COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Will Chandler said he knows he should not have left campus when he and two friends left Wheeler High School for lunch a week ago.
A school officer found a Swiss Army knife in Chandler’s car’s console. Under the school’s zero tolerance policy it was an automatic suspension for Chandler.
The next day, the Chandlers found out Will had also been charged with a felony.
“We found out that my son, there’s a felony warrant out for him. It just seems like a nightmare. We’re still in shock,” said Sharon Chandler. Will Chandler was booked into the Cobb County Jail and his mother started a quest to find answers.
“When the principal said to me, ‘This could kill someone,’ I said to him, ‘So could a pencil.’ My son did not have this on his physical body, did not have it on him, it was not in his backpack, it was not in his locker. It was in the console of the car,” said Sharon.
The problem isn’t just with the “Zero Tolerance” brigadistas in the school system. This fiasco couldn’t take place without the collaboration of peanut-brain politicians and cops who acquired their standards from 19th Century vigilantes.
Related links:
School Website
Ed Thayer
Thanks, KB
#29 – I’m sure your wife is simultaneously relieved and frustrated that you’ll be perfectly safe entering a public school. 🙂
#26 Monster’s Lawyer, I remember your work well. The kid will be lucky to stay out of Guantanamo 😉
In Atlanta, young men and women walk around with a braided leather strap attached to their keys. The strap is about 18″ long. The leather looks very decorative, but I suspect clocking someone with the keys at the end of the strap could be a LOT worse than a Swiss knife
Nobody seems to mention anything about the warrant. The way that the article is written makes reader feel they are connected. But what if it is not. If the student in the story has an outstanding warrant BEFORE the knife incident, would you change your mind?
34 – The situation would need to be re-evaluated, depending on how incomplete the initial information is.
We can play “what if” games all day. Try coming up with something relevant, eh?
Malevolent, foolish and pointless; your government at work!
Since Hop isn’t around, I hereby award both the BubbaRayDipDork Award and Hop’s Ultimate King Kahuna Moron Award to the morans that perpetrated and support this travesty. Where are all the folks with brains when something like this occurs??
I’ve commented before, I attended a public elementary school where a friend brought a new hi-tech deer rifle for show-and-tell, and the teacher was impressed.
Oh, sorry I’m so late posting, I had to use my Swiss Army death-ray to make sure my flip-flops had no explosives in ’em for my next commercial airline flight.
Does anyone know the Will Chandler’s age when this incident occured?
If this kid is under 18 years of age; this should be a misdemeanor.
According to the…
Georgia Code Section: 16-11-127.1
Georgia Code Section 15-11-63
Georgia Code Section 16-11-132
Killing someone with that sort of knife takes a lot of skill. Killing someone with a belt or shoe lace is much easier, faster, more certain, and safer for the attacker.
I think that they should counter w/ a suit against the prinicpal for breaking and entering on that kid’s car – this is uber bullshit
In the sixties when i was in high school, it was common for us to have a couple of guns in a rack in the back window of our pickup trucks. No one thought anything about it. The town police chief had a shooting club for kids 8 years old and up. Thats when my dad bought me a 22 target rifle. Almost everything we did back then would land us in jail now. It was Mr. Gregory’s three foot paddle that kept us in line in grammer school.
#31 – Can still break a bench vise – ’nuff said
My faith in society was seriously tested by this story. Thankfully seeing the poll on the website where 92% of 1000 people said he shouldn’t be charged lead to me understanding that most people aren’t crazy, only the high school administrators.
Lets see…
I can go onto school grounds with a Crowbar, a Tire iron, and STILL not get arrested…
But If I carried a Leatherman, I would be arrested, EVEN if it was in the toolbox of my car???
#26:
so, the hands of the students should be removed also since the hands can be placed in a configuration resembling a handgun.
They need to “communicat” better.
Poor Ed.
#20 “The terrorists have indeed won. They wanted to change how we live, they wanted to take away our freedoms, and they have done exactly that. Our government have us living in fear, have us living with them looking over everything we do, and they must see the news of the domestic wiretaps, the government gone drunk on power, and laugh soundly.”
An interesting observation. Its not so much the fear of terrorists now – that just started the ball rolling down the hill.
I was talking to our European distributor about the fear of terrorists in Europe and he laughed “What fear? That’s all you guys – US and UK. We trade with these ‘terrorists’ as you wrongly label them so why should they do anything to us?” Well that’s his take – he’s Italian.
Something that is would worth reading about is Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Mao so worried about losing his grip on the Chinese people he created the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guard to ensure that undesirable thinking was corrected.
Mao believed that a population in fear would be easier to control. It worked – Chinese people lived in constant fear of each other and what they saw as the real the threat of attack from western countries – this was an era of no tolerance to the nth degree in everything.
People were encouraged to turn in friends, family, anyone who they thought was not 110% loyal to Mao, the communist party and China – in that order. People who had relatives living in western countries were persecuted and imprisoned. In fact Chinese who had only visited ‘western’ countries were suspected of treason and were persecuted and imprisoned regardless of the reasons. If this wasn’t already bad enough even people who simply were seen to ‘act’ western were suspected as well. Of course forget about religion – there was only one God and his name was Mao.
Draw any parallels you like.
Its an interesting read for those who don’t know so much about this and more amazing on how quick this turned around in just 30 years.
There is hope the the US then. 😉
Cheers
i disagree..
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself..
call it fear of the unknown if you like..
I’d love to go on a diatribe about sandcastles and the balance of power..
but in the end it all comes down to personal choice..
be afraid?
don’t be afraid?
the choice is clear
26,
dont forget 2/3 of the Gym equipment…
No wonder the rest of the world thinks we’re insane.
I love the comment by the principal: “This could kill someone.” No, a person can kill someone. A knife can be used to do that, but it has to have a deranged person using it to kill someone. And as the parent said, a pencil, a pen, or pretty much any sharp pointed instrument can be used to injure or kill someone. Our society is becoming dangerously close to a Puritan-esque society like in “The Village”. At least that’s what the majority of the “ruling authority” is trying to get us to. 2008 can’t come soon enough.
These school officials seem to have forgotten that job one is to teach. As a matter of fact, I don’t think oversight of camping gear storage methodology should even be on their frigging job scope list. These folks would probably be better suited for a job like captaining a vessel, say one of those glass bottom boats at Silver Springs. Where their authority could only be questioned by Ed, the Admiral of the Silver Springs Fleet. I need to go buy some more push-pins and a larger map. I’m running out of map space and pins on my old “locations of America’s biggest dipshits” wall chart.
Yup. The parents are going to hire a lawyer, sue the ass off of the school and the principal and come out the winner. And there goes the salaries of several teachers for the next couple of years.
If the principal is indeed the one who is charging the kid with a criminal offense, then it will be his own sorry ass on the line. He won’t have immunity for pressing a criminal charge.
They should take the time to charge all the students that drive to school for the same thing. I’m sure they all have a some type of tire iron in their trunks to change a flat tire.
This is so ridiculous. This is a complete OUTRAGE!
The superintendent, backs the principal….and the super-T then contacts the school attorneys that are on retainer who make these assinine legal recomendations that the school officials actually go out of their way to follow. It is a KYA senario and becomes an us vs them situation. This is all too common….go out to ztnightmare website and zerointelligence.net. Unfortunately, our court system is stacked against the parents and students as well….because our school officials are “well meaning” and are only trying to do the best that they can to protect their students and the community at large. So our tax dollars are used against our children and ultimately us. Take a look at what our school boards have become…. they walk lockstep with the CEO of their school. We vote them in, with only a paragraph in our local papers to let us know what kind of people they are. We give them this power, knowing absolutely nothing about them….how many young lives can they assist in destroying during their terms in office? And just how many hoops does it take the voters to get them recalled? It is just like anything else….if we want something really screwed up we call in the lawyers and give it to the government. It has taken awhile….but our schools are just as messed up as the rest of government has become. I really think that it is time for school vouchers. Private, charter and homeschoolers can take that money and educate the youngsters for a lot less than it is currently costing us. Our children would actually be learning. That is the choice that our family had to make, because of one of these zero tolerance farces. If there is one civics lesson our son learned….. Don’t ever trust the people in government who are in authority over you.
Zero tolerance for school administrators. If my kids don’t get an an A+ your fired.
I hope they ban plastic bags and shallow bath water too.
#53 – Fusion
“If the principal is indeed the one who is charging the kid with a criminal offense, then it will be his own sorry ass on the line. He won’t have immunity for pressing a criminal charge.”
Fusion – the principal is a private citizen in this scenario. He can report what he thinks is a crime to the police, he can claim that the kid committed a crime – he might even be permitted to effect a citizens’ arrest; but only the DA or the State Attorney can charge the kid with a crime.
When someone can ‘press charges’ is when they are the victim of the offense alleged, and are given the option by the DA’s office to waive prosecution or not.
I wrote the principal and he responded as follows:
“It is a Georgia state law with no room for administrator interpretation. If I don’t file charges I can be charged with a misdemeanor. Surely you are not asking me to ignore state law! I am in a nice situation don’t you think!
ET
Ed Thayer, Principal
Wheeler High School”
Now the situation is even dumber than I told him it was!
If I am not mistaken a swiss army knife is like a merit badge in boys scout.