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DAVID FRAZIER Boise Guardian |
When a second grade student at a Middleton elementary school noticed “a gun” in the backpack of a fellow 7 or 8-year-old second grader, he did the right thing and told his teacher.
The teacher did the right thing and notified school officials. From that point it got weird according to a report in the DAILY PAPER. For better or worse–remember, we are talking 7-year-old kid with a toy gun zipped away in his backpack–school officials called the Canyon County sheriff.
In a normal society untainted by school shootings, cops killing 12-year-old kids on video, big kids scaring cops so bad they blow away the kid resulting in riots, a copper would be sent to visit the classroom.
We are no longer a normal society. Canyon’s Sheriff responded with 18 coppers, several nearby schools were “locked down,” and the poor little 7-year-old was immediately suspended from school. We don’t know the words used by the teacher, the administration, or the dispatcher, but such an over reaction is bound to make future witnesses “gun shy” about reporting potential misbehavior.
A seasoned teacher would have simply picked up the child’s backpack and in a worse case scenario, called the boy’s mother. The sheriff says the kid did not display the toy gun (with red cap on the barrel), didn’t threaten, didn’t point it at anyone.
There is the usual “continuing investigation,” but we suspect somewhere after the well intended notification by the second grade student and confiscation of the toy, the report escalated to, “Gun in a classroom> call police> unknown weapon at school> send back up> lock down schools just in case> suspended for no tolerance.”
Everyone needs to calm down and COMMUNICATE. Everyday folks on cell phones race to call 911 to report car crashes. Police get so many calls with reports in the “east lane, west lane, just before and just after milepost 54,” that the dispatcher sends fire trucks, ambulance, and police fearing multiple crashes and injuries.
Today’s computer dispatching and truncated lingo can have tragic results when responding officers are sent to “man with a gun” calls instead of “caller thinks there is a boy with a fake gun.” A 12-year-old kid was killed by Cleveland coppers who made a hasty response, driving within 8 feet of the youth across the grass in a small park.
