With the proliferation of online schooling, we recently saw that school officials in Illinois wanted to tell kids they couldn't wear pajama pants when doing online classes. On the flip-side, a Tennessee school system has been exposed for trying to prevent parents from observing what is being taught in online classes. So, as more people concentrate on the "zoomification of education," more school systems are being exposed for either trying to shield their classes from taxpayer scrutiny, or trying to invade personal space.
Now, people are talking about authoritarians like those of Baltimore County, MD., who, if they get their way, will make the famous Red Ryder BB gun featured in the film “A Christmas Story” an open invitation to government home invasion, political investigation, possible arrest, and potential seizure of children.
Of course, this attack on the minority rights of the family earlier this year has gone virtually unnoticed by the dinosaur pop media, but social media has been on top of it, and PJ Media and The American Conservative have noticed. Paula Bolyard writes for PJ Media:
A Baltimore County, Md., fifth-grader got a visit from the police after his teacher called to report that she had seen a BB gun on the wall behind the student during a class video call.
Yep. A worrywart parent and two teachers freaked-out when seeing the horrific, alive, self-aware, and autonomously aggressive BB gun.
'While my son was on a Zoom call, a ‘concerned parent’ and subsequently two teachers saw his properly stowed and mounted Red Ryder BB gun and one other BB gun in the background,' (Courtney Lancaster) Sperry wrote on Facebook. 'He was not holding them and never intentionally showed them on video. In fact, he was oblivious that they could even be seen in the background.'
And this, somehow, became a license for the school principal, Jason Feiler, to become a judge and call the cops, who pretended they had a warrant from the pretend judge and inspected the home.
Almost.
First, since the parents are divorced, school bureaucrats endeavored to find out whether the boy was in his mom’s house or his father’s while on the Zoom call.
Sperry told PJ Media that the school’s vice-principal called her ex-husband, claiming to be checking on network connectivity. She believes the real reason for the call was to find out whose home her son was at. The vice-principal ‘ended the call without leveraging the opportunity to discuss the matter and rather was fishing for information to find out where to dispatch police,’ she said.
And then… The cops came on the school order to inspect Sperry’s abode.
Nothin’ like that Fourth Amendment, is there?
The police didn’t have a real warrant, of course, so they “asked” Sperry if they could inspect the home for weapons. She permitted entry, and found it in her heart to compliment the authoritarian police for, at least, recognizing the absurd action in which said officers were willingly participating.
‘The officers that responded were appalled at the call and even commended the set-up that my son has for his toys and commended him also on his respect and understanding of the BB guns,’ Sperry wrote on Facebook.
Good for the officers. One wonders if they would have turned out if the boy were in the kitchen and a few knives were on magnetic hangers near the stove, or if he had a five-gallon bucket in the background, since more small children die from accidents involving five-gallon buckets every year than die from accidental gun discharge.
Sperry did not criticize the cops. But it’s high time that – in every instance -- police officers check the U.S. constitution, their state constitution, and fundamental ethics before they use taxpayer cash to operate. The state or municipality – even the U.S. government -- might issue “orders” in the form of its ever-growing pile of statutes that stand in towering contravention of the Bill of Rights and basic morals found in Natural Law, but no police officer has any kind of ethical excuse for improper actions when he or she claims to be “enforcing the law.” If the commands an officer receives conform to a statute, but that statute is contrary to the Bill of Rights, the officer is acting in an immoral manner, contrary to the officer’s oath.
In that vein, all police officers might want to remember Sperry’s summary words:
‘I felt violated as a parent, for my child, who’s standing there with police officers in his room, just to see the fear on his face,’ she added.
Disgraceful behavior on the part of the school system and the police. Their websites offer contact information. One wonders whether they are answering their phones to hear from the taxpayers forced to pay for their reckless malfeasance.