We have become so sensitive in today’s politically correct culture that the police were called on a New Jersey third-grader who made a comment about brownies.
The incident happened during an end-of-the-year class party at William P. Tatem Elementary School in Collingswood, New Jersey. Brownies were served, which is when the comment was made.
“He said they were talking about brownies. … Who exactly did he offend?” asked Stacy dos Santos, the mother of the boy who made the comment.
She said a police officer came to the school to talk to her 9-year-old son, and that the comment was about the brownies and not about skin color. The student’s father, who is Brazillian, was contacted by Collingswood police later that day. The incident was also referred to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency.
All this over a comment about brownies.
It stems from a crackdown instituted on May 25, when school officials and police said they had been instructed to report even the smallest of potentially criminal incidents. Police Chief Kevin Carey said officials were to report even something “as minor as a simple name-calling incident that the school would typically handle internally.”
Officials were also told to report “just about every incident” to Child Protection. Because of the ridiculous new demands, Superintendent Scott Oswald estimated that on some days, police were called up to five times a day. He called the demands “a pretty clear directive” but said it was “questioned vehemently.”
A month later, Mayor James Maley insisted that the new directive was just supposed to “reinforce the applicability” of the school’s memorandum of agreement with the police and “not to expand its terms.”
For dos Santos, she plans to send her son to another school because he was so “traumatized” by the event. She is also demanding an apology from the school for the way her son was treated.
“I’m not comfortable with the administration [at Tatem]. I don’t trust them and neither does my child,” dos Santos told Philly.com. “He was intimidated, obviously. There was a police officer with a gun in the holster talking to my son, saying, ‘Tell me what you said.’ He didn’t have anybody on his side.”
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
