Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/10/police-called-to-school-over-s.html
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This is critical, what kind of juice?
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This is pretty typical. Some administrator gets it in their head that they have to follow policy to the letter and they don’t stop to consider if the case even meets the criteria for the policy to begin with. See also: finger guns and related improvisations.
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“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” What is the sentence these days for swiping a juice box? Does detention still exist?
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“While you’re here, can you do something about the schoolyard bully?”
“Nah, boys will be boys.”
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Has juice box been reached for comment?
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Heartbreaking.
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In a just world, the cop would come down to the school, give the kids a bit of a speech about theft and why it is bad to the class, and talk to them about what police officers do; without arresting anyone or going along with the school’s shoddy police work to identify the “thief”.
In a slightly less just world, the cop would then go to the office and arrest the principal on principle for wasting police resources, making sure to bang their head on their desk when they are taking them down. Nothing serious, and charges not filed- just a ride downtown and a discussion regarding what constitutes an emergency at the next school board meeting.
In our world, I wonder if they arrested the kid? 
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The main thing I learned from watching Antman was that this kid didn’t “rob” anybody of anything, unless I’m drastically misunderstanding… He committed larceny, or burglary at worst. “Robbery” implies a threat of violence (i.e. a robber took your wallet and watch off of you, a thief took your jewels from your home while you were out). C’mon!
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The Beatles knew the difference…
And so I quit the police department
And got myself a steady job
And though she tried her best to help me
She could steal, but she could not rob
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I really wish someone would create a good chart for a formula calculating the age & $-amount scale for when the police should get involved, and what level of response is appropriate.
For similar adult situations, a scale for age and grand-parental status, or the ability to be self-mobile would be handy. It’s just weird how so many headlines holler about “grand-mother/father arrested” but there’s no mention of if they were 40 or 80, and why that’s important in the first place.
All that aside, yeah, this was a stupid situation. I was more confused why State Police were called, rather than City/County.
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The newscaster has a look on her face like this is cute. It isn’t cute. It’s disgusting to terrify little kids and get them on that school to prison pipeline.
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The real issue here: Why wasn’t it free to begin with?
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In some circumstances it might be a capital offense subject to immediate execution. Sometimes it is just a matter of melanin levels.
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What are you, some kind of communist?
For real though, for some reason this school isn’t taking advantage of the Community Eligibility Provision and providing free lunch to all students (Their 51% identified low income population more than qualifies). But let’s assume the student gets free lunch anyway, the issue was probably that they took it without asking or at an inappropriate time.
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Having a youngster myself I believe that the “zero tolerance” rule shouldn’t be “zero thinking”. Zero tolerance is just an easy way for school staff to not get involved and risk dealing with ignorant/stupid/litigious parents. I think the rule should be: Every incident is looked into, but if punishment is warranted it is proportional to “crime”, if this can even be called that.
But FFS, this particular juice box situation is ridiculous. The police should have said “yeah, it’ll cost is more in petrol than the cost of the juice box, we’ll send you the 80¢, don’t bother us with this trivial BS again. Just operate under the assumption that the kid who took the beverage comes from a family that goes hungry and you’ll feel better about giving it to them.”
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