Several years ago, when I was actively practicing law, I held a discussion with a class of highly motivated and intelligent high school students (mostly upperclassmen).  My subject matter was the economic and cultural chaos wrought by the modern police state.  To my joy the students, nearly every one of them, were not only aware of the issues I covered but were deeply concerned about the world they would soon enter as adults.  Many embraced good old-fashioned anarchy as a positive response to the daily deluge of state-imposed evil.

Another thing which struck me, and which I mentioned to the young people, was how much their public, government high school resembled a prison – both in physical appearance and in operation.  Of this too they were all to aware.

It was a nice, new, modern facility in one of the trendiest parts of town.  It was where the money went when they didn’t want the private school bills.  The halls were clean, the grounds attractive, the people were pleasant.  However, I noticed things which seemed better suited for a correctional facility than a place of education.

Back then I regularly traveled around to various prisons and jails.  Most have a familiar layout and feel.  So too did this shiny new hall of academia.  The building was made of interlaced concrete blocks, bare of ornamentation – like a prison. The rectangular halls, with classrooms on either side, were laid out in wings or pods, fanning from a central hub – like a prison.  The central hub housed the administrative office in what looked like a tall glass control tower – like a prison. Near the doors were metal detectors (not in use that day) – like a prison.  The building was patrolled by armed officers – like a prison.

I had met some of these officers, all certified in law enforcement, before in professional settings.  I tried several cases stemming from “criminal” school misconduct.  The cases usually involved drugs, alcohol, cigarettes or other earth-destroying calamities.  Every single one of them was also devoid or things like probable cause, evidence, due process, and common sense.  I beat every single case.  And, it took quite the beating to win them.

Another ancient legal protection absent from modern Amerika, especially concerning students, is the prohibition against double jeopardy.  The theory, best summarized by Sir William Blackstone in the late eighteenth century was the “universal maxim of the common law of England, that no man is to be brought into jeopardy of his life more than once for the same offence.” (Emphasis mine.)  This theory is but legend now.  Our children often face triple jeopardy over things that are not crimes in the first place.  Here’s a real world example (possibly a combination of different cases, all real):

Johnny saw the school psychologist who suggested Johnny be prescribed mind-altering psychotropic drugs for his nonexistent attention deficit (in reality Johnny was just a boy).  Johnny’s doctor prescribed the narcotics, which otherwise would be considered illegal under state and federal law.  Johnny became semi-addicted.  The drugs caused his brain to slow down.  While giving him the appearance of being calm and receptive the dope also seriously impaired his health, to include his judgment. Johnny became a zombie.

Now, under the influence of these otherwise illegal drugs, practically mandated by his school, Johnny ran afoul of the school’s idiotic policy on otherwise illegal drugs.  School regulations dictate that any and all medications prescribed to a student must be held for the student’s use in the keeping of the school nurse. Johnny so kept his medicine in the school’s care and keeping.  Remember, the drugs in question diminished Johnny’s ability to rationalize and act appropriately.

One day, under the influence of these dangerous narcotics, Johnny forgot to drop off a few of his pills with the nurse.  He kept them in his book bag.  Mind you that Johnny never had any troubles whatsoever with his teachers, his classmates, or anyone else.

Out of the blue, without warning, probable cause, or a warrant, along came the local Sheriff’s department and their trusty drug-sniffing dog.  My students told me periodic drug sweeps were common in the prison…er..school.  The dog did his unlawful job well and promptly located Johnny’s pills.  The pills he was forced to take.  The pills that impaired his ability to reason.  The pills that caused him to forget to follow the procedures of the school that forced him to take the pills. Johnny was in trouble.

Jeopardy the first: Johnny had to appear at an administrative school hearing and faced expulsion or a year at the “alternative” school – like the supermax prison of the school world. Jeopardy the second, under asinine state law, as a minor with a driver’s license, Johnny’s possession of “drugs” put his license at risk and necessitated another administrative hearing before a state officer.  Third, and worst, Johnny faced a criminal proceeding and the possibility of jail time.

Luckily, Johnny had a good attorney and beat the triple threat.  He was back in class, soon weened himself off the school dope, and became a college honors student.  Others in the system are often not that lucky.  Maybe you know one of them. Maybe you were one of them.  Others have noticed this phenomenon and written about it.

Today John W. Whitehead wrote: Public School Students Are the New Inmates in the American Police State.

From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment she graduates, she will be exposed to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

If your child is fortunate enough to survive his encounter with the public schools, you should count yourself fortunate.

Most students are not so lucky.

By the time the average young person in America finishes their public school education, nearly one out of every three of them will have been arrested.

Whitehead.

Whitehead notes the utterly insane militarization of the school police, who shouldn’t even exist in the first place:

In their zeal to crack down on guns and lock down the schools, these cheerleaders for police state tactics in the schools might also fail to mention the lucrative, multi-million dollar deals being cut with military contractors such as Taser International to equip these school cops with tasers, tanks, rifles and $100,000 shooting detection systems.

Indeed, the transformation of hometown police departments into extensions of the military has been mirrored in the public schools, where school police have been gifted with high-powered M16 rifles, MRAP armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and other military gear. One Texas school district even boasts its own 12-member SWAT team.

As Whitehead states, the stories of abuse are “legion.” Students are being harassed, detained, and arrested for anything and everything.  One student was recently arrested for showing off his homemade clock at school.  Specifically, he was showing the clock off to his engineering teacher, who was duly impressed. Despite the fact the clock was obviously a time keeping device and impressed the shop teacher, its owner, a 14-year-old, was handcuffed and hauled away by police.

Child Arrested for Chronometer Possession.  BBC.

The boy in question was a known Muslim and some feared his clock was a bomb. The criminal case was dismissed after the clock was verified to be a clock not a weapon.  I imagine the boy still faces school discipline in addition to the trauma he suffered during the incident.

This story almost makes sense.  Americans today face the threat of Islamic terror, largely because their government constantly stirs the Islamic world to the point of terrorism.  The same government then trains, equips and funds the known terrorists.  Worse, the government, almost out of malicious hate for the people, then import migrants from the areas where they have fostered hate and terror.  You can see this is definitely a problem.  But, it’s a problem with the state not with an aspiring young engineer.

Your government does not care, at all.  Frequently neither does the media nor the television-numbed people themselves.  Obey those laws!  Trust the state! Arrested means guilty, period!

William L. Anderson today recounts the horror story of the arrest and unlawful prosecution by the U.S. “Justice” Department of Xiaoxing Xi, Chairman of the physics department of Temple University, on espionage charges: Paranoia and Pernicious Prosecutions: The Department of Injustice Continues its War Against the Innocent.

The once-glorious standard of American criminal law – guilty beyond a reasonable doubt – no longer exists de facto in U.S. courts, and especially in federal courts. Furthermore, federal intervention in certain legal areas – and especially when highly-politicized accusations of sexual assault are made – has made it extremely difficult for charged individuals to mount a defense, even when a charge is ludicrous on its face.

Let me further explain. Had there been a trial federal prosecutors would have presented their evidence and Dr. Xi would have had to then rebut with his evidence. However, as became painfully obvious, prosecutors had no evidence. Instead, they had “evidence” that on its face was untrue because they had the wrong material. One imagines that prosecutors and their “expert” witnesses would have given jurors a lot of scientific terminology that would have been confusing, and when jurors are confused, they usually end up siding with the prosecution, since most Americans believe that an indictment itself is “proof” of guilt.

It would have been up to Dr. Xi and his defense to prove that federal agents had presented the wrong set of blueprints. The feds would have falsely claimed that theirs was the correct set, even though by then they surely would have known they were presenting false claims. This last point is important, because it is a crime to knowingly present false information to a jury, but prosecutors never are disciplined for doing just that.

Anderson.

As Anderson notes, the feds dropped their case once it was obvious they had no evidence.  Xi pretty much lost everything – his reputation, his position, his peace of mind as an innocent American – all because of groundless charges brought without evidence.  Evidence is (or used to be) critical for a criminal case and conviction.  In my career I had similar criminal cases in federal and state courts fall apart due to a complete lack of evidence.  More on some of those in another column or two.

Many do not care about standards of evidence, due process or about the rights of people in general.  See: here, and here, and here.  That last “here” link is to a story I did about an innocent man shot by the police in Atlanta in his own home for no reason.  That narrative has played out yet again:

Fearing for their lives, California deputies opened fire on a man who was recording them with a cell phone from the garage of his home Friday, claiming they thought it was a gun.

Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies then searched the man’s home, finding no guns, before they apologized and went on their way.

Fortunately, Danny Sanchez survived the shooting, ending up with only bullet fragments in his legs, which he was having removed through surgery on Friday.

And although deputies apologized to Sanchez, they are pretty much unapologetic for their actions because, you know, officer safety.

 Carlos Miller, PINAC News.

Pitiful action by pitiful men.  Scared of a cellphone.  “Sorry we shot you.  Well, have a good day, sir!”  And the lemmings among you will still praise the deputies and chastise the victim.  “He should have obeyed the law!”  He did.  “You have to respect the police!”  No known disrespect even after they almost murdered him. Reality is doing a really poor job convincing the state-worshipers their’s is a false god.

For you, the sane, eye with distrust the machinations of government: its foreign policies; its immigration policies; all its policies; its schools; its courts; its police. All the laws and all the agents serve but the government and its owners. You and I are either obedient servants or criminal enemies of the state.

Note: This article was originally intended as two separate parts. As the subject matters – schools as prisons and more prosecutorial/police misconduct are related, I combined them, here.  This also promotes reading economy.  You’re welcome.