from the overreaction-is-our-only-reaction,-which-always-starts-off-a-chain-reaction dept
The weather’s (mostly) hot. School’s almost out. And what better way to celebrate summer being almost here than being arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for throwing water balloons.
Hail academia, forever teaching our youth that anything and everything will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, even childhood hijinks our parents would have approved of, if only they weren’t so busy being arrested themselves.
Seven teenage students in North Carolina were arrested on Thursday and charged with a misdemeanor for throwing water balloons during a school prank. A parent was also arrested during the incident.
The seven boys, all between the ages of 16 and 17, threw balloons filled with tap water as an end-of-year prank at Enloe High School in Raleigh. The balloons were rumored to be filled with “other substances,” but Wake County Public School System spokeswoman Renee McCoy said “all indications” were that only water was used.
Six of the teens were charged with disorderly conduct. The seventh was charged with assault and battery for hitting a school security officer with a balloon.
You’ve got to respect the uniform — even if that uniform is a 50/50 polyester/ugly blend. If other students, teachers and administration staff get hit, that’s a paddlin’ simple “disorderly conduct” (a.k.a., the cop’s best friend). And if you can’t respect the security guard’s uniform, you had damn well better respect the boys in blue, or you’ll get thrown to the ground for throwing water balloons.
Kevin Hines, the parent who was arrested, was just acting out of concern for a student’s wellbeing. No good deed goes unpunished, not when we’re sending cops after kids armed with water balloons.
Kevin Hines said saw Raleigh police officers acting aggressively towards a student they were arresting when he drove up to the school.
“Being lifted up by the neck and taken down hard,” Hines said.
Hines said he tried to intervene was but was told he didn’t know the whole story. Hines complied and said he wished to speak to the principal.
“You’re just trying to cause trouble. Get out,” Hines said an officer told him.
Hines said he then attempted to talk to a lieutenant but was approached by two officers and threatening with a TASER. Hines said he told the officers that wasn’t necessary.
“They arrested me on grounds of trespassing,” Hines said. “So, they put cuffs on me and carried me away.”
Swell. An unarmed parent who’s concerned that someone (NOT A COP) might get hurt is handcuffed, threatened with a taser and charged for “causing trouble,” which apparently goes on the books as “second degree trespassing.”
Another parent is “causing trouble” as well, although this might be the kind of trouble that sticks:
The mother of an Enloe High School student has filed a complaint with the Raleigh Police Department after an officer threw her son to the ground Thursday as police responded to a water balloon battle at the school.
Call me naive, but I never thought I’d ever read a sentence this incongruous in my life: “…as police responded to a water balloon battle…” Tase me. Tase me now, lord. At least it wasn’t a water pistol fight. Martial law would have been declared and the National Guard called in.
Here’s the school’s official statement on the “event.”
Renee McCoy, a representative of Wake County Public Schools, said they rely on the training of the Raleigh Police Department in these situations. “We leave those decisions up to Raleigh PD,” McCoy said.
Punt.
Seven kids with misdemeanors on their records (“released on bail” — I am not kidding) for throwing weaponized water. I’m not really sure what schools are teaching kids at this point — that every minor infraction must be dealt with swiftly and brutally? That violating school policies is a criminal offence? Whatever they’re trying to teach by jettisoning critical thinking and replacing it with zero tolerance cops on speed dial, it’s not getting through. All students are going to learn is that school administration has farmed out its disciplinary responsibilities to a variety of humorless, uniformed thugs — some private, some public — and that there really is no crime too small.
Almost too silly to even discuss.
“The seventh was charged with assault and battery for hitting a school security officer with a balloon.”
Can they call it attempted murder if the security officer doesn’t know how to swim?
What about the bubbles that little kids play with? Aren’t they instruments of terrorism too? You never know what’s going to happen when one of those things pops. Someone could get soap in their eye and drop dead on the spot.
On the last day of my senior year in high school, I brought a battery powered water gun that looked like an M16. It was a fun way to end my high school days, no one made a fuss or even thought about calling the police. Now the schools here have security guards, they operate like prisons where kids are carefully programmed with the New World Order agenda. I am glad I am not a kid in school in these sick and twisted times.
This is truly frightening. What sorts of fears are these kids going to have about workplace activities and government in general, when they leave school, attempt to earn a living and establish families of their own?
Now that these kids have had a first-hand demonstration of authority maintaining itself through brutality, what sort of behavior can we expect of them towards their spouses and children?
Is this really what we want our children to be taught? It looks to me as though any ideals we may have had of being a nation of citizens, working to live in peace and dignity have not only died, but are being buried so deeply under heaps of stupidity that it will be generations before we can find them again.
When I was a young man in school we had many activities like ‘field day’ that included water balloons. Fast forward to today where the jackboot police state thugs show up and start smashing children into the pavement over this harmless activity. The schools official response is that they will just feed these kids to the police state over some water balloons? Pure insanity, that’s what it is.
No one talks about passive resistence anymore. How about just pulling your kids out of these stockyards of education? How about an “opt out” day to show the school how you feel? Non-compliance will result in change; wringing your hands with cries of “Woe is me.” will not. I’ve done this myself, the kids would be better off watching the Discovery Channel than attending 90% of the “feel good” crap passing for education here.
I remember a friend of mine discovering that two bicycle inner tubes attached to each side of his college dorm room window made a very effective giant water balloon slingshot with super range out onto the courtyard below. I suppose that would now garner a charge of using a WMD.
This is going to backfire spectacularly. The more people in authority engage in this stupidity, the more kids lose whatever respect for authority they may have had. Cops and schools are too clueless to realize they are making laughing stocks of themselves, which is why the kids threw water balloons at the security guard in the first place. If the security guard had just laughed it off, everything would have been fine. But the reaction proved to everyone that the cops are losers who take themselves too seriously.
Staln would be so proud of his Ziocratic army, so proud indeed.
Reading this is thoroughly disgusting. Many times incidents such as this happened when I was in school. The worst that ever came of it, if it was something that was truly offensive, such as a jello fight in the cafeteria, was a paddling. Time to “End the Public School System”. I never learned much of anything useful at these mind prisons after Elementary School anyway.