Leftists in Virginia have a novel approach to ending the school-to-prison pipeline. They intend to eliminate the transportation component by leaving potential inmates inside the school. As part of the Stop Snitchin’ initiative, schools won’t be required to report many criminal offenses to the police.
It will be mum’s the word as far as the outside world is concerned. School officials will work to promote “restorative justice” while victims can kiss plain old justice goodbye.
The bill to keep victims and victimizer in close proximity has already passed the leftist-controlled House of Delegates and Senate, and only awaits the signature of the governor to become law.
Law Enforcement Today made a list of crimes that formerly required reporting but are now optional. These include, “assault and battery that results in bodily injury, sexual assault, death, shooting, stabbing, cutting, or wounding of any person, stalking, threats, firearm, drug and alcohol violations are also included.”
The Democrat’s sanctuary for the violent isn’t limited to the school campus either. Offenses on school buses or at school-sponsored events would also be included in the legislative mandated cover-up.
This is just another instance of the left imposing their idea of ‘reform’ on an area of public life the majority was unaware was in need of reform – or in this instance repeal.
Who is the intended ‘reform’ beneficiary? Certainly not the victims or their families. As far as they’re concerned, authorities could open a pumping station outside the high school if that would help increase pipeline velocity and speed the ejection of predators. Keeping discipline problems in the classroom isn’t a teacher preference either. This only benefits an oppositional, budding criminal class and their negligent parents.
Democrats have gone from the War on Crime to our current War on Victims.
The new procedure places the burden of going to the police on the victim, rather than the authorities. What’s worse it will make the victim look as if they are the one out for blood – since the school didn’t think the offense merited police involvement – instead of the thug who drew blood.
Vicki Manning, a Virginia Beach school board member who hasn’t lost her mind, said “victims are going to be further victimized under this bill and the perpetrators are going to be emboldened.”
The absolutely infuriating part of this turn-their-child’s-other-cheek policy is we already know how the policy ends.
The last stop is Parkland High School.
The fools that ran that school system designed their own end-the-school-to-prison-pipeline. It was wildly successful. The Boston Globe found in the year just prior to the Parkland school system’s emancipation proclamation there were 1,056 school-based arrests. By the 2015-16 school year the number had plunged to 385.
The only fly in the ointment was student deaths by gunfire went from zero before implementation of the plan to 17 after the school-to-prison-pipeline was closed, because the Parkland school shooter took full advantage of the sanctuary policy.
The shooter assaulted students twice with no arrest. Made repeated threats with no arrest. He threatened to kill people with no arrest. No reporting and no arrests meant there was no record in the NCIC system regarding his past run-ins with the law. Since he was a blank slate the shooter didn’t even get swept into the FBI’s ‘catch and release’ anti-terrorism program after the Bureau fielded a tip Buying a gun was no problemo.
What use are the “universal background checks” on gun sales the Virginia left is demanding without corresponding universal crime reports?
James A. Bacon ran the numbers on the Department of Education’s “restorative justice” school discipline initiative. This requires victims sit across from their victimizers while a woolly brained social worker overlooks the intimidation inherent in the arrangement.
Bacon found “restorative justice” only restores nothing. “I compiled one key indicator – the number of assault & battery (no injury) incidents reported – which serves as a rough proxy for disruptive behavior as a whole. The trend line is startling. The number of incidents has nearly tripled in just three years – from 870 to 2,423 [assaults].”
The Democrat’s new See-Something-Say-Nothing policy will only make matters much worse.
Most Virginia leftists never reveal plans for open borders bathrooms or decriminalizing crime. I give Del. Mike Mullin (D-Pardon) credit. On his campaign website, he said he’s “working to end the school-to-prison pipeline.”
But Mullin didn’t say that meant reversing the flow.
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Copyright 2020 Michael Shannon, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
Michael Shannon is a commentator and public relations consultant, and is the author of “A Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times.” He can be reached at [email protected].
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