. Or they get a top job in the
Obama Administration, such as Jedi-master of cronyism,
Tim
Geithner, being chosen as Treasury Secretary.
Back to the WSJ…
At school, talking back or disrupting class can be called
disorderly conduct, and a fight can lead to assault and battery
charges, said Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the
Advancement Project, a national civil-rights group examining discipline
procedures around the country.
If these rules were in place in my day, I would have been arrested about 150
times.
“We’re not talking about criminal behavior,” said Texas State Sen. John
Whitmire, the Democratic chair of the senate’s Criminal Justice Committee, who
helped pass a new law last year that limits how police officers can ticket
students. “I’m talking about school disciplinary issues, throwing an eraser,
chewing gum, too much perfume, unbelievable violations” that were resulting in
misdemeanor charges.
According to the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights,
260,000 students were reported, or “referred” in the official language, to law
enforcement by schools in 2012, the most-recent available data.
The number of school police officers rose 55% to about 19,000 in
the 10 years to 2007, the last year for which numbers were available,
according to a 2013 study from the Congressional Research Service.
The schools crackdown has had its intended effect. Victims’ surveys
compiled by the Education Department show that there is a lower rate of violent
crime committed in schools, falling to 52 incidents per 100,000 students in 2012
from 181 incidents per 100,000 in 1992.Supporters say that alone proves the
worth of aggressive policing.
Well yeah, and pigs in a pen are easily controlled too, but are these the
types of children we want to raise?
And what about the downside, such as:
Brushes with the criminal justice system go hand in hand with other
negative factors. A study last year of Chicago public schools by a University of
Texas and a Harvard researcher found the high-school graduation rate for
children with arrest records was 26%, compared with 64% for those without. The
study estimated about one-quarter of the juveniles arrested in Chicago annually
were arrested in school.
A science experiment that went awry turned into a 17-month battle for
Kiera Wilmot and her mother as they tried to clear the honor student’s arrest
record. According to the police report, she was on school grounds
outside the classroom trying out an experiment that hadn’t been authorized by
her teacher. Ms. Wilmot, now 18, said she put a piece of aluminum
inside a bottle with two ounces of toilet cleaner to see what would happen. The
teen’s mother said she was trying to simulate a volcanic eruption.
“It popped,” blowing the top off the bottle, she said. She was
handcuffed by the school-resource office, escorted out of the Bartow, Fla.,
school and taken to a juvenile facility where she was charged with possessing or
discharging firearms or weapons at school and making, throwing, possessing,
projecting, placing or discharging a destructive
device.
Think about what sorts of lessons we are teaching talented students about
experimenting and being creative. A modern Benjamin Franklin would most likely
be rotting away in solitary right now.
So as we militarize the police, we police the schools. See the direction this
is all headed in?
Keep chanting muppets.
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