And to reporters Jessica Blanchard and Casey McNerthney, for this special report.
Here are the first three paragraphs:
King County prosecutors on Wednesday charged two Seattle teenagers in a sexual assault on a developmentally disabled female classmate in a Rainier Beach High School restroom in June -- an incident that school officials never reported to police.
A Seattle P-I review of police and Seattle Public Schools records shows that case isn't the only likely crime that wasn't reported to police. While a majority of incidents on school campuses were recorded into the district's safety and security logs and reported to police if necessary, some incidents weren't -- including cases of assaults and strong-arm robberies.
In a few cases, parents or victims say school officials urged them not to report the crimes to police at all.
But you'll want to read the whole thing. In fact, you may even want to buy a copy of the PI, just for this report.
(Incidentally, it was good to see that the PI included, in the on-line version of the story, a link to a PDF with four of the incident reports.)
Posted by Jim Miller at September 27, 2007 09:58 AM | Email ThisThe Demographics of American Newspapers:
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the
country and who are verygood at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but
don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their
statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the
country -- if they could find the time -- and if they didn't have to leave
Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country
and did apoor job of it, thank you very much.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's
running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on
the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the
country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while
intoxicated.
9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but
need the baseball scores.=20
10. The Pee Eye is read by people who aren't sure there is
country . . or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that
they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are
handicapped
minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from
any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not
Republicans.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery
store.
12. The Seattle Times is read by people who have recently caught a fish and
need something in which to wrap it.
When any practitioner, county coroner or medical examiner, law enforcement officer, professional school personnel, registered or licensed nurse, social service counselor, psychologist, pharmacist, licensed or certified child care providers or their employees, employee of the department, juvenile probation officer, placement and liaison specialist, responsible living skills program staff, HOPE center staff, or state family and children's ombudsman or any volunteer in the ombudsman's office has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency or to the department as provided in RCW 26.44.040.
SHALL REPORT, they don't have the f'in option under law.
If not why isn't (s)he? They actively covered up the crime after the fact.
Posted by: CrazyFool on September 27, 2007 12:56 PMIt's all for the children remember that.
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on September 27, 2007 01:27 PMI personally know of three injury producing assaults in the U-District within the last year and a half. Fear of retaliation from the assailants prevented the filing of charges in one case. The media avoided any mention of these incidents. It occurs to me that the local merchants association might be involved in the suppression of crime reporting.
The Northgate area suffers far more assaults than one would suspect from media reporting since many incidents go un-reported.
I once enquired about the horrific incident at G-I Joe's near Northgate about two years ago. The officer in charge told me that it was "only a wilding". Though one victim was hauled away on a gurney, near death.
I am also frustrated by the fact that the media often do not report a full description of the perpetrators when these crimes actually do make it to the news.
Posted by: Bart Cannon on September 27, 2007 03:22 PMBut a playground scuffle is also, technically, an asault.
I doubt anyone in this forum wants playground scuffles or bullies stealing lunch money to be dealt with by the police. This kind of thing can be dealt with better by schools, parents and the students themselves than by police.
I'm not saying that schools do a good job of this. We have all been the victims of bullies. There will always be bullying as long as there are more than two kids at a school.
But bringing the police in to every little squable is a liberal postion, not a conservative, limited government position.
I won't defend the government schools for covering up this rape, but there are some behavioral incidents that are best left to the school or family level.
And the best thing for society would be for more parents to send their kids to private schools. Competition is the only thing the government school interest groups will actually listen to.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on September 27, 2007 04:27 PMAnd no, schools don't take student abuse of other students seriously enough. i was always thoroughly unimpressed with that they let kids do to other kids. It had occurred to me that if adults did the same stuff to each other there would be some arrests made. The parents have to pretty much step in and put a stop to things because the principals give it lipservice and then blow it off.
Posted by: Michele on September 27, 2007 07:46 PMI learned this over and over again throughout my school career.
Always being 20 to 30 pounds less than everybody else, and 3 to 4 inches short didn't help. Nor did the fact that I wore glasses and spent most of my time reading books.
I rapidly learned that if a bully attacked you the teachers would would do nothing unless they witnessed it themselves. (Which they never did cause bullies are smarter then TV shows give them credit for). However if you defended yourself after being attacked you'd be suspended.
Oh and if you watch Fox News last night apparently Mothers/Older Siblings can't even protect you anymore.
It's scary to be a small boy in school these days.
I remember at Finn Hill Junior High I was nearly murdered by a bully who know I stay at the school library until it closed every day (and then walked down to Thoreau Elementary to collect my younger siblings). So he waited in ambush for me at the top of 2 flights of concrete stairs. He attacked me and threw me down those stairs- and it was clear that he had planned it out.
If not for the grace of God I would have been severely injured or killed. As I was falling everything slowed down. I reached out with my hand to grab something, anything, and my hand found the railing. Suddenly time sped back up and I rotated and slammed into the railing as my grip redirected my momentum. I finally got my feet back under me.
I looked up and Chris was stating down at me, obviously in shock that I hadn't fallen to my doom. I turned and ran.
The teachers and police all said they couldn't do anything because no one saw it.
I realized that nobody could protect me but me.
So I publicly challenged Chris (who weighed at at least 110 pounds- I weigh 70lbs) to a fist fight after school. The students gathered to watch.
I had thought it all out before hand, I knew I was going to lose, Chris beat me up pretty bad- but with all the kids watching he didn't dare hurt me too bad. I fought as hard as I could and kept getting up- I got a couple shots in and Chris wasn't as used to fighting as I was (he wasn't the first bully- that started in Pre-school). So after that he stayed away from me. He knew he could beat me, but he also knew that it wouldn't be any fun for him.
That's the lesson I learned from public education- any surprise I became a conservative?
Posted by: Cicero on September 27, 2007 08:28 PMI didn't go through what he did, but I was beat up and bullied and ganged up on, even though I was a tall nerd.
Boys know they need to be responsible for their own defense. As adults, this leads us to defend gun ownership rights. The teachers can not be everywhere, and neither can the police.
Police have a place in a well-ordered society, but ultimate responsibility for your own defense, and that of your family, lies with the parents, and most often, the husband.
Making fist-fights or even one-sided bullying among 8th graders punishable by the police and courts is absurd and will not work.
But the cops should get involved when bones are broken, guns or knives are used, or kids are raped as in the story above.
Getting a bloody nose or a black eye in 5th grade should not be cause to call the police. Bring the parents in on it instead.
Boys need to learn the lesson about the importance of self defense early, while they are young and aren't likely to do much permanent damage to each other. By fighting it out and learning to deal with it themselves, as brave Cicero above did, they will learn that they are ultimately responsible for their own defense, not the nanny state.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on September 27, 2007 09:06 PMMy experience is that the Swiss are fairly homogeneous and don't really exhibit an understanding of other groups.
1. A primarly issue is Black on Black crime and it involves victims as well as perps. I agree with you that many secular progressives' focus on perp rights and not the effect that the actions have on victims. It is not so much, Black perps being protected as Black victims being valued less or for that matter poor people being valued less. Several homeless people and prostitutes have been killed, were their perps protected because they were Black? Many of the killers were not Black. Wasn't Ridgeway white?
Gee, was Phil Spector protected because he was white or was it because like OJ he had the resources to buy justice.
2. Black on Black crime, despite the sensational cases often reported is the more likely scenario.
Here is one example:
"Commentary: In What's Possibly the Worst Black-on-Black Crime in Decades, Why are Al & Jesse So Silent?
Date: Thursday, July 26, 2007
By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com
"Our crime rate is far too high."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote those words in his 1958 book, "Stride Toward Freedom." He was referring to the disproportionate amount of crime among black Americans, an issue King didn't flinch from facing.
Nearly 50 years later, King might be inclined to follow that sentence with the words "and some of those crimes are unbelievably heinous."
Indeed, you have to wonder what King would have made of this story from The New York Times on July 19 about one of the most horrendous and brutal cases of black-on-black crime I've ever heard of in my 55 years. The incident occurred at a public housing project called Dunbar Village in West Palm Beach, Florida.
"After dark on June 18, the police say, as many as 10 armed assailants repeatedly raped a Haitian immigrant in her apartment complex at Dunbar Village ... They took cell phone pictures of their acts. They burned the woman's skin and (her 12-year-old son's) eyes with cleaning fluid, forced them to lie naked together in the bathtub, hit them with a broom and a gun and threatened to set them on fire...."
"If you're wondering why the traditional gaggle of black misleaders didn't dash before the nearest television cameras to condemn what might well hold up as the worst black-on-black crime of the decade, don't bother. You already know the answer."
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/sayitloud/kane726
3. You are correct that the school system is failing many. It is riddled with secular progressive ideology which too often patronizes low-income children and children of color while at the same time mocking or deameaning the very values which will lead to strong families and a better education outcome. I agree that junk food is probably not healthy, but an all out assault on the junk food of the mind, hip hop is poo- pooed. The "Great Society' that great experiement in secular progressive social planning has failed miserably and from time to time the local rags in glaring detail report that failure. I have had ongoing "discussions" with many secular progressives here. In my opinion, they want Blacks to be useful idiots who are dumb, dependent and dependable when it comes to mining votes. No, it is not so much the perps being protected and the victims being kept in their place. Meanwhile, Sharpton/Jackson head for another microphone.
Interesting moniker, Swiss, are you any more attuned to the world outside your canton, than your namesake?
Posted by: WVH on September 27, 2007 11:08 PM