Just When You Are Convinced There Is No Common Sense...

[MountainDon]

... along comes this.

Brief background.

An area High School student was suspended for having what turned out to be a cardboard fake gun in school. SWAT team was called, school locked down, students herded outside for hours.... the usual 9 yards.

Okay, I first thought, what a numbskull bringing something lie that to school.

Now for the sunshiny part...  There's more to the story...

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE-TV13) - The La Cueva High School student whose walk with cardboard gun locked down the school wasn't the only one who used poor judgment, a district court judge ruled today in overturning the student's suspension.

Late this afternoon District Court Judge Linda Vanzi ordered the three-day suspension of La Cueva senior Luke Schiffer stricken from his permanent record.  She also ruled he could participate in graduation ceremonies with his class.

Vanzi also described the massive police and SWAT team response and the five-hour lockdown of the school as an overreaction.

On Monday a school security officer monitoring a surveillance camera saw Schiffer walking down a hallway with what appeared to be handgun.  School officials agreed with that assessment, and police responded in force.

Schiffer, 17, was eventually caught and arrested by the SWAT team.  He was suspended from school and charged with tampering with evidence, a felony, and interfering with the educational process, a misdemeanor.

This afternoon's hearing was requested by Schiffer's attorney and focused only on the in-school punishment, not the criminal charges.

Attorneys for the school district argued Schiffer could still graduate, he just couldn't walk in the actual ceremony.  Schiffer's attorneys argued the punishment was way off.

Schiffer told police he found the cardboard cutout in an English classroom.  Today Schiffer's English teacher confirmed students in another one of her classes made the cardboard gun for modern interpretation of a scene from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Steve Scholl, Schiffer's attorney, said in court that Schiffer found the cutout, played with it out in the open in plain view of fellow students and a teacher who didn't seem to think it was a big deal.  Schiffer did not mean to cause a disruption, he added,

While Schiffer is not blameless, Vanzi said school police failed to thoroughly investigate while teachers failed to stop Schiffer from playing with and displaying the cardboard gun.

"We're obviously happy with judge Vanzi's ruling; we think she did the right thing," Scholl said in a hallway news conference.  "There were a lot of mistakes made out there, but comparatively what a 17-year-old high school kid does compared to teachers and administrators and police officers and SWAT teams kind of pales in comparison."

Schiffer was not in court today but his dad was.  He did not want to comment when he left the courtroom.

Late this afternoon a spokesperson for the district attorney's office said they will decide within a week whether to prosecute him on the criminal charges.

APS said it respect the judge's decision and will learn from this incident.

It's not often I say Bravo! to the judge.  The DA's office better let this drop, or I'll tell her how far off base she is (she's an acquaintance).

[ScottA]

Somebody is seriously paranoid. The judge showed some common sence though.

[MountainDon]

I just looked her up, she's a registered Democrat; sorta surprised, some of them hate anything that even looks like a weapon. 




... off to da mountains..... 

[sparks]

Good Lawd !  More knee jerk reactions!  (you guys won't squeal on me for the big stuff I keep at my abode, right?)   

[John_C]

Please let us know the final outcome.

When my daughter was in high school I thought about this a lot. In my area where gun ownership is universal common the kids often used realistic looking fakes for plays and "history lessons".  I don't know of any local cases of kids being punished for having these in the normal course of school activities.  Down the road in Atlanta kids get suspended for drawing a picture of a gun on a sheet of typing paper. I always hoped my daughter wouldn't be the test case.

She now goes to a military college and there is an Army Ranger camp nearby. They have drills in the quad every morning at sunrise and they fire the cannon every morning at 7AM. On campus at any given time there can be some cadets carrying wooden mock-up drill rifles, the competition drill team carrying very real looking drill rifles and perhaps some Rangers or rifle team members carrying real (unloaded) guns. It is so common nobody takes much notice.  When the drill team goes to chow they put their drill rifles in racks outside the mess hall and a couple cadets remain outside. It certainly wouldn't be the place for someone disturbed by the sight of a cardboard cut out.

[glenn kangiser]

My main concern about this is for the safety of the kids, therefore I am against them carrying anything that looks like a gun.  Many kids are blasted away by scared or overzealous cops who thought thy had a gun.  These days I wouldn't even let my kids have realistic looking squirt guns.

When the SWAT team in Fresno got new machine guns they purposely went to a guys place who had threatened them before with a .22  As expected he told them to get off of his property and threatened them with a gun.

This gave them the perfect opportunity to unload all their brand new machine guns, check for jams before empty etc.  The number of bullets that hit ol' dead Bill was never released publicly that I know of.