Tuesday, November 01, 2011

On What Planet Would Normal, Reasonable People Consider This OK?

Not too far away from me is a school district that has a history of being dysfunctional. It was created only a few years ago, merging a few elementary districts with one 7-12 district to make a unified K-12 district. The 7-12 district, and at least one of the elementary districts, were dysfunctional before the merger; the hope was that with the bad blood gone, things would improve. Oh, if only that were so.

But that's only tangential to our story.

The 7-12 district in question had its own police force, and now the unified K-12 district has that police force. Wouldn't you think a school district police force, working as it does with children, would want to project an image of actually caring about children? I would think so, but then again, no one asked me:
T-shirts sold by the Twin Rivers Police Officers Association have this message: "U raise 'em, we cage 'em," surrounding a picture of a young child behind bars.
The shirts were first sold in 2009. A year later the police chief asked that they be taken off the union's web site. The police union president still had them for sale on his Facebook page as recently as this past summer.
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3 comments:

  1. mrelliott4:30 AM

    The t-shirts were totally out of line. However, speaking from someone who spent 6 years in a very dysfunctional school with a population raised in dysfunctional households that did not support education. Gangs and crime were a part of it, I could see this happening. Until you've been in an environment like this, it's hard to understand. What seems inappropriate, and is, to us, is accepted and humorous within a dysfunctional environment.

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  2. Darren6:37 AM

    I taught in the K-12 district for 4 years. It's still not acceptable.

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  3. W.R. Chandler2:17 PM

    My wife taught in the former Rio Linda Union School District which was the most FUNCTIONAL of the districts swallowed up by Twin Rivers.

    She was not happy about the merger.

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