I did not know about this story until last week. A 14 year old girl from Wisconsin was arrested for disorderly conduct for refusing to stop text messaging in class. I thought this story was made up at first because it is so ridiculous. After hearing the story from a friend I saw the girl at her high school on television as the news anchor was discussing the story. The police officer's justification for arresting her was for lying, saying she did not possess the phone, not obeying the teacher, and disrupting the class.
This story was such a joke to me at first I literally could not get my head around it. When I was in high school I would see students text during the middle of class multiple times. The typical class size in my high school was thirty to forty students per class so students texting seemed to get away with it all the time. If a student had been seen texting by the teacher the worst thing that would happen is getting your phone taken away for two days.
A police officer's job is to protect and serve. Arresting a 14 year old girl for texting is in no possible way protecting or serving the girl. I've noticed that many police officers spend a lot of time on minor problems. Instead of going to a high school to arrest a girl for texting shouldn't the police officer be out on the streets trying to arrest drug dealers and problems that are actually an issue?
I think it's OK for the school to have called the cops. The girl had disobeyed the rule, and then she further disrupted the class by refusing to obey the teacher's order to turnover the phone. In the meantime, the taxpayers' money was wasted, since the class was disrupted and the other children were not getting the education the tax payers were providing them. Schools should not be zones of toleration where somebody's precious little Susie or Johnny gets to disturb the peace anymore than people are allowed to disturb the tranquility of the neighborhood with loud parties after 1:00.
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