There was a problem at William P. Tatem Elementary School in Collingswood, New Jersey, at the school\u2019s end-of-the-year class party. A 9-year-old boy saw there were brownies being served. While it wasn\u2019t reported exactly what he said about the brownies, another student claimed the remark was \u201cracist\u201d and the school called the police. \u201cHe said they were talking about brownies,\u201d says the third-grader\u2019s mother, Stacy dos Santos. \u201cWho exactly did he offend?\u201d<\/p>\n
The case, such as it is, has been forwarded to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency. School Superintendent Scott Oswald admits police have been called to district schools, which have only 1,875 students, about five times a day in recent weeks, and parents are calling on prosecutors to \u201cstop mandated criminal investigation of elementary school students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wait: \u201cmandated\u201d? Yes: school officials and the police say they\u2019ve been ordered by the Camden County Prosecutor\u2019s Office to report any incidents that \u201ccould be considered criminal.\u201d Police Chief Kevin Carey says that includes anything \u201cas minor as a simple name-calling incident that the school would typically handle internally.\u201d<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Philadelphia Inquirer<\/p>\n
Randy Cassingham adds the comment: “Childhood: now a criminal matter in Camden County.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was a problem at William P. Tatem Elementary School in Collingswood, New Jersey, at the school\u2019s end-of-the-year class party. A 9-year-old boy saw there were brownies being served. While it wasn\u2019t reported exactly what he said about the brownies, another student claimed the remark was \u201cracist\u201d and the school called the police. \u201cHe said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2708,2704,2707,2706,2705],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6947"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}