Children with autism and other disabilities, and more of them, are “actually getting arrested for having tantrums at school,” Minnesota’s WCCO reports. 13-year-old Dakota Jacobson was charged with a felony after he was found carrying a pocket knife in his coat:
[Dakota] didn’t threaten anyone, but bringing any kind of weapon to school is a felony in Minnesota. While most kids understand why you wouldn’t want to do that, Dakota did not.
“He’s 13 and he’s autistic,” explained his mother [Kathryn Jacobson].
Children with autism can have trouble understanding rules. His mom says he was just trying to be like his dad, Brian.
“Brian is on the volunteer fire department, carries a knife hooked up to his belt, so he kind of likes to emulate his dad,” said Jacobson.
Police and the Pennington County Court weighed Dakota’s Autism diagnosis, but still charged him with a felony that ended up on his record.
“I was very afraid. I was hoping it was a dream, that’s what I was hoping,” said Dakota.
It’s more like a potential nightmare, and simply not the right way to address the needs of teenagers with autism and other disabilities. The WCCO story also describes how 19-year-old Thomas Brinker, who has fetal alcohol syndrome, was cited for disorderly conduct after throwing paint on a teacher’s sweater, and arrested. After being put in the Hennepin County Jail, Brinker was placed in METO:
METO is the Minnesota Extended Treatment Options program. Its one place courts send people to live if their developmental disability turns dangerous. Thomas’ family doesn’t think throwing paint rises to that level.
“I had to sign a piece of paper in fact, [saying] that I knew there were sexual offenders on the premises,” said Brinker. “He got to METO because of a court system that failed him, a school that definitely failed him.”
Roberta Opheim is the state’s ombudsman for Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities. She told the I-TEAM Thomas shouldn’t have ended up there, but a lot of people like him do.
“When they don’t or can’t participate in their own trial, they are sometimes sent to mental health facilities,” she said.
Opheim recently reviewed the METO program and found problems with the frequent use of metal handcuffs and leg hobbles.
“It became so routine that people didn’t even identify it as a problem,” she said.
Thomas was restrained on one occasion.
Brinker is still at the METO and now about to be released, and will return to a group home. The felony on Dakota’s record will be removed from his record after six months, if he does not bring a weapon to school again. But arresting minors for bad behavior and placing them in facilities where their own safety might be compromised?
[...] – autistic children and adults. This article came back to my mind as I read Kristina’s post Arrested: The Charge? Bad Behavior, in which she describes the arrest of a 13 year old autistic boy and a 19 year old man with fetal [...]
I think doctors that give vaccines should be arrested for bad behavior! An no, mercury does not cause autism, the viruses and crap in vaccines cause autism!
http://www.vacinfo.org/Carley.pdf
@Another Voice: Obviously, arm at least some of the grownups in the schools.
@Larry: Yup, often one is allowed more social slack in college than before or after. I was concerned about someone thinking the piece was real and bringing charges, or something. M’self, I’m so obsessive about the firearm safety rules that I’m right careful with the trigger on an electric drill motor, or circular saw. (And the latter should be treated as a very-short-ranged firearm, if you ask me.)
I sympathize with you about the type-casting; I recall a Church Hallowe’en event when I was drafted to play a character from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
@Justthisguy, Clearly you and I disagree on allowing pocket knives in the class room. I feel that knives should be left at home when children go off to school. Making it a felony for a first offense that did not involve an altercation is, in my opinion, too severe. But finding an adult that supports bringing knives to school is also rather severe.
In one of your posts you identify yourself as a second amendment absolutist and in the same post say – “Violent spree killers pick schools and other such “gun-free zones” for the reason that they are “gun-free.” What might you suggest?
Well rude or not, it may still be on film somewhere, since they were media students filming on our territory, there used to be two colleges next door to each other and both ran media courses.
Our lot were filming a gangster piece at the time, I always seemed to get cast in the role of an assasin for some reason.
I guess I’m feeling there should have been more consideration of Dakota’s diagnosis in regard to him bringing the knife—a felony charge just seems kind of extreme.
Umm, Another Voice? Violent spree killers pick schools and other such “gun-free zones” for the reason that they are “gun-free.” They know that no armed honest people will be present to resist them. You never hear of these people shooting up a gun shop, or a police station.
“Gun-Free Zones” would more properly be called “Disarmed Victim Zones.”
I warn you sir, I am a Second Amendment absolutist.
Oh, and Larry? That was, at very least, rude to point that thing at that fellow. Seems to have been a violation of Rule 1, and of Rule 2.
Why should I speak with some yankee union?
I do know about armed attack I live in a “bad” district and the point is it is not the weapon or tool but the pschology and the intention behind it,
You know that the US is doomed when you reach the age of 18 and can legally buy an assualt rifle, what is the point I sometimes think youy deserve the Hobbesian Armageddon that is coming and don’t blame me you all brought it on yourselves.
Unfortunately, laws against bringing weapons to school are necessary. Many schools also have metal detectors set up at points of entry. They are there to protect students and teachers from armed attack. It is a very sad commentary but some schools also require armed law enforcement personnel to be on-site during the school day. Some may consider that an over reaction but before raising your voice in disapproval speak with some members of the Chicago or New York teacher’s unions.
What is happening to the US?????
Quite apart from anything else I do worry about this “zero tolerance” mentality I go back in memory to the time in medieval europe when a pig could be charged in the courts http://everything2.com/e2node/Medieval%2520animal%2520trials
The wily and the clever can get by the innocent and the inexperienced are victimised. I am so lucky I escaped that stage even when I was confronted by an armed response unit. I lived so many in recent times Charles de Menenez for example have not, why was I so lucky that I was not summarily executed?
It gives me a certain arrogance these days that the law with guns scares me not, I actually make a point of teasing them.
Even some time back I came across some kids (I knew them) playing about with a gun. One of them said to me “Don’t worry it’s a replica”
Well there is probably an urban legend about me when I took a replica machine gun into my FE college, (for a film project) I did not ask permission I just did it, and worse than that, during the filming I encountered students from the other college next door, and so I pointed said weapon at then and told them to keep to their own college, and they were actually highly amused by that (cos of course I was in a joking spirit
Well anyway this gets stranger cos the police were called to the college for something else and I was sitting there in reception with a bag containing a machine gun, with the police around having no idea. Wierd or what?
As I say it has become an urban legend at the college now.
I guess the moral of the story is that if I ever point a gun at you, you are more likely to die laughing
I am not a martial arts expert but I am going to be filming some martial arts soon, just let us say that with my cane I am a threat to any martial artist who does not know those particular martial arts pertaining to a cane, I defeated a wing chun guy in a challenge anyway
The fun will be challenging someone who knows Arnis and I intend to do that
The school I worked at got the Sheriff involved when one of the kids brought those “popper” fire crackers to school a couple of years ago. (The same principal expelled a kid for a pocket knife.)
You throw them on the ground and they pop kinda loudly…they were my favorite part of 4th of July pranks, to try to scare the bejeebers out of your brother or sister by setting them off stealthily.
What is true in the cases mentioned above is that the punishment FAR outweighs the crime. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like we are making criminals out of kids who might do with a bit of understanding.
“Split the Kipper”?
That was called Mumbly-Peg in the USA, within living memory.
Don’t get me started on the lost, or soon-to-be-lost, traditional children’s games!
Ally ally oxen free!
Umm, Larry, a fellow I know who grew up in Detroit says a stout leather jacket wrapped around the weak arm is a fair defense against a knife, assuming one has something in the strong hand for completing the sentence.
Not that I claim any special knowlege about this, or anything, and proceed at yer own risk and IANAL, etc.
Oh tempora oh mores, that anyone could believe I never had tantrums in school or challenged a teacher?
It is all the luck of the draw. They talk about knives in schools today, well even in my Junior school kids played “split the kipper” and this in a relatively affluent suburb. The game in case you do not know is that you stand legs akimbo and do not flinch when someone throws a knife into the ground between your legs.
But that apart we did not have the stabbings that are reported today, part of a boy scouts equipment was his sheath knife, and as a boy I remember receiving penknives as gifts, my parents having no worries when still in my teens I bought a bowie knife from my saved up pocket money.
A knife is a tool and it is the attitude to it that matters not the sharpness of the blade, I would not threaten anyone with a knife these days never mind I still carry one as a daily routine (within the law that is)
If I were confronted with a knife on the street the last thing I would defend myself with is a knife, but then I guess maybe that is why I have not been threatened with a knife anyway
One thing I don’t do nowadays though is carry a knife in the evenings or into places where it could be misconstrued, but knives in school, yeah I did it, I am guilty m’lud.
I carried an axe into University once, (because I was going to chop wood for my fire )
P.s.
Once, on the way home from elementary school, I got gratuitously jumped by a coupla bullies. Thinking about it now, it was probably about my borderline autitude.
How. Ever.
I betcha each one of us had a knife in his pocket, and it never occurred to any of us to use said knife(s) in offense or defense.
We were kids.
Paula, to preserve what little anonymity I might have left, I’ll say that I’m closer to Sixty than to Fifty. Our pocket knives were real ones, and yes quite sharp as we were taught how to make them so. Yes, I did cut my self a time or two before I learned how to operate a pocket knife.
The knives of which I write, Cub Scout and later Boy Scout knives, were of the best quality, capable of holding a very sharp edge, and having other tools than blades on them, such as augers, screwdrivers, can-openers, etc.
Believe it or not, when I was a kid in the Fifties, kids were trusted to carry razor-sharp knives in their pockets to elementary school!
As I wrote above, nobody got cut, except by hisself, and by accident
Justthisguy,
Um, how old are you?
You don’t need to answer. I grew up in the days where, yes, some kids brought (usually very small and not very sharp, and I might even have done it myself since my brothers had those sorts of things) pocketknives to school to impress their friends. These “knives” were actually marketed and sold to children. I also remember children learning from each other, and practicing, “passing gas,” for which one child was arrested a couple of weeks ago. I, too, have the same question as you: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Oh, man, this is so wrong in so many ways!
1. What the hell is wrong with bringing a pocketknife to school? How the hell is the kid gonna carve his name in the desk without a pocketknife?
I remember when I joined the Cub Scouts at age 8 and proudly brought my Cub Scout knife to school to show it off. It was one of those evil lockback knives, too, arranged that way so that I would be less likely to cut myself.
2. Arrest. ARREST? Arrest a little kid? Instead of having the teacher say, “wow, that’s a cool knife, but the rules require me to sequester it until school’s out, when I’ll give it back to you.”
3. “bringing any kind of weapon to school is a felony in Minnesota…” WHISKY TANGO FOXTROT?
I could go on, but am starting to prove to myself that I really am autistic after all, by feeling a desire to jump up and down and flail parts of my body about upon reading of this injustice