Principal decides she doesn’t like zero tolerance after all
Cecilia Beaman, principal at Pacific Middle School in the Highline Public School District, found out just what zero tolerance is like when her bread knife was found by Transportation Security Agents during a pre-flight security screening.
This past weekend she and several other chaperones took 37 middle school students to a Heritage Festival band competition in California. The trip included two days at Disneyland.
During the stay she made sandwiches for the kids and was careful to pack the knives she used to prepare those sandwiches in her checked luggage. She says she even alerted security screeners that the knives were in her checked bags and they told her that was OK.
But Beaman says she couldn’t find a third knife. It was a 5 1/2 inch bread knife with a rounded tip and a serrated edge. She thought she might have lost or misplaced it during the trip.
On the trip home, screeners with the Transportation Security Administration at Los Angeles International Airport found it deep in the outside pocket of a carry-on cooler. Beaman apologized and told them it was a mistake.
“You’ve committed a felony,” Beaman says a security screener announced. “And you’re considered a terrorist.”
Beaman will be fined $500 for the felony infraction as well as being placed on a TSA security list. Her statements ring a bell with anybody who has read the reactions of students who have been hit with the zero tolerance bat.
“This is not right,” she told us. It’s not right!”
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“I’m a 57-year-old woman who is taking care of 37 kids,” she told them. “I’m not gonna commit a terrorist act.”
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And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said ‘not at this point … you don’t have any’.”
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“This is not the way my country should be treating me,” she said.
Let’s see if I can word the proper ZT responses to her objections:
1) The rules are necessary to keep order. Of course you don’t think it is right when it happens to you. The only people who object to zero tolerance are the ones affected by it.
2) It does not matter what your intent was. You knew about the rule and you broke it.
3) You do not get all of your rights here. In order to do our jobs and maintain a safe environment we have custodial powers over you.
4) You brought it on yourself. You had plenty of opportunity to avoid the situation and were advised about the rules several times. Don’t forget that everything that happened is your fault for breaking the rules.
If she had been a student at her own school and been found to have that bread knife she would have faced serious consequences according to the school policy:
1. The principal/designee shall place the student on emergency expulsion.
2. The principal/designee shall notify the parents/guardians and request an immediate conference.
3. The principal/designee may impose long-term suspension of ninety days unless expulsion or a lesser number of days is warranted.
4. The principal/designee shall notify appropriate law enforcement personnel through the district security office.
That’s just for a first offense. If it happens a second time the student is automatically expelled.
(Tip credit to solara7)
All I have to say is…what comes around, goes around! It’s Karma, baby!
Ah, irony. Madame Principal, hear yourself speak.
The smallest violin in the world is playing a sad tune for her.
ha ha ha ha ha
My father is a TSA Screener at LAX. In that case zt is a matter of safety for thousands of people an hour.I’m sure a terrorist could do alot of damage with a butter knife.It would be alot easier on the “innocent” people if they would wear little signs that read “terrorist” but since they don’t we all just have to deal with the little inconveniences, such as double checking our luggage.I also think she should be a better role model for her students, and accept her punishment the same way she would expect them to, with her mouth shut.
Amusement at the irony of the situation is fine, but serious glee is out of line. ZT is a bad policy in the schools and in the society as a whole; it is never good. In both cases it is a method used to protect “our children†“our safetyâ€Â. A skilled individual could do harm with a serrated butter knife, a skilled individual can do serious harm with a pencil or a rolled up newspaper (see the history of the OSS). I understand the TSA’s position, but we have a more serious problem here. If she indeed has no constitutional rights then the terrorists have won. A penalty without recourse, presumption of guilt and summary punishment by the “arresting officer†without checks and balances is dangerously un-American. Freedom always costs something and involves both risk and sacrifice. Rather than sacrifice our national principles (and principals) for the perception of safety; I say choose to remain free Americans and accept an infinitesimally small amount of individual risk to ourselves. After 9/11 nobody will take over a passenger airplane unless all the passengers are dead, my grandmother will personally gum them into submission, I’m not kidding. There must be a way to protect ourselves with out chucking the constitution.
The American Way is to suck it up and deal with it when you’re abused by the government? It seems like this woman might realise the idiocy of ZT. Are you never allowed to change your mind? I hardly think it would befitting a role model to ignore it when they find a fault within their own beliefs. It seems a bit uncompassionate to gloat when someone - anyone at all - is ensnared in unfair laws.
Additionally, you don’t know how ZT rules are enforced at her school. Are there any stories of ZT abuses from this school? The policy does seem to allow for some judgment of a situation.
When a superindent expels a student saying, “This is a bad situation but rules are rules,” he realises that there is an unfortunate situation taking place, he does not gloat and brag that he’s just ruined some innocent’s kid life.
People on the other side are people too. I’m not even on the other side, far from it, but have some humanity, people.
–adam
Yes there are ways. But people are too cowardly to go down those routes because they involve self-defense and self-reliance.
Shadowhawk: I think it’s the self-reliance part that people don’t like. Lawd knows we shouldn’t have to do things ourselves as autonomous individuals.
Why bring a knife anyway? You can get any condiment as well as peanut butter and jelly in a squirt bottle/tube.
Beautiful is all I can say but I do feel bad for her because as a convicted felon, she may lose her job. ZT is evil and absolutely needs opponents such as school principals before real reform has a chance. I’ll keep dong my thing here in Central New York as an ex-school board president to spread the word. Rick
Sorry, the word was supposed to be “doing” on the previous post. Rick
Jim and solara7 rock.
I don’t dispute that the bumper sticker is right, stuff happens. But, we’ve set the bar so low and have refused to have the guts to make individual decisions that we’ve turned into a society of quislings.
Wake up and take control of your lives. Turning the ability to punish to those who have no ability to make judgements is folly.
I am w/ Hilary “a skilled individual can do serious harm with a pencil or a rolled up newspaper” I have two pencil leads in my leg from Jr Hi. A pen or pencil to the arteries in someones neck or an eye would do a lot of damage.
“And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said ‘not at this point … you don’t have any’.”
…This is quite troubling indeed.
What goes around, comes around
Thanks to Zero Intelligence for making my day with this story. An educrat got busted under a zero tolerance policy of sorts, this time belonging to the TSA. She violated procedures and brought a butter knife onboard the plane, and since Americans can …
The way the Constitution is written, it’s obvious that back then they thought that no sane individual would allow government to have the kind of power inherent in the TSA…IMO, they should have included a clause in the definition of Treason to include any attempt to knowingly subvert the Constitution. That’d stop quite a few of the insanities of modern government in their tracks, from Congress all the way down to the teachers in an elementary school.
That wouldn’t help, because these days, the Constitution says whatever the 9 trained monkeys in black robes in Washington say it says.
hey Dweeb, it’s the FIVE trained monkey’s in black robes.
soon to be 6
Actually, it’s any five of the nine on any given day.
The TSA and everything that accompanies it is a monument to impotence.
How many terrorists have been caught by the TSA? Ted Kennedy does not count. how many thousands have been inconvenienced, humilitated, arrested and embarrassed by these “professionals.”
BTW, how many times has the TSA found real weapons in luggage as part of their routine to check the effectiveness of their procedures? ANSWER: Z E R O !
I have zero tolerance for the TSA and any other governmental intrusion into my life.
We are creating a nation of sheep and lemmings. Anyone that can see any good in goverment intruding on our lives is part of the problem. it is NOT the Supreme Court, the appellate courts, or any other court, legislature or school board.
We have met the enemy and he is us. Pogo
As long as perpetuating their own fannies they’ll never make a rational decision. Throw the bums out! I’d rather have problems from wrong decisions made honestly than the problems I’m facing from supposed professional. Wake up America.
Cheers,
Steve J