Borg-like zero tolerance laws<\/a> are creating travesties of justice.<\/p>\nThe most notorious case was in Cobb County in suburban Atlanta, where sixth-grader Ashley Smith was suspended for 10 days for bringing to school a Tweety Bird wallet with a long keychain attached. The school district said the chain was a weapon and violated its zero-tolerance rule.
\n“Certainly that little girl had no harmful intent in wearing that Tweety Bird chain around her waist,” Marable said. “I think there are some gray areas we are looking at.”
\nMarable also brought up the case of a Georgia Eagle Scout who returned to school from a weekend expedition with a broken ax in his car. The ax was discovered during a random search of the car, and the boy was punished, Marable said.
\n“He had no history of an intent to do harm and yet he had been treated as if he had brought a gun onto campus,” he said. “We\u2019ve had many cases along that line.” <\/p>\n
ZT laws always remind me of the prototype law enforcement robot in the original Robocop<\/i> movie — the one that would get it into its head that you were a threat, ignore all evidence to the contrary, and machine-gun you into a bloody pulp. We need some rationality, some leeway put back into the system, and the proposed amendments to the law let school boards (in this instance) know that they have such leeway.<\/p>\n
The only thing we need to remember is the reason some of these laws got so tight-assed is (a) folks were using that leeway as an excuse not to do anything in what were clearly dangerous situations, largely because (b) unjustly accused folks were suing the asses off of school districts who acted at their discretion, while (c) cases where stuff slipped through the cracks also led to massive law suits.<\/p>\n
School districts (and others) have tended to like ZT laws (even while they hate them) because it removes the risk. Where they miss something, they can show how diligent they’ve been in so many cases. Where someone didn’t enforce a ZT law, it gives them a scape goat. Where folks were unjustly raked over the coals, they could point to the letter of the law and say they had no choice.<\/p>\n
Well, now they do, and they’ll have to take responsibility for their actions. By the same token, I desperately hope that where districts do act in good faith and with reasonable judgment, that litigation-happy idiots will not roll back what good the Georgia legislature is now trying to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The state of Georgia, miracle of miracles, is realizing that Borg-like zero tolerance laws are creating travesties of justice. The most notorious case was in Cobb County in suburban Atlanta,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3913,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/11\/a_revoltin_devl.html","url_meta":{"origin":1347,"position":0},"title":"A revoltin devleopment","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 11-Mar-03 12:05pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council has rejected a complaint from a woman, accusing Bugs Bunny of misogyny. The incident was triggered by an episode of the Bugs Bunny and Tweety...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24596,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/16\/zero-tolerance-and-ritual-impurity-continued.html","url_meta":{"origin":1347,"position":1},"title":"Zero Tolerance and Ritual Impurity, Continued","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 16-Dec-11 10:29am","format":false,"excerpt":"It's nice to see (not) that Muslim religious pedants can be just as obnoxious and unrealistically obsessed with absolutes of theological purity as the Christian variety.(Cue \"Muslims declare War on Christmas!\" headlines from Fox News.)No, Mr. Crazy Youthful Islamic Scholar, saying \"Merry Christmas\" is not worse than \"fornication or killing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1574,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/12\/08\/zero_sense_er_t.html","url_meta":{"origin":1347,"position":2},"title":"Zero sense, er, tolerance","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 8-Dec-01 12:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This is True does a good job of highlighting various abuses of \"Zero Tolerance\" policies at schools. These are policies, usually directed at (a) weapons and (b) drugs, in which...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1243,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/02\/08\/more_zero_toler.html","url_meta":{"origin":1347,"position":3},"title":"More zero-tolerance fun","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 8-Feb-02 7:38am","format":false,"excerpt":"Zero Tolerance policies -- where (in the instance of schools) being caught with anything that could be used by someone in some strange, parallel universe as a weapon, or carrying...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28134,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/05\/i-like-chicks.html","url_meta":{"origin":1347,"position":4},"title":"I like chicks!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 5-Jun-12 9:30am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll take one to go, please.Reshared post from +Steven SupinskiOMG Tweety!via:\u00a0https:\/\/imgur.com\/gallery\/KW6T5PUBLISHED by catsmob.com Google+: View post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11986,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/12\/18\/obviously_i_need_to_have.html","url_meta":{"origin":1347,"position":5},"title":"Obviously I need to have a talk with Katherine …","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 18-Dec-07 2:27pm","format":false,"excerpt":"... before she does something stupid like this ... and gets sent off to Gitmo by even more stupid people ... 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