06 February 2009

Truancy Is Now In Effect.

Here are some black teens wandering about their OWN community and minding their OWN business when the cops pull up. The children are interrogated by the officer and forced to admit that they're late for school. Then the curt officer tells the young men to get into the squad car and informs them that "truancy is now in effect." Meaning, I suppose, that they are now prisoners.

They get carted to a holding tank at some building, where they're further interrogated by social workers. One person brought in during this video is coerced to admit that he uses drugs. No doubt his life is no longer the same.

Maybe that's a good thing. For his own good, the boss-man is gonna take care of him. Forgive the racial overtones in this. I don't do it often. But just *look* at how the government is treating its own people. How the schools and the police and the judges, social workers... they're all working together to infringe on the rights of these black teens. It is racist NOT to notice that IMO.

As a free citizen of a free country, the idea that some cop who can't even pronounce the "L" in "schooL" can force my children into squad cars and take them God-knows-where is really chilling. You'd think that that would be the sort of thing you'd expect in, say, Yemen or one of those rinky-dink dictatorships in Africa.

But, no. Welcome to the new America.

3 comments:

  1. Not sure it was racial, but maybe it was.

    In our town, the same thing was happening to homeschooled kids who would walk during the middle of the day to classes at the local high school. Finally, we had a lawsuit, and the police department can no longer detain kids that way. Doesn't mean they can't ask what they're doing, but the harassment did stop.

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  2. I don't think that there's this big white conspiracy to keep the black folk down in New Orleans or anything like that.

    More that, there seems to be a separate set of rules for mostly white suburban districts than black inner-city ones. You know the cops would never pull that putting a kid into a cop car right off the bat like that in an affluent "white" district. Their butts would be so sued and they know it.

    Where are the black leaders speaking out on this story???

    Regardless of whatever problems at that school, these children should have some sort of Constitutional rights. Yes, nothing wrong with a concerned cop asking a little kid if all is well. But these are truant officers out serving warrants and harrassing citizens barely months under voting age.

    The interrogation thing I think is the worst. Total, flagrant disregard for the rights of the student.

    And the facilities. Prisoners get better. And cable tv.

    You know, if they're going to insist on public education in that area, better to have these students go to the cyberschool on a laptop (since they have trouble getting to class anyway LOL!) than to be in this mouldy, drippy room with those ratty uniforms.

    Claire, I'd make sure my kids were in a group if that harassment had been happening in my town!!

    ReplyDelete

Non-troll comments always welcome! :)

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