Girl, 10, Arrested for Using Knife to Cut Food at School
A ten-year-old girl in Florida was arrested and faces felony weapons charges because she brought a small steak knife to school to cut her lunch, which was steak. Seems to me a steak knife being used to cut steak isn’t a ‘weapon’. It’s a tool.
And speaking of tools:
I suppose that one could argue that the steak should have been cut by a parent beforehand knowing that knives are frowned upon at school, but arresting the child does seem more than a bit heavy handed, especially if they plan on carrying the charges all the way and having the child branded as someone who has brought a weapon to school for the rest of her school career.
Do you know how many assaults involve steak knives? It is the most readily available weapon for youngsters. Kids should not bring knives to school. Sounds like sensationalist reporting to me, I bet you dollars to donuts she won’t be charged with anything. Getting suspended at that age is nothing more than making it clear to the parents not to send the kid to school with a knife.
WTH Johnny, I suppose you would be upset if she got arrested for bringing a gun to school if she was really just going to go hunting on her lunch break?
When I was in junior high, I saw a kid get stabbed in the stomach with a fork. That required a little visit from cops and EMTs both.
I suppose you’d ban forks next.
Personally, I’d ban stabbings, whatever they are committed with. That’s just me.
Cite? Steak knives are more readily available than say rocks or lunch boxes or any of the other things kids assault each other with?
While not for grade school kids and perhaps not in her particular area this isn’t an unheard of practice in some of the more rural school districts.
I just saw the thread title and said yes even before I opened the thread or the link.
Oh and askeptic :rolleyes:
Right back at ya…
Are we supposed to rolleyes in GD?
“Zero Tolerance” policies are a mechanism by which school adminstrators can avoid doing their jobs (which are 1)to evaluate situations and reach decisions and then 2)stand behind those decisions).
If they don’t want to have to do anything other than mechanical rote work, they should be paid minimum wage and required to wear a paper hat and a shirt with a “HI MY NAME IS ____” breast patch.
I agree with Rick. :rolleyes:
A ten-year-old bringing a gun to school to do a little (unsupervised, else the parent would bring the gun) hunting during the lunch break is exactly equivalent to bringing eating utensiles for one’s lunch.
Yeah and when the next kid brings a steak knife to school to “cut steak” and kills someone with it all you guys are going to pay the civil judgment when the parents of the dead kid sue the shit out of the school? Fine, you have a problem with the litigious nature of our society, that’s no reason to blame schools for trying to protect themselves from litigation.
Lets see…Gun=Deadly weapon, Knife=deadly weapon, yep it is the same. Would you feel different if it was a switch blade or a Rambo Survival knife? In the end it is still a knife. I presume knives are prohibited on campus.
How about the kid who was suspended for drawing a gun in school? No, literally drawing- with a pencil.
Yes, Zero Tolerance has gone too far.
No, it isn’t the same. A steak knife is not a ‘deadly weapon’. Maybe books should be banned in schools because they can be used to seriously injure or kill another student? :dubious: Anything can be used as a weapon, but a steak knife is not ‘a weapon’. It’s an eating utensil.
If you can’t see the difference between an eating utensil and a fighting knife, then you must have an interesting table.
What if the knife in question was a butter knife, would you feel differently? By your interpretation it’s still a knife, even though butter knives on the whole make terrible weapons, what with them being dull and rounded on the end. What if it was a putty knife, or an X-Acto knife? Surely you can appreciate that different knifes have different intended applications, especially since this student was also packing a steak, which makes having a steak knife not a weapon at all since there’s a clear intent for which it is to be used.
We could bring guns to school during hunting season as long as they were left in the car. Lots of students hunted before school and I never heard of any incidences from it. They were just tools, not gang weapons in our eyes.
My little brother got expelled because a similar zero tolerance policy his junior year of high school. His best friend found an old, rusted, knife-like thing in an old barn and wanted to clean it up for display later. He left it in the back of my little brother’s truck. My brother went to school, someone noticed and reported it, and the police were called. My mother is an author, speaker, and famous educator. No amount of talking could get them to back down from their zero tolerance of rusty things with no edge. He actually dropped out before the expulsion was final. He went straight into community college and then transferred to LSU. He is graduating with a 4 year degree this week but the whole thing was pointless and stupid.
Again, people can and do get convicted all the fricken time for assaulting people with steak knives. A butter knife has no point or sharp edge. If you want to have the discussion about what is a deadly weapon, fine. But this thread is about a child who violated the rules and or laws and was dealt with. Personally I wish we lived in a society where the school personnel could have simply taken the knife away and told the parents not to send the kid to school with it again. Or better yet I wish we lived in a society where kids could bring steak knives to school to cut steak. But the sad fact is that we live in a society where kids do stab and shoot and assault other kids. Sure they could do it with rocks or sticks but their is a rule about knives. The school has a rule (I am sure) about bringing knives to school. The state has a law about bringing knives on campus(I am sure) it is not up to the school to decide to ignore those laws and rules. We have a system in place to make those decisions and that system involves the cops, District attorneys and judges and juries. I wish we lived in Mayberry but we don’t.
ETA- Yeah Shag I bet Boston schools today let kids bring guns to school…not.
You are aware that the weapon of the 9/11 terrorists was an X-Acto knife, right? Surely you can appreciate that regardless of the manufacturers purpose a knife can be used for other than intended purposes. If a student had a butter knife that was pointed and had a sharpened edge, I say arrest the kid and let a jury sort it out.
It’s all about intent. She didn’t bring it to threaten anybody, she brought it to eat her lunch.
My God, man, you can stab someone with a pencil in school. Yes, knives can be weapons. Heavy library books can be weapons…shall we ban the encyclopedias?
Ban the behavior, not the tool. I can understand banning guns, since those can be dangerous if used improperly, but I think a 10-year-old knows how to cut a steak with a knife.
Oh well if it all about intent then by all means lets let a 10 year old bring uncle johns survival knife that he brought back from Vietnam in for show and tell…
Library books have a place in school. Knives do not. You can have a school without knives, you shouldn’t have one without books. Cost benefit analysis, look it up.
What about knives that are used to split hairs? First, the 9/11 terrorists used box cutters, not X-Acto knives and secondly if a knife is pointed and has a sharpened edge it’s not a butter knife.
Surely then you can appreciate that regardless of any purpose that damned near anything can be used as a weapon, but corresponding evidence (i.e. a steak, an art project, a can of putty etc) negates the idea that the purpose of the person posessing such is doing so maliciously. Without malicious intent there really can’t be a crime, and therefore as asked by the OP, Zero Tolerance has gone too far.