Singing the Sky

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I like where I work. I like the people. Except for constantly seeing Older Son’s probation officer, who stares at me like a damn idiot and says nothing. After this incident with Older Son, where I was suddenly put face to face with our legal system, I am finding it difficult to remain objective and just “do my job”.

Photo from Citizens Trade Campaign, a worthy site, in my opinion.

Case in point: Today, the same officer who had cuffed Older Son and taken him to the courthouse to get locked up pulled a kiddo out of my class for a field sobriety test. Apparently, one of the paras had thought that he was “on something”. Kiddo just got off of three years probation yesterday. When he returned to my class, having passed the test, he was shaking, and he said he felt sick to his stomach. He asked to go to the bathroom. I asked if the officer had told him he would be drug tested later in the day. Kiddo said yes.

Here’s the thing. I let the kid go to the bathroom. If he had drugs on him (I really hope he wouldn’t be that stupid, but you never know) he flushed them. I knew this could happen. I also knew that he could get rid of the “old piss” and drink a bunch of water, thus diluting the results of any drug test that may have occurred.

How in the hell can people randomly drug test a seventeen year old who is no longer on probation? They didn’t come to do the test, which makes me think the officer was talking junk to get Kiddo to admit to something. The idea of cops lying to kids to get confessions, information, etc., makes me sick. I mean, this is not a terrorist cell we are trying to find here…

I had this thought: If we teach kids early on that they have no civil liberties, then as adults, they may hate the police, but they may not know their rights. If they did, would so many be locked up? We are in the top three insofar as incarceration goes….U.S., China, Russia.

Another thing. Kiddo was not staggering, sleeping or engaging in any unusual behavior. He was not being disruptive in any way. Shoot, if I had to sit in the program I teach at all day, I would want to be on a mood-altering drug. Oh wait. I am. I think Xanax qualifies. I am a legal addict. I do not abuse it, but I am addicted. In my opinion, it is more dangerous than weed, at any rate. I would rather see a kid smoke weed now and then than being addicted to benzos like I am. Not that either is desireable, mind you.

Here is a horrible example of just how far our system has gone awry.

4-Year-Old Accused of Improperly Touching Teacher

BELLMEAD- A four-year-old hugged his teachers aide and was put into in-school suspension, according to the father. But La Vega school administrators have a different story.

Damarcus Blackwell’s four-year-old son was lining-up to get on the bus after school last month, when he was accused of rubbing his face in the chest of a female employee.

The prinicipal of La Vega Primary School sent a letter to the Blackwells that said the pre-kindergartener demonstrated “inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment.”

Here is the story.

As a friend of mine said, have we lost our damn minds??? Now we are putting four-year-olds into the system. I am sick and tired of kids being locked up or penalized in other ways over stupid stuff. (I am not including my son’s drug use in the stupid stuff category, by the way. What he did was wrong–I just don’t think that they should lock kids up over that sort of thing.)

In our district, a kid can get in a fight, which presumably hurts the opposing party, and go to in-school suspension for three days. A kid who gets caught with one of mommy’s anti-depressants gets an entire year in my program. Are we saying that violence is more acceptable than drug use? I am not seeing kids with meth or crack here. We are talking about benzos and marijuana. In our country, a drug user/seller can get more time than a murderer. That is so messed up. And the media marches on, condoning all of it.

This is the most in-my-face ongoing loss-of-civil liberty examples that I have ever experienced. It is especially hard to take, being a cog in this system. I don’t like the direction we are heading, which in my opinion, is a POLICE STATE.

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