Police Called to Elementary School After 3rd Grader Makes ‘Racist’ Comment About a Brownie

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Before this week, 14-year-old Ella Fishbough had never been in trouble at school.

The cheerful, curly-haired eighth-grader’s undoing came when she learned that a male friend was having a bad day. As consolation, Ella put her arms around him in a hug.

“It was literally for a second,” the eighth-grader told Click Orlando. But that moment earned her a morning in detention — as well as a blemish on her formerly spotless disciplinary record.

It is at each principal’s discretion to determine what kind of touching is inappropriate. According to WFTV Orlando, hugging was banned altogether at Jackson Heights this year, in addition to holding hands, linking arms and kissing.

– From last year’s post: Nanny States of America – Parents Arrested for Letting Kids Play on Beach, Girl Given Detention for Hugging Friend

So this really happened. Via Philly.com:

On June 16, police were called to an unlikely scene: an end-of-the-year class party at the William P. Tatem Elementary School in Collingswood.

A third grader had made a comment about the brownies being served to the class. After another student exclaimed that the remark was “racist,” the school called the Collingswood Police Department, according to the mother of the boy who made the comment.

The boy’s father was contacted by Collingswood police later in the day. Police said the incident had been referred to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency. The student stayed home for his last day of third grade.

Dos Santos said that her son was “traumatized,” and that she hopes to send him to a different Collingswood public school in the fall.

“I’m not comfortable with the administration [at Tatem]. I don’t trust them and neither does my child,” she said. “He was intimidated, obviously. There was a police officer with a gun in the holster talking to my son, saying, ‘Tell me what you said.’ He didn’t have anybody on his side.”

The incident, which has sparked outrage among some parents, was one of several in the last month when Collingswood police have been called to look into school incidents that parents think hardly merit criminal investigation.

Superintendent Scott Oswald estimated that on some occasions over the last month, officers may have been called to as many as five incidents per day in the district of 1,875 students.

This has created concern among parents in the 14,000-resident borough, who have phoned their elected officials, met with Mayor James Maley, blasted social-media message boards, and even launched a petition calling on the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office to “stop mandated criminal investigation of elementary school students.”

The increased police involvement follows a May 25 meeting among the Collingswood Police Department, school officials, and representatives from the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, where school officials and police both said they were told to report to police any incidents that could be considered criminal, including what Police Chief Kevin Carey called anything “as minor as a simple name-calling incident that the school would typically handle internally.”

The police and schools were also advised that they should report “just about every incident” to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency, Carey said.

Previously, the school district, following the state’s Memorandum of Agreement Between Education and Law Enforcement Officials, had only reported incidents it deemed serious, like those involving weapons, drugs, or sexual misconduct. Both Carey and School Board President David Routzahn described the protocol set forth after that May meeting as a significant change in procedure.

Several parents said they consider the recent police involvement not only ridiculous but harmful.

Megan Irwin, who has two daughters who have attended Collingswood public schools and who teaches first grade in Pennsauken, said the police had been called to deal with behavior the schools could easily have handled.

“Some of it is just typical little-kid behavior,” Irwin said. “Never in my years of teaching have I ever felt uncomfortable handling a situation or felt like I didn’t know how to handle a situation.”

As an elementary school teacher, isn’t dealing with these sort of incidents a key part of the job? Why are school administrators taking such tasks away from where they belong, with the teachers?

And Pam Gessert, a Collingswood resident who works as a school counselor in Burlington County, said that because teachers have the best relationships with students, they are most qualified to determine what happened in a particular incident.

Let’s discuss how ridiculous this is from a couple of angles. First off, we don’t even know what the kid said, and if it was in fact racially offensive. According to the article, “another student exclaimed that the remark was racist,” so what was actually said? Did the teacher actually hear the comment? It’s possible one kid merely decided to call it racist knowing the other kid would get in trouble. I’m not saying this is what happened, but it’s happened before.

For example, recall the case of Ethan Chaplin as highlighted in the 2014 post, New Jersey Threatens to Take 13-Year-Old Student From His Father Due to “Non-Conforming Behavior”:

This is the story of Ethan Chaplin, who back in April was twirling a pencil in his seventh grade classroom in Vernon, NJ. One of the class bullies saw an opportunity to be a jerk and yelled: “He’s making gun motions, send him to juvie.”

Rather than demonstrating any sort of common sense, the teacher apparently had a panic attack and reported him, which resulted in a two-day suspension.

Amazingly, the saga manages to get even worse. Just today, we find out that New Jersey is threatening to take Ethan away from his father. Incredibly, the state is claiming that the prior psychological evaluation wasn’t sufficient and more testing needs to be done. Since his father Michael is pushing back, the loss of custodianship has been threatened. Absolutely insane.

It’s interesting that both these incidents occurred in New Jersey, but I digress. The sort of thing that happened to Ethan Chaplin is bound to happen when kids recognize that adults will have a panic attack if anyone purportedly says something racist or twirls a pencil in a threatening manner. That’s what little kids do from time to time, but let’s move on.

Let’s assume this nine year old did indeed make a racially charged comment about a brownie. Why in the world should the police ever be involved in something like this. Teachers are now so scared about losing their jobs if they don’t call 911 for every little incident, they are forced to treat toddlers like prison inmates.

It’s absolutely mind-boggling that this could actually happen. Did the school administrators not think about the kind of long-term psychological damage this sort of thing might do to the children? The only lesson these kids learned is that for everyday mischief little kids have engaged in since the beginning of time, a person with a gun, badge and ability to lock you away in a cell is just a phone call away. All because a nine year old made a comment about a brownie.

Any society that puts up with this crap for long is doomed to irrelevance.

For related articles, see:

Nanny States of America – Parents Arrested for Letting Kids Play on Beach, Girl Given Detention for Hugging Friend

New Jersey Threatens to Take 13-Year-Old Student From His Father Due to “Non-Conforming Behavior”

Washington State School District Bans Game of “Tag” to “Ensure Physical, Emotional Safety of Students”

The “Nanny States of America” – Mother Arrested for Allowing 7-Year-Old Son Walk to Park Alone

11-Year-Old Boy Taken Away by CPS for Being Left in Backyard Alone for 90 Minutes; Parents Charged with Neglect

Maryland Parents Being Investigated for Neglect After Letting Their Kids Walk Home from Playground Alone

A Winter Wonderland of Fear – Cities Across the U.S. Move to Ban Unregulated Sledding

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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18 thoughts on “Police Called to Elementary School After 3rd Grader Makes ‘Racist’ Comment About a Brownie”

  1. “Any society that puts up with this crap for long is doomed to irrelevance.”

    The insanity in Western “democracies” is getting to be cosmic in scale. The deterioration of common sense and responsible authority to its present level of robotic reaction is beyond comprehension to any normal adult.

    The police called for a classroom comment? Lemonade stands closed down as health permit violations? Cowboys and Indians hand gestures warrant a permanent blot on school records?

    Normal Americans have let the inmates run not the asylum but the entire society. How something like this gets beyond the brainstorming discard bin is mind blowing.

    At this rate, in less than a decade we will be living in a society that makes the regimentation of Orwell’s 1984 look like a Bacchanalian orgy.

    This is how violent reactions are set up.

    Reply
    • I’m with you Mr. Eaton, but for one thing. Why do we, as a society, call things we find distasteful, nuts or inferior by women’s names, intimate practices or body parts? And why do we put up with this sexist behavior and trend? Your point is well made, however I would rather you chose more colorful, less sexist, words. That said, my hat’s off to you, Mr. Eaton, for at least speaking so frankly about what a MESS this crap is! I truly hope no one takes you to task for asserting your freedom of speech. I know I won’t. Have a great weekend! ;->
      And;
      Ditto Sallae and greendragonfly:
      I thoroughly agree with your perspectives. My thought is something my ex used to say – – Hit ’em where it hurts; in the wallet. {Now, will the “I-Po’s” investigate me for using the phrase I just did?}
      If people move out of district, move their kids out of district or go to homeschooling, leaving the idiots w/o the tax money they so languish in, they might decide to wise up.. Two of the hardest lessons I have learned – – Money talks & NEVER, EVER, trust a bureauCrap.

      I wish you all a wonderful weekend – – IF you can still find anything left of our Constitution, culture and/or country to celebrate. Given how things have been going, it certainly seems anachronistically contradictory – – and PURE FARCE. I want to cry.

  2. But don’t do or say anything..just report it here and all over the net…and all of you reading…don’t do or say anything about this. No, just keep watching Keeping up with KARDASHIANS! American citizens are WHY this shit happens and will continue to happen and it will get worse! Because Americans are sheeple and have no fucking backbone at all anymore!
    Get fucking pissed enough to speak out god damn it! Call this pussy cop out call the panzy ass police chief office and tell him he is a fucking pussy! Call the fucking school admininstrator and tell him or her they are spinless pieces of shit sponging off our tax dollars. Speak out god damn it! Or live with your spineless selves.

    Reply
  3. No, because no-one thinks at all anymore. Everyone (students and teachers) is so terrified of receiving a disproportionate punishment for every minor infraction, real or perceived, they’ll follow whatever insane procedure was laid down in some committee meeting and exaggerated every week since. We’re being turned into neurotic robots, and then we complain that our kids are all messed up when they graduate from college.

    Reply
  4. They legally extort money from property taxes to pay for these total incompetents running the indoctrination schools. It’s just so nuts it’s hard to believe this kind of thing is happening. How do parents take this nonsense?

    Reply
  5. I think public schools are now corrupt and perverted.Now add tyranny.Time to fire all shut it down.Give vouchers.Next secede.Who needs this idiocy?BTW if brownie called boy or girl a cracker would the police have come?Bet no.

    Reply
  6. You can either be a man or woman retaining your unalienable God-given rights or you can be a corporate ‘person’ (legal term for a corporate ‘entity’under the full control of the Federal Corporation). It takes guts to be a man or woman and chart your own course, your own values, your own freedom. If you don’t…. you get what you deserve; i.e., slavery.

    Reply
  7. Breaking news! Reports are pouring in of an active speaker in the elementary school. Tensions are high as police attempt to negotiate with the speaker. A SWAT team is standing by. The suspect is said to have three years of educational training in that facility, making him both articulate and familiar with the layout of the building. The neighboring community is on lockdown and residents are asked to shelter in place until the governor decides whether or not to implement martial law. We will be bringing you more information as this tense situation unfolds. Stay tuned for the latest developments.

    Reply
  8. Try having a kid on the autism spectrum – it gets even better. Situations that school personnel with “years” of experience are supposedly trained to handle are often made worse by the overreaction of the teachers involved. Always find it interesting when other parents tell me that they are upset with how a particular situation was handled between their child and mine. Hmmm. They are not going to like our recommendations and requests for this upcoming school year…..

    Reply
  9. Guys and Gals- If you know something is insensitive towards others (i.e. like Trump comments and rhetoric) just don’t say it! In the above case, this was a 3rd grader, whom we all know has little sense, but he must have heard it somewhere “maybe at home”, as a former school employee myself, I had a similar problem with a 3rd grader calling me “ethnic/racially charged names”, I took it to the principle, the principle called in the parents and the child was made to apologize to me! In the above case, I believe the school went overboard, they should have called in the parents and call them on the carpet to find out where this child is learning this type of language from and whom? Then take appropriate measures to correct same……..

    Reply
  10. Children have the race nonsense pounded in their heads without understanding. I said little black dog to my shipperke and my 6 year old grandson said that’s racist.

    Reply
  11. So maybe it was to much to call the cops on a 9 year old saying this but WOW what kind of parents are these that the kid talks like this? ”
    The boy said the brownies were “made out of burnt black people”
    WTF kind of parents are these ? Very offensive comment and it is funny how the mom does not address this at all, she says “they were talking about brownies” LOL “Burnt black people brownies ?” Funny how she does not want to accept any blame for this horrible comment. I can imagine what they talk about at home.

    Reply

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