The law of unintended consequences
One of the things that aggrevates me, is a teacher calling the police over an in a relatively minor incident from a kid with a disability being. I think I've found out why this happens, and also discovered a good lesson on how well meaning laws can cause other problems:
https://blog.aclupa.org/2010/03/31/the-problem-with-forcing-schools-to-call-the-police/
SB 56 mandates reporting of criminal offenses on campus by school administrators to both local police and to the state Department of Education’s Office of Safe Schools. The primary sponsor has a school in his district that was calling the police for student incidents but not reporting those incidents to the Office of Safe Schools. By not reporting to the office, the school avoided being tagged as an unsafe school.So it makes sense to put some guidelines in place to be sure that schools are not ducking the Office of Safe Schools. And, of course, all of us want some incidents reported to the police. If a homicide occurs in a school, I’m pretty sure that everyone wants the school to call the cops.
But once you get past the obvious, things get murkier the further you go down the list of offenses. Here’s an example that is nearly identical to a real incident. Say a teacher who doesn’t understand autism touches a kid who is on the spectrum. Kids with autism don’t like to be touched. The kid reacts by kicking the teacher in the leg. The act itself is simple assault, but because the victim is a school employee, it’s aggravated assault.
Under SB 56, school administrators have discretion on whether or not to call the police on simple assault but must call the police for aggravated assault, under threat of a fine of several thousand dollars. So if this bill becomes law, that kid gets hauled off by the police, and it doesn’t matter if he’s 7 or 17. Think for a moment about just how traumatic it would be for a child, any child, to be taken from school in handcuffs.
With administrators having the discretion to report simple assault but being mandated to call the police for aggravated assault, school administrators will be left to determine where particular offenses fit in the criminal code. Third degree institutional vandalism must be reported to the police, under SB 56, but lesser forms of vandalism do not. If you’re an administrator and you have a $2500 fine hanging over your head, you’re probably going to err on the side of caution and report all forms of vandalism and all forms of assault. Why risk money coming out of your pocket or your school district’s pocket?