A Children's Treasury Of Children Injured By People Who Care About Children's Safety

We are starting to think that maybe school safety demonstrations are not healthy for children, especially this "Red Ribbon Week" thing that's supposed to scare them away from drugs. In California and Indiana, some exceptionally well-thought-out combinations of law enforcement and little kids didn't go so great. On the upside, the kids at those schools got a free bonus demonstration of how EMTs and ambulance crews work.

In Chino, California, a student walked up to a police motorcycle and pulled the trigger on an AR-15 rifle mounted to the bike. The rifle discharged, and three kids at the school received minor injuries when they were hit by metal fragments when the bullet hit a metal plate on the motorcycle. One was treated at the scene for scrapes, and two were briefly hospitalized -- one with an eye injury. The officer who visited the school failed to follow department guidelines for stowing weapons, so hey, there's a good safety lesson right there.

And in Brazil, Indiana, an 11-year-old boy was bitten by a police K-9 dog during a field trip to the Clay County Courthouse, where a judge decided it would be a nifty idea to show the kids just how police search for the drugs. A report by the dog's handler, Ray Walters, made it absolutely clear that the blame lay completely with the 5th-grader:

the officer and his K-9 partner, Max, as well as another K-9 team were requested by Clay County Superior Court Judge J. Blaine Akers to carry out a simulated raid of a party with actors in place to help "educate the Clay County fifth-graders on drug awareness."

He added the juveniles in the scenario met with officers prior to the start and were asked to remain still when the dogs searched for narcotics.

Got that? They told the kids not to move. And then they hid a "very small amount of illegal drugs" on one of the kids, and the K-9 dogs sniffed 'em out. They had four scenarios planned out, and the first two went great. But darn it, the 11-year-old kid in the third group did not follow simple instructions:  

"As I got closer to the actors, Max began searching the juveniles," according to the officer's report. "The first male juvenile began moving his legs around as Max searched him. When the male began moving his legs, (this is what) I believe prompted Max's action to bite the male juvenile on the left calf."

Kids these days. They just won't hold perfectly still when you put illegal drugs on them and have a police dog sniff them. How are they going to learn anything about safety if they flinch when you clearly tell them not to move?

Brazil Police Chief Clint McQueen felt all kinds of bad about the unfortunate dog bite:

"It was an unfortunate accident ... Wish it hadn't happened like that but it did. We are trying to evaluate (the incident) to make sure nothing like this happens again."

But hey, nothing to worry about, really, because as McQueen pointed out, the exercise was conducted "under exclusive control and supervision of members of the court and law enforcement." These are professionals who know exactly what they're doing, and it's hardly their fault if a stupid kid can't handle a bit of sniffing from a dog that is trained to take down criminals.

Besides, it's really no big deal, because the police report says the boy's mother (the local reporter didn't bother interviewing her):

was very calm and polite," the officer's reported stated. "She asked me what had happened and I explained exactly as I have here in my report. She replied with 'it's OK, accidents happen.' She stated that her son was very tough and everything would be fine."

No harm, no foul. Hope that little whippersnapper learns not to fuck around with police dogs anymore.

[ Press-Enterprise.com / Brazil Times via Alternet ]