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December 6, 2007
Zero tolerance or zero common sense?BoardBuzz is, yet again, befuddled. CNN reports that police have arrested Wisconsin high school teacher, James Buss, for allegedly posting an anonymous comment on a blog “praising the Columbine [High School] shooters.” A fellow teacher apparently thought this meant that blogger was going to pull a Tony Montana (BoardBuzz loves the Al Pacino) and ask the faculty to “say hello to my little friend.” BoardBuzz hates to criticize, and would never dream of joking about violence in schools, since everyone's top priority is the safety of our students, but it now seems the police may have acted a little hastily, because the county prosecutor is still trying to decide “whether to charge Buss with disorderly conduct and unlawful use of computerized communication systems.”
Disorderly conduct? Unlawful computer use? You mean to tell us the police determined the blogger didn’t pose a real possibility of a viable danger when the blogger praised the Columbine shooters? And, they arrested him anyway? What?!! Could it be (as CNN reports) the blogger may just have been engaging in a “sarcastic attempt to discredit critics of education spending?”
Now, BoardBuzz is no lover of weapons in schools (unless they’re being held by School Resource Officers that know how to use them) but, it does seem to us that some times using the old noggin to do some critical thinking is a good thing. And, that holds especially true for controversial areas that are prone to knee-jerkism. Let’s examine the present case as reported by CNN:
The [blogger’s] comment, left under the name "Observer," came during a discussion over teacher salaries, after some writers complained teachers were underworked and overpaid. [The blogger], “a former president of the teacher's union, allegedly wrote that teacher salaries made him sick because they are lazy and work only five hours a day. He praised the teen gunmen who killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide in the April 1999 attack at Columbine High School.And, he closed with the coup de grâce,
They knew how to deal with the overpaid teacher union thugs. One shot at a time!
CNN reports that the folks over at the ACLU think this posting is about “somebody who is trying to mock the conservative view of teacher salaries." You mean this is about arresting someone for political satire? No, says the police chief, because some people were scared and he says, besides sometimes you just can’t say things. And, to prove his point he expounded on his understanding of the First Amendment, saying "What happens when you say 'bomb' in an airport? That's free speech, isn't it?" he said. "And people are taken into custody for that all the time."
Well, no. Yes? Maybe. Who knows? (BoardBuzz is no TSA minion). What CNN reports is that a prosecutor is now thinking about charging someone with a relatively minor nuisance violation instead of with the substantial charge for which he was arrested. Apparently, the police believed the blogger posed a viable threat to the safety of others when they arrested him. Does he no longer pose such a threat? Does a review of the facts indicate he never posed such a threat? Is that the reason for the lessening of the charges? BoardBuzz doesn’t know. We’re just asking questions. And we simply wonder whether a better approach might not be to actually look at the totality of the facts and make a determination on the ground about whether someone actually poses a threat and intends to carry out harmful acts. If that’s the case, then law enforcement should move forward deliberatively to prevent harm. But, acting simply as a reaction to someone’s fear without more intent poses lots of difficulties both for law enforcement, the accused, and the public’s safety. Ultimately unfounded knee-jerk reactions could dilute support for the real efforts necessary to combat public violence of this kind.
Posted December 6, 2007 9:37 AM | Teachers
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Comments(1)
Posted by: P-W parent on December 10, 2007 9:43 PM
Thank you for raising this issue. Children say and do dumb things, partly because their brains are not fully formed and partly because they do not have adult problem-solving abilities. Applying laws made for adults (terroristic threats laws) to children is ignorant and will only lead to distrust and alienation of the community. Harsh punishment only teaches children to be intolerant.
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