Do people get convicted all the time for eating at Outback?
The kid I mentioned who stabbed another with a fork - should the cops have ignored that mess because it was just a fork?
You are focusing on things and not on behavior, and in this you are making the same mistakes as the zero-tolerance idiots. Now, I know you’re not an idiot, so I wonder why you continue with this unproductive line of argument.
Few people would argue against a rule against knives in school in general - but in a sane world, this case would have been handled by the knife being confiscated and the girl being given a warning. The penalty here was too harsh - and too harsh penalties diminish respect for and obedience to the law.
Statutory Rape, no malicious intent needed. There are others. For example a law that makes it a crime to bring a knife on to school grounds. No malicious intent needed. I am sure there are procedures for getting permission for school related activities.
BTW your hair splitting was more pathetic than funny…
I rarely talk to you but in this case I will agree with this. The difference is we don’t live in a sane world. Yes, the penalty was too harsh. But the society we live in requires it. Like I said we don’t live in Mayberry no matter how much you wish we did.
Well you win some and you lose some. They can’t all be good, my writers are on strike.
Statutory rape does include malicious intent unless someone claims that they slipped on an icy sidewalk and whoops, stuck their dick into someone they knew was underage, since one of the definitions of the word is "intent to commit an unlawful act or cause harm without legal justification or excuse ".
Holy shit, askeptic, you are serious? I thought your first couple of posts were written in sarcasm mode!
And I’m agreeing with Mr. Moto? Geez, I need to go lay down…
Yeah. Outlaw stabbing people, not knives. Should a kid who stabs with a fork or a popsicle stick NOT be charged because he didn’t do it with a knife?
1- it is not illegal to posses a steak knife at outback.
2-If they attack another patron with the knife they will get arrested.
3-I thought a law and order conservative would understand this concept(not really)
That’s exactly what I am saying… :rolleyes:
No I am not. The law says no knives on campus. Just because this is Little Miss Whitebread Susie and not Jamal Gangbanger I don’t believe in giving her a pass. The law applies to everybody.
Askeptic, and I’m not saying this to be “intimidtaing or sound scary”, but I’m sitting at a desk. I count at least seven items within arm’s reach with which I can kill you in under a minute, several of which would deal mortal wounds with one good blow, plus additoinal ones I can fashion into a shiv in about a minute. Anyone can do the same thing. A twelve-year old could probably shiv me in a heartbeat if he really wanted to take me down.
Weapons and potential weapons are everywhere, and if you really want to kill someone, you can. The trick is to create an environment where such actions are inconceivable to students and to have alert, watchful staff who pay attention to potential problems, social as well as physical.
Nobody can really prevent it. Frankly, if kids want to bring guns to school provided they let their teachers know and leave them locked in a car. If they want to bring steak knives, big furry deal. The worst I’d demand is that they leave them with the cafeteria lunch-ladies except at meal times.
Boom. All that needs to me said. Kid goes and shoots up campus, an English essay from seven years ago is trotted out as a warning sign along with cries of, “Why didn’t the school act?” Kid breaks a law, school does what is legally required of it, cries of “How dare the school act!”
As the school spokesman said, “Anytime there’s a weapon on campus, yes, we have to report it and we aggressively report it because we don’t want to take any chances, regardless.” School didn’t arrest anyone. How, exactly does that jibe with
when the administrators have nothing to do with the making or enforcing the law?
It requires no malicious intent to stick you dick in some one. If they turn out to be under age even if you carded them and they showed you a fake ID and you asked their parents for a birth certificate and they showed you a fake one and twenty nuns and priests swear on the bible that she is eighteen and the doctor that delivered her files an affidavit with the court that she is eighteen and gives you a certified copy, you will still be guilty of statutory rape if you have sex with her. And if she is fourteen or younger you will be guilty of child molesting regardless of your intent or how old she said she was or even if she had a disease that made her look 50.
Under the circumstances, the school authorities did what they were supposed to do, so they acted “appropriately.” The problem is, the rules are idiotic. Zero tolerance allows no room for common sense or reasonable action. Of course having a sharp knife at school is dangerous. Even if the young girl didn’t mean to use it for anything other than cutting a steak, somebody else could have taken it and used it as a weapon. That’s true. However, a sensible policy would have had a teacher or other supervisor take the knife from her, call an available parent or guardian and ask them to come get the knife from the office. They could have then told the parent and child that bringing a knife to school was unacceptable and if it happened again the knife would be taken and not returned. If there was a continuing problem it would be dealt with by the principal and parents outside of class.
Having a 10 year old child arrested for this is a waste of time and money and an excellent example of why the litigious society is out of control.
And Askeptic, you really need to get a different perspective. :rolleyes:
I wish you people would stop doing the rolleyes in GD. I agree with all you say, but I also realize that there is a law that says no knives on campus. You want to try to draft a more effective law that will still accomplish the goals fine. But as it stands the teachers do not have the leeway. The law says no knives. Period. Sure some people live in communities where kids really want to just cut a steak. Others live in gangland warzones. The legislature has to write laws that apply to all of them. Fix that then roll your fricken eyes.
Alright, I’ll concede this point. Now back to the OP. In your last post regarding the real topic at hand you said
Why not give Ms. Susie a pass, since the law she’s supposedly violating is acting much like a tuna net snagging a dolphin, which I believe is the idea behind **Johnny LA’s ** OP. Jamal Gangbanger at school with a weapon is exactly the type of case that these laws were enacted to cover, not kids innocently eating what amounts to an inappropriate lunch. Do I agree that the knife should have been confiscated and the parents called or as someone else suggested left in the care of a lunch lady so that it’s use is properly supervised? Sure, I have no problem with that at all, after all there are rules. Do I have a problem with her being sent down to the county lockup because she was having leftovers for lunch? Absolutely.
Why does it HAVE to? Why can’t it bow out and allow local people to run their schools? How could a central legislature possibly write a law that fairly applies to people in rural Wyoming and people in South Central Los Angeles?
What law? The “zero tolerance” policies we have here are written by the school district, not the legislature. Steak knives are still legal, even their possession by minors.
'Sides, you’re dodging the question. The question isn’t, “Should this school have enforced the law (or even, their policy)?”. The question is, “Has Zero Tolerance gone too far?” Law or policy, is it of the good? Or is Zero Tolerance a load of horseshit?
That’s what we’re saying here. The law is wrong. I may not sentence blame their idiocy, but their enforcement is moronic. The entire Zero Tolerance policy is moronic, and at best alienates the students from the teachers by creating an adversarial, prison-like environment which constantly tells young adults that they are too pathetic or helpless to do anything, that they aren’t allowed to even cut their food with anything more dangerous than a plastic spork, and that common sense is meaningless in the face or random rules assigned by someone somewhere for some reason.
Because we are supposed to be a nation of laws, not men. Let the courts work it out. Besides I bet little susie didn’t spend a single minute in lock-up. I bet the school called her parents and had them come get her. If the cops cited her I bet it was because of the fact that the law says no knives on campus. The law is the law if you think it is stupid change the law. All I am saying is the administrators are doing what the law requires. If they didn’t all the little nice white girls would get a pass and all the brown kids would go to jail. That is not fair either.
Hey, GD isn’t my usual playground and so I don’t know if finding additional cites for the story provided by the OP is considered gauche, but according to this link the girl was taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center, which I’m going to guess doesn’t administer the Iowa Basic tests. This story states that it’s not a law, but a school policy that the girl was in violation of, and that she’s facing felony weapons charges in connection with eating her lunch. This has nothing to do with being a nation of laws, or little brown kids or any of those other strawmen. This has to do with administrative lunacy and the castigation of a child for eating lunch.
