Kids Being Kids

Getting caught swearing at Caldwell High School gets you a $200 fine, or so I have been told by several sources I would consider reliable.  I believe you can do eight hours of a community service as an alternative, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.  A quick look at Caldwell ISD’s website wasn’t helpful.

A month or so ago, Houston attorney Murray Newman had a post about this very same topic.  I call it the criminalization of youth behavior.  That’s pretty boring, I need to come up with something better.

School seems to be different than 1998 when I got out of high school.  It was a pre-Columbine age.  We had a student get stabbed my senior year, but that was it.  There were no lockdowns.  We had security guards, but they were criminal justice students from Michigan State or people who (I assume) couldn’t cut it at the police academy.  There was no school district police force.   There was one deputy assigned to the school, but he only had to show up if he was actually needed.

I’ve recently had several juvenile defendants arrested for graffiti on school grounds.  The parents, and the students are amazed to learn that if little Johnny was an adult when he tagged the school, he could be looking at up to two years in a state jail.  In fact, they’re amazed that little Johnny is even facing charges.  “Why doesn’t the school just punish him,” is a fairly common question I’ve heard while doing Juvenile cases.  “Why are we even dealing with this,” is a fairly common question the Burleson County Attorney hears from me every time I get a case that (in my humble opinion) should have been dealt with at the school level.

I don’t quite know when schools decided to stop punishing students themselves and started to let the courts do it.  Sometime after Columbine and before I got out of law school, I assume.  Legislatures all over the country were probably bombarded by Helen Lovejoy types.  The only sensible solution was to create new laws and jack up the penalties on the existing laws.

Was it a success?  If the goal of it all was to turn usual school problems into felonies, well, then mission accomplished.

Free Advice: Chilifest

This isn’t legal advice, you have to pay for that.  But this is some free advice that might prevent you from needing expensive legal advice.

Chilifest is this weekend, the population of Snook is going to grow from 600-odd people to 30,000 – 40,000.  There’s a great lineup too.  Robert Earl Keen, Pat Green, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Stoney LaRue, and Reckless Kelly.  I was planning on going until my Michigan State Spartans made the Final Four and that takes precedent.

Law enforcement in the Brazos Valley also has some big plans for this weekend.  The No Refusal Weekend is coming to Brazos and Burleson Counties.  To my knowledge, this is the first time there’s been a No Refusal weekend in Brazos or Burleson County.  I’m actually surprised it’s taken this long for it to get here.

College Station PD has six officers out there focusing solely on catching people driving while intoxicated.

The College Station Police Department will utilize six officers to focus on DWI violations. If a DWI stop is made, the suspect will be requested to give a sample of their breath or blood in order to determine the alcohol concentration or presence of a controlled substance or drug in their body. If the suspect refuses, a warrant may be sought for a blood sample. If the Magistrate issues a warrant, a blood sample will be taken from the suspect to provide evidence in the DWI case.

I wonder how many warrants won’t be signed.  I’m guessing zero.

Snook PD is running No Refusal Weekend as well.

The department has assigned a seven member “DWI No Refusal” task force. The task force will be in addition to the seven officers normally patrolling the city’s streets in the evening.

“We have have two judges on Standby,” said Sgt. Couch.

The judges will ready to sign search warrants for DWI suspects who won’t voluntarily give a breath or blood sample.

I like that they say the judges are all set to sign the warrants if drivers don’t comply.  It’s not that the judges will consider the warrants, it’s that the judges WILL sign the warrants.  So much for seperation of powers.

And they’ve already stuck two needles in peoples arms.

Although police said Currie later agreed to a breath test, two others didn’t. Their blood was drawn by order of a search warrant. An idea some people may not like- but don’t necessarily have to worry about.

“If you don’t drive impaired, you wont be contacted by us, you won’t go to jail, its that simple,” said Brown.

The Texas Department of Public Safetly will have around 30 officers in various shifts patrolling Highway 60 between Snook and College Station, during Chilifest.

Chilifest offers a park and ride service that runs until two hours after the last act.  My advice?  Take advantage of it.  I don’t support vampire blood draws, and I really don’t support these weekends where the powers-that-be have gotten together for the vampire blood draws.  But if there’s a service out there that can keep you from getting a needle in your arm, it might be a good idea to use it.