By Alice Salles at theantimedia.org
Albuquerque, NM — In Soviet America, burping in class is a serious crime. Need proof? Just look at the story of this 13-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Cleveland Middle School.
According to George Washington University law professor, Jonathan Turley, the boy was acting like a class clown, doing what many class clowns do: disrupting class. Because of his loud burps, his teacher, Margaret Mines-Hornbeck, reported the boy to Officer Arthur Acosta. The seventh grader was then taken to an administrative office after being searched for drugs, as the assistant principal accused the 13-year-old of participating in a marijuana transaction.
During the search, the boy was asked to remove his jeans and shoes, then flip the waistband of the shorts he had been wearing underneath. This was all in vain considering no drugs were found.
After the traumatizing experience, the boy was suspended for the remainder of the year, all because he burped too loud. But sure enough, that wasn’t the end of it.
Instead of letting this matter go after such a harsh punishment, Cleveland Middle School decided to charge him criminally using a provision that says “[n]o person shall willfully interfere with the educational process of any public or private school by committing, threatening to commit or inciting others to commit any act which would disrupt, impair, interfere with or obstruct the lawful mission, processes, procedures or functions of a public or private school.”
Making matters even worse, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit decided to uphold the Albuquerque school officials’ action by claiming police and school leadership were justified in sending the 13-year-old to juvenile jail.
That’s right. The courts ruled it’s okay to send a child to jail for being a class clown.
According to Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie, this type of overreaction helps explain why Americans are losing confidence in major institutions “of political, commercial, and civic life.” Instead of believing in their enforcement methods, these authorities act as if they have no “belief in themselves and the things they run,” proving this is a “society in decline … that no longer feels as if it can exercise power at any level except via banishment and extreme action.”
He might be right since this isn’t the first time children have been harshly punished for acting like kids.
Last year, Ahmed Mohamed was arrested after his MacArthur High School teacher called officials over a clock he had assembled at home. Officials at the time alleged that the boy had attempted to cause a bomb scare, but the case was later dropped.
More recently, Professor Turley reports, a series of students have been suspended or expelled over comments they made on social media websites, making us wonder why “[t]eachers and administrators have been criminalizing juvenile conduct rather than dealing with such issues with the students and their teachers.”
Could this be the new norm?
This article (13-Year-Old Strip Searched Then Thrown in Jail for Burping in Class) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Alice Salles andtheAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to [email protected].
Whatever would have happened had this lad farted instead? Possibly the electric chair?
whahahahahahah or execution squad
USA lost their North many time ago.
f that shit
but he is still a child, sending him to juvi dosen`t makes the matter better.
he is a child he should get his punishment, but not jail time for making a burb or biegen class clown,
it`s only in the us you can do that shit. eny other place in the World you will only get ligth punishment by bieing send home or get suspendt for some days.
Long live the free life, and dont put childring to jail for burbing in class
This is the police state, where insanity rules.
The authorities in the USA have lost any credibility they may have had. Throwing children in jail is just the last straw! Once in there they are bound and gagged and stripped and beaten and abused and treated like hardcore criminals. It disgusts not only me!
Whatever happened to freedom of speech or expression. We gave it away in favor of political correctness.
Sure the youngster was being inappropriate in class. Being sent out of class and having a consequence for disruption makes sense. Having him undress to be checked for pot should be done with kids very judiciously, and only after an arrest, while in custody of law enforcement, in the process of jailing him. And “strip search” means underwear comes off, too. So Anonymous’ inflammatory headline is misleading. Shipping him off to juvie appears to be within the statute — so either the statute must change, or else the attitude and training of school personnel. His parents will hopefully enroll him in a more appropriate, private school.
What a misleading article.
He was not strip searched. He was dressed in multiple layers of clothing. After removing the outer layers he still had on shorts, boxer shorts and a long sleeve shirt.
He was “thrown in (juvenile) jail” for about one hour (1:30 pm – 2:30 pm on the day of the arrest) – only so that he could be booked.
The decision not to return the rest of the year following the one day suspension for the burping incident was taken by his mother – not the school.
The entire article is misleading and wrong.
burping protest, everyone! It’s peaceful!