Student's Story About Shooting A Pet Dinosaur With A Gun Ends In Suspension, Arrest
from the due-to-administrative-actions,-this-year's-class-reunion-will-be-held-at-the dept
Another school weapons policy results in another ridiculous outcome. Dinosaurs -- pet dinosaurs -- are involved. As are lawyers, a defensive police captain and a silent set of school administrators. (h/t to Techdirt reader Violynne, who sent this in with the note "Tim's going to love this one: guns and dinosaurs!" And I do. Even though I might be the wrong Tim.)
Police were summoned to a high school after a boy wrote a story about using a gun to kill a dinosaur. The boy was searched, suspended from school, and subsequently handcuffed and arrested when he did not handle the interrogation calmly.The boy is 16, so not quite as young as that sentence makes it sound. He also suffers from a unspecified learning disorder and the "story" was written in a resource class that was supposed to aid him with that problem. Here's a few more details about the creative writing project gone stupidly wrong.
Alex Stone, 16, said he was assigned to come up with a fictional story for a creative writing assignment at Summerville High School on August 19, 2014. The brief assignment involved writing a few lines that were supposed to mimic a social media post; a “status update” drafted on paper.As is the case with most stories involving non-threats being portrayed as threats, those reading Stone's words as a threat removed the context around them. This was quite a feat, considering the teacher who expressed concern to administrators had all the context right in front of her. It's just that she stripped it away when emailing school officials.
Stone’s submission discussed himself and a fictitious dinosaur that lived next door to him. He wrote that he used a gun to kill the dinosaur.
“I killed my neighbor’s pet dinosaur, and, then, in the next status I said I bought the gun to take care of the business,” Stone said to NBC 12.
According to an incident report, a resource teacher identified as Jessica Lewis emailed Assistant Principal Preston Giet on Monday evening to tell him she discovered a reference to a gun while going over students' assignments.A "school resource officer" was summoned (which basically means a moonlighting/specially-assigned police officer was summoned). School officials then passed on the information to the rest of the police department, which arrived to question Stone, search his locker, his book bag and his person. His mother wasn't informed of this until after it happened. In addition, Stone, despite proving to be no threat, was arrested and suspended for the rest of the week.
"The email stated that the suspect had written in a classroom assignment that he had 'bought a gun to take care of business,'" the report said.
It looks like the police arrested Stone for his supposed gun threat, but the Summerville PD claims that isn't true.
"The information that is being reported is grossly incorrect in reference to what led to the juvenile being charged," said Capt. Jon Rogers in a Summerville police statement released on Thursday."The charges do not stem from anything involving a dinosaur or writing assignment, but the student's conduct."OK, then. Here's the extent of Stone's "conduct," according to the police themselves.
According to police, when Stone was asked by school officials about the comment written on the assignment, he became "very irate" and said it was a joke.It would appear that Stone was only "disturbing" school officials who seemed intent on finding some evidence of his desire to shoot people and was understandably frustrated that they wouldn't believe it wasn't some sort of threat. Whatever disturbance Stone caused was limited to a single office. There was no reason for anyone to claim, much less believe, that his written assignment, or his behavior inside that office, was "disturbing" his classmates, other classes or anyone else not directly involved.
A Summerville Police Department report states that Stone continued to be disruptive and was placed in handcuffs, and was told that he was being detained for disturbing schools.
This is the totality of the school's response to the situation.
Pat Raynor, spokeswoman for Dorchester District 2, said on Thursday she could not comment on the circumstances surrounding the incident on the advice of the school district's attorney.Good advice, considering the situation has now expanded to include the media and Stone's lawyer, who plans to challenge both the suspension and the legality of the school and police department's actions.
More commentary was provided by Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, who trains school administrators in emergency preparedness.
"There is a point for discretion in the consequences for what you find in your investigation," Trump said. "That's when you have to factor in age and developmental issues and the context in which the comment or threat was made."Discretion is the better part of
"Comments that were made by children a couple decades ago pre-Columbine, pre 9/11, pre-Sandy Hook would never rise to a suspension expulsion or prosecution," he said. "Parents see this as criminalizing the behavior but the other side of it is security and school officials can't afford to make one mistake and have a credible plot slip through the cracks that leave people killed."Better safe than sorry, no matter how many non-threatening students you have to suspend and/or arrest. And if these students aren't thrilled with being searched and interrogated over written words deliberately robbed of context, you can just toss them to local law enforcement and let them flip through the law books until they find a charge that can be beaten to fit and painted to match.
Once again, I'm not saying even questionable incidents like these shouldn't be investigated. But the end result of the investigation shouldn't be a suspension or an arrest when nothing incriminating turns up. And there's certainly no excuse for not contacting parents when something like this happens. Deliberately excluding them is not only dishonest, but it's cowardly. It gives the appearance that the school would rather steamroll students than allow another possibly adversarial viewpoint into the "discussion."
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Filed Under: alex stone, dinosaurs, guns, stories, students, zero tolerance
Companies: summerville high school
Reader Comments
The First Word
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Guilty as charged
Much akin to last week's "... outright challenges to my authority."
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Re: Guilty as charged
the true crime though is thought crime: thinking you cat fantasize freely while being a child.
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Re: Guilty as charged
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It's just too easy for administration to manipulate him and get him to say something that will result in a suspension.
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Re: Guilty as charged
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Re: Guilty as charged
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"GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR, ASSHOLE! YOU'RE UNDER ARREST FOR SHOOTING A DINOSAUR!"
***
Wrong Tim? I would think both Tims would enjoy it. ;)
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"(kick) OPEN THE DOOR, GET ON THE FLOOR, SOMEBODY SHOT THE DINOSAUR!"
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I am so glad...
Sheesh, I remember when I was 7, someone had a knife in the park and ran with it, the lifeguards (swimming pool was connected to the park) simply took it away and contacted the kid's parents.
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Re: I am so glad...
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Re: I am so glad...
Cleaning them up in shop class before the hunting season was an annual event.
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Re: Re: I am so glad...
I'm curious if a kid bringing a circular saw to school for use in shop (or for a drama-department set-building project) would cause the same kind of panic.
Because, you know, children are always only one step away from turning into savage rampage killers.
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(In all seriousness I'd ask the cops if they made sure the dinosaur wasn't actually threatening and the kid did a public service. In my most serious tone.)
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Does that make me a bad person?
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Re: verry funny news
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Instead they will annoy parents, and end up with teachers killed, when some parent takes violent exception to their child being branded a criminal.
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Reply with:
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
John Hammond: Don't worry, I'm not making the same mistakes again.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: No, you're making all new ones.
because that is something even a small-brained dinosaur can understand.
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If you lack the education this child is now being denied.
He wrote a story.
A teacher, under stupid pressure to find threats everywhere, reported the magic words.
Without bothering to look at the context, you snatched a child out of class and I am SURE that officer was properly trained to handle a child with different needs.
When placed under stress (asshole with a gun yelling at me trying to find out when I'm gonna shoot up the school) a CHILD might act out because you refuse to accept the situation isn't want you want it to be.
Zero Intelligence are what these policies lead to.
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Further, a lot of children with special needs get upset and angry when their routine is disturbed, especially if they have no warning.
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Also, please note that there is precious little difference between "police" and "policies".
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Of course they see it as "criminalizing the behavior". You HAVE criminalized it. You used to not prosecute something, and now you do. What else would you call it?
And if you think this was a "credible plot", you shouldn't be anywhere near children.
Also. He was arrested by armed officers who had deluded themselves into thinking that he might be planning to shoot up the school. Under those circumstances, that arrest might actually be quite dangerous for the student. If he had some sort of bulge under his clothing and had reached for it, this may very well have been a situation where the officials "make one mistake" that "leaves people killed".
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[pedantic]
Almost got it there.
"leaves people killed"
is suitable passive voice
officials "make one mistake"
horribly active, blaming those perfect administrators and police officers. -- Try this:
"mistakes were made"
make no mention of who might have made them.
you now have adequate passive voice.
[/pedantic]
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I mean, come on…
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Isn't this the very definition...
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Re: Isn't this the very definition...
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Re: Isn't this the very definition...
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Re: Isn't this the very definition...
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Well, duh...
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Methinks sending in officers to search a boy's possessions and person for possible weapons and pulling him out of class to interrogate him, then arresting him and suspending him based on nothing more than a writing assignment involving a gun and an extinct animal is just a wee bit more disruptive than being angry at being falsely accused of threatening to shoot up a school based on absolutely no credible evidence.
So of course, the teacher who pulled the magic three-letter-word out of context, the school officials who called in the cops, and the cops who ordered and executed the search were all arrested on similar charges, right...? RIGHT?!?! /sarc
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Back in my day...
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What's next?
And is it my imagination or did this Jessica Lewis intentionally misrepresent to her higher-ups what had actually happened? What could possibly have been her motive?
Lastly, isn't holding and interrogating a minor without notifying the parents/guardians a violation of the minor's Sixth Amendment right to counsel?
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Re: What's next?
That's how it looks to me. There's plenty of blame that should be placed on the cop and the school, but with the information at hand, it looks like what the teacher did deserves the most criticism.
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It's just possible the teacher couldn't be bothered to read the entire thing; saw 'G-U-N', once or twice, and decided to turn it over without thinking to add needed context. Then, just to add insult to injury, after having notified staff, she went back over the paper, and discovered that she was wrong. But by then it was too late to retract her warning, and things went down hill from there.
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Re: What's next?
Challenging A Sound of Thunder, of course.
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Time to shutdown that school and P.D.
All school officials involved as well as the police department officials, hell add in the local school board, should all be imprisoned for false arrest, making false police reports, and all around ass-hattery.
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Tough little sucker that killed a dino -- cops should be afraid
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Worst First Thinking
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2014/08/23/the-zebra-of-worst-first-thinking/
I think this describes a trend, one that will eventual carry us all to the bottom, if we do not find a way to mitigate this paranoiac thinking.
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Parody SONG (as in art) when I was in elementry school
Deck the halls with gasoline
fla la la la la, la la la la
Strike a match an watch it glean
fla la la la la, la la la la
Watch the school burn down to ashes
fla la la, la la la, la la la
Arnt' you glad we play with matches
fla la la la la, la, la, la, la
Joy to the world, the school burnt down
and all, the teachers, died
We're looking for the principal
he's hanging from the flag pole
With a noose around his neck
With a noose around his neck
With a noo-oose, a noose, around, his, neck
Hold on a minute, someone banging on my door something about a terrorist threat and religion in school.
$#l7$&*#g
Carrier lost
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Reverse Zero Tolerance
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No Leaders
Zero Tolerance isn't a recipe for corruption or abuse as much as it is a recipe for substituting thoughtful analysis and prudent judgement with thoughtless incompetence and zealous policy enforcement for legal reasons. Once the teacher read the word "gun" it was all over for this 16 year old. Who needs context when policy can be mindless followed, especially if you could be sued if you don't? Who wants to take that chance?
The costs of being a leader is too high.
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Re: No Leaders
The solution to solve those issues? Write broad rules, and apply them without mercy. Mercy is the first step to a lawsuit. It's better to argue a "them's the rules" standpoint than a "sorry you child was killed / maimed / hurt by the student we didn't control".
The US has serious issues with lawsuits, and it's diminishing anyone's interest in being a leader or trying to apply context to rules. Don't blame the schools, blame the legal system that got them there.
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Re: Re: No Leaders
*Gasp* I, well, completely agree. Hold on, I need to reflect on the fact that this is the first thing I've seen you write that I've agreed with. I even had to check your profile to make sure it was the same person.
There's a simple solution to this; the same thing we do in the military. If a student does something that you believe is bad behavior, write it down in their student record and talk to them about it (assuming it's minor). If more things happen, and that record starts getting full of infractions, then consider more severe action.
Also, the parents MUST be involved in every step...it is unacceptable for a school to decide this stuff on their own (I would immediately disenroll my child from any school that showed illegal behavior...that is not something I want my daughter to be exposed to).
The "lawsuit mentality" is destroying people for stupid, illogical reasons.
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Re: No Leaders
Also known as "corruption and abuse".
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How things have changed...
I explained that I was just trying to think of the most outrageous thing I could imagine. It was fiction, so I thought I'd just run with it. What's the harm? It was set during winter break. Nobody would be there, I figured, so nobody would get hurt.
Today, that would have gotten me locked up in solitary and interrogated as a terrorist just waiting for his chance to shine. I'd probably be in juvenile prison until I was old enough to be sent to Git-Mo.
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Dinosaurs are endangered, the kid got off easy!
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The teacher should be held responsible also
So if a student is told to be creative and writes a story, and if the teacher who assigned the story turns him in for being "dangerous", then the teacher needs to be held responsible: either tell kids not to write any stories about using guns or better yet, don't take a sentence out of context for a paper that you yourself assigned!!
And what will happen to the teacher in this case? Will she get in trouble for encouraging kids to write about guns (even if it's used to kill a dinosaur)? Or will she be called a hero for stopping a dangerous student?
Either way, she did a good job as a teacher: she taught kids that creative writing assignments will be treated like death threats and they'll get arrested by the police for said assignments.
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