Disability rights advocates said kids like Ty should not be getting arrested under Tennessee’s school threats law. And they tried to push for a broader exception for kids with other kinds of disabilities. It didn’t work.
“we’re trying to stop the people who should know better from doing this, and if they do it, they should have more than a slap on the wrist.”
They’re 13 years old ffs, they can’t be expected to not say stupid things.
“I don’t know whose level of trauma is going to be the greatest: the kids in the classroom wondering if there’s an active shooter roaming their halls or a kid that didn’t know better and says something like that and gets arrested,
Or the trauma of the kids who saw a classmate arrested for having a bunny plushie in his bag.
In the first six weeks of the school year, 18 kids were arrested for making threats of mass violence.
Sweet Jesus! What the fuck are you doing Tennessee?? This is madness!
Better not say you’re going to beat everyone at the sack race in P.E. class, Billy. That’s a threat of mass violence.
I remember going to a daycare center where not only were toy guns not allowed to be brought, not even for action figures, you couldn’t pick up a stick and use it as a gun and they would even put you in time out for a finger gun.
We have threat assessments at our elementary school but we go through MANY channels before police are involved.
Like, is the threat credible?
Is anyone fearful?
Does the child have the means? Is there motive?
Someone making a comment that says “because they’ll blow up” would be a freaking conversation about school appropriate language not arrest and suspensions, for ANYBODY but especially kids with documented disabilities.
Reporting it makes sense. Investigating if the threat was credible makes sense. If it is credible, a felony then makes sense. But if it isn’t, a fine or misdemeanor is enough. Because I do agree that there should be some consequences to discourage how casually death threats and the like are thrown out these days.
But the idea that no tolerance rules that turn kids having outbursts (disability or not) into felons makes anyone safer is laughable. Making troubled kids unnecessarily lives harder is more likely to create more danger than prevent it.
They’re 13 years old ffs, they can’t be expected to not say stupid things.
Or the trauma of the kids who saw a classmate arrested for having a bunny plushie in his bag.
Sweet Jesus! What the fuck are you doing Tennessee?? This is madness!
Better not say you’re going to beat everyone at the sack race in P.E. class, Billy. That’s a threat of mass violence.
I remember going to a daycare center where not only were toy guns not allowed to be brought, not even for action figures, you couldn’t pick up a stick and use it as a gun and they would even put you in time out for a finger gun.
This is far stupider than that.
teaching respect for firearms at a young age is not stupid in the hellscape of a nation you live in.
We have threat assessments at our elementary school but we go through MANY channels before police are involved. Like, is the threat credible? Is anyone fearful? Does the child have the means? Is there motive? Someone making a comment that says “because they’ll blow up” would be a freaking conversation about school appropriate language not arrest and suspensions, for ANYBODY but especially kids with documented disabilities.
Reporting it makes sense. Investigating if the threat was credible makes sense. If it is credible, a felony then makes sense. But if it isn’t, a fine or misdemeanor is enough. Because I do agree that there should be some consequences to discourage how casually death threats and the like are thrown out these days.
But the idea that no tolerance rules that turn kids having outbursts (disability or not) into felons makes anyone safer is laughable. Making troubled kids unnecessarily lives harder is more likely to create more danger than prevent it.