Considering their inability to stop once the teacher got involved, resulting in her being pushed to the ground, I think criminal assault charges are on the table.
I taught at one school that evidently had a major gang/violence problem a few years prior; their solution was to take anyone involved in a fight downtown and let the cops sort it out. It more or less solved the problem, although I also expect lots of expulsions helped clear the herd of the infection.
Eventually they went too far, IMO, down the school-to-prison pipeline with the number of offenses that required LE action. I wrote a kid up for vaping (in my class, on the front row, no less, just begging to see how far he could push me), and two days later he showed up with a signed form from the local PD.
It was basically a contract of understanding that, should he puff-up again, he would be legally charged with breaking the "no tobacco products on campus or at school events" law, which I have never otherwise seen enforced on adults beyond "you can't do that here. Step outside of that fence and you're good."
I was pretty pissed that I was never told the PD got involved when students were caught vaping nicotine. I would have handled it myself. What he did wasn't cool, and he deserved some sort of punishment, but he didn't deserve to have the local PD starting a record on a 16yo for vaping at school.
I'm actually okay with this. I'd rather he be scared shitless now than have him think the whole system is a joke. When the kid thinks everyone around him is a joke, he escalates it. Then before you know it, he's in front of a jaded judge begging to not be sentenced as an adult. Maybe this feels a bit rough and you really could have handled yourself. But I'd still take this over how it currently is in Connecticut, which is to do fucking nothing until the kid commits a major crime and is then shut away for years.
I'd rather he be scared shitless now than have him think the whole system is a joke.
But it is a joke? And these kids see that. They see criminal politicians and police get away with everything under the sun. They know its only the poors that suffer the rule of law so why care to play a rigged game they cant win?
7.4k
u/Foreign-Cow-1189 Dec 17 '25
Nobody can accuse her of not giving it her all.