The only thing the kid did was post a short video of the guns in their carry cases and kind of squealed with excitement about the trip to the range.
There was absolutely no threat of any kind in the video and no violation of any law or school rules.
The only violation here is the violation of his First an 2nd Amendment Rights.
Looking at it with hindsight, it is easy to see that āGoing to be a good timeā wasnāt a threat. Viewing it from the point of view as it is happening, it is ambiguous enough that the school thought it wise to take action.
Also, the school only had the motherās statement that the police cleared them. Based on the article we donāt know if the school was notified at all by the police, their action taken was based on a safe to tell complaint.
This is Colorado. I live ten minutes from Columbine High School, 20 minutes from Arapahoe High, 5 minutes from Deer Creek Middle school, 45 minutes from Platt Canyon High, 50 minutes from the Aurora theater, 30 minutes from Faith Bible Chapel, 10 minutes from Highlands Ranch Stem school, 1 hour from Focus on the Family and New Life Church. For 30 years Colorado has juggled with how to deal with these situations that might be threats. Iām not saying the school handled it in the best way, but again, according to two different 2A lawyers, his rights were not violated.
Itās easy to draw a line in the sand when reading a story in the news, a little different being the principal living through the situation trying to weigh the rights all the kids that go to that high school. I respect that you disagree, Iām just giving my view point based on living in Colorado.
The schools are caught in a tough situation, react and get blasted for over reacting, donāt act and get raked over the coals of public opinion for ānot seeing the signs and acting,ā and possibly having kids hurt.
This is why there needs to be severe penalties for those making unfounded complaints under RFLās and similar laws or school policies.
How many thousands of dollars were wasted on these āinvestigationsā? How much police time and resources were wasted?
That doesnāt even begin to address violating this kids rights starting with his 1st and 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendment Rights.
One call by the administration to the police would have solved that in a few minutes.
Quit possibly true, but also, the cops that handled the call could have been on their days off and the only record could have been their disposition of the call to dispatch when they cleared the scene. It might have taken a couple of days to confirm. Again, we can all Monday morning quarter back to support our side of the argument, myself included. Why make a totally gray situation black and white and cast judgement.
No, thereās a written record of every police investigation. If a call is made everything has to be documented.
Again, the biggest issue is that the kid was punished without even an investigation much less a finding that heād done anything wrong.
When I was a police officer, if no crime was committed, as they determined here, I would have cleared the scene with a verbal disposition to dispatch and there would have been no case report generated. Yes, there would have been my disposition in the dispatch log, but nothing beyond that and what notes I took in my notebook.
Being suspended pending a school review is no different than an officer being suspended during a PD investigation. It isnāt punishment. I agree, not giving him his assignments was a total cluster, but they admitted that. Again, poor decision made while an event was in progress.
Yes it is different, you agree to those work rules when you voluntarily take the job.
The suspension from school absolutely is a punishment and suspensions are handed out daily in schools across the country as punishment for various offenses.
As a cop too, the suspension is a paid vacation except in the most egregious cases where the officerās guilt is obvious.
If you have kids in school, they must do things differently in AZ, here in CO, each kid and their parent signs various contracts with the school including code of conduct contracts each year. Kids know they can be suspended for just about anything including social media posts. They know they give up any right to privacy with their locker and even their backpacks if you want to digress from this case into search and seizure issues. I respect your point of view, but disagree for this case.
The social media post didnāt violate any law, school rule, or element of the code of conduct.
Absolutely, on the stiffer punishment for unfounded accusations. Make the parents pay back the county for the officers time. Also, make the school district pay any and all legal fees incurred.
Again I have to respectfully disagreeā¦ The school knows the number for the police department and could have quickly checked the motherās statement saying that the kid had been cleared. At that point they would have been ālooking at it with hindsightā and should have easily cleared him. This was a āswatāingā I donāt care what method (āSafe to tellā ) was used to carry it out, and the school has decided to join in. With their policy the school is extending their āgun free zoneā beyond the actual school grounds and into the homes of students, that is a slippery slope if there ever was one.
As a police officer you must know you are presumed innocent until proven guilty, even if you live in Colorado. The school had a concern that was reported, investigated and dismissed, yet a student is still being punished (suspended) and treated like he was planning an attack. How can his rights not have been violated?
Maybe you all live in an area where everyone knows everyone and a phone call will clear up the situation in a heart beat. That is a great advantage for you and your kids if they ever get into trouble.
If my 1st Sgt. or Lt. got a phone call from someone stating they were the assistant principal at a school and asking them to clarify a situation that occurred during the shift, they would take their name. Then, when the chance presented itself, they would call me and the other officer either into the station or to designate a spot to meet and ask us both what happened. Then they would talk it over with their supervisor who would pass it along to the public information officer who would then call the school back, asking for the name of the person who had called. They would then verify that it was that person who had inquired about the situation and they would give them the disposition of what happened. This might take an hour or two or two days.
That process might have been shortened if the school had a Community Resource Officer stationed at the school who could call dispatch and get the disposition over the phone. Not every school has a CRO stationed at the school.
Yes, everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Letās not even get into a school systemās procedures for handling cases, letās take the more professional approach of the criminal justice system. The way you are expressing it, it sounds like everyone goes about their life while the process moves along to prove they are either innocent or guilty. Individuals sit in jail for days, months, and maybe even a year before some investigations are completed and the case is heard in court. Is it easy to say after the adjudication has been pronounced that they were guilty or innocent? Yes, a lot easier than when it is being investigated and there are facts in evidence showing both they could be guilty and innocent.
This will be my last post on this topic. So, Iāll ask a couple of questions I hope everyone can be honest about. Did everyone base their opinion on the original article alone or did you google it and read a couple of other articles and watch a video of the situation reported by other news sources?
Did you read the headline which is written to generate interest and cause an emotional response by a pro 2A organization to draw you into the story and then say to yourself. No, he didnāt get suspended because he went to the range with his mom. He got suspended because a Safe2Tell complaint was made against him because of a social media post he made. The headline states, āColorado Student Banned from School for going shooting with his mom.ā Is that why he was banned from school? Did you separate your emotional response from the way the initial article was written to responding to the actual facts as they occurred found in not only the article posted but several other sources that provided a wider view of the situation as it happened?
As a pro Second Amendment person, I feel I have a duty to realize several of our media sources are just as biased as anti-2A media sources and not go off half cocked, sorry for the pun, until I know the facts. I applaud people here on both sides of the argument in this discussion for standing up for what they believe. I just interpret what actually happened differently than some of you. Again, this will be my last post because Iām not going to change the way anyone feels about this particular event, and I apologize for the length of my response.
Edit to add: I was PMād saying I should post the facts released from the family themselves so others in the discussion have them. The kid was suspended on a Wednesday while the school investigated. Thursday morning at the start of school, after the 5 minute meeting with the school, he went back to classes. From the kidās own mouth, āPeople nowadays just jump to conclusion, but again, there is a lot of violence and a lot of school shootings, a lot of stuff like that, so I somewhat understand,ā āIf I ever post something like that again, Iām going to make sure I say something like, āIām going to the rangeā."
What the heck is going on? This is not OK. If it happened here in Arizona I would help in protesting the heck out of this issue.
This kind of stuff is what the schools make up thinking it makes us safer. Itās not making us Safer.
As an IT professional and expert on the subject, I can tell you Dawn is 100% correct. Always assume anything you put on the internet is public. Period.
Iām going to have to share that with my kids! 
Arenāt Red Flag Laws violating the 5th Amendment regarding seizure of property without ādue process of law"?.. to be part of any proceeding that denies a citizen ālife, liberty or propertyā and requires the government to compensate citizens when it takes private property. Arenāt guns considered āprivate propertyā, or is it just land?
āHearsayā is not legal proof of guilt. Guilt can only be proven by the justice systemā¦ not your neighbor that is a gun-hating snowflake.
Hi Brian, @TexasEskimo
Actually slight correction the 4th Amendment takes into Illegal Search and Seizure of an individualās property.
Firearms are indeed private property.
As far as gun hating Snowflakes, this is how at the beginning of the rise of Adolph Hitler came into power with Germany, Then soon the rest of the Baltic countryās turning on each other neighbor reporting neighbors and friends and then as you know mandatory gun confiscation and then World War II
I think you meant Brian38. You got Brian3
Oops, 
Yes 
Happy Sunday