You guessed it.
It's rant time.
The back story first.
Knife At Lunch Gets 10-Year-Old Girl Arrested At School
OCALA, Fla. -- A 10-year old Ocala girl brought her lunch to school and a small kitchen knife to cut it. She now faces a felony charge after being arrested. The school and the sheriff's office disagree on the reason for the arrest.
School officials say the 5th grader was brown-bagging it. She brought a piece of steak for her lunch, but she also brought a steak knife. That's when deputies were called.
It happened in the cafeteria at Sunrise Elementary School. The 10-year-old used the knife to cut the meat.
"She did not use it inappropriately. She did not threaten anyone with it. She didn't pull it out and brandish it. Nothing of that nature," explained Marion County School Spokesman Kevin Christian.
I can imagine it looked a LOT like THIS (click here if you subscribe via email):
Zero Tolerance policies are an excuse for school administrations to be lazy. Zero Tolerance is an excuse for school administrations not to have to think. It requires no thought process, no looking into a situation, no BRAINS, to sit and cry "Zero Tolerance Violation."
NAIL clippers fall under Zero Tolerance policies. Drawing pictures of guns can get you suspended under Zero Tolerance.
This little girl was TEN YEARS OLD and just trying to eat her lunch. She was ARRESTED, at the age of TEN YEARS OLD, for trying to eat her lunch. Now, I can understand her being arrested had she been brandishing the knife in a threatening way, eyes glazed over, and holding people at bay threatening to cut them if they did whatever. SHE WAS EATING HER LUNCH AND WAS ARRESTED FOR IT. And they're talking about charging her with a felony for it?
The question I have to ask is if the steak felt overly threatened in any way? WAS there also a felonious use of A-1 sauce as well? Perhaps maybe just a misdemeanor offense of using Heinz 57 instead.
Ten years old and looking at a felony charge JUST because she was trying to eat her lunch.
This is INVERTED. We have reached a point where common sense has gone out the window. THINKING is becoming a lost art and a lost practice. School administrations have taken the lazy route of REFUSAL to think, to contemplate, to investigate, when situations such as this arise. When a LITTLE GIRL can't brown bag her lunch and eat it at lunch time with her little friends without being carted off by sheriff's deputies, we have lost touch with reality in our school systems. WE CAN NOT continue to go down this road where little girls are arrested for doing nothing more hazardous than eating their lunches.
I can hear the nay-sayers now, "Oh, but, you don't under STAND. She brought a WEAPON to school." Let me tell you that a pencil can be just as much a lethal weapon as a knife. I personally know more than a couple of ways to kill a person using nothing more than a wooden number 2 pencil like you'll find in any school in this country. What makes a pencil a weapon? Intent. What makes a steak knife a weapon? Intent. I would dare say that the only thing being THREATENED was the piece of steak that this child was trying to eat for her lunch.
I want to hear from you, America. I want those of you who feel like I do about this to leave your comments. I want those of you who read this site regularly to pass this around to everyone you know. Email it to people. Spread the word. At the end of this week I would LOVE to have a SIGNIFICANT number of comments supporting this child so that I can forward this piece to the Ocala school district demanding that this stupidity be dropped. I want us all to begin taking a stand RIGHT NOW that this "Zero Tolerance" mentality be scrapped in favor of the use of REASON in our school systems.
Zero Tolerance equals Zero Thought Process.
Enough is enough. Arresting a little girl for eating her lunch is one toke over the line.
Once and Always, an American Fighting Man
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