Following up on the East high school beatdown

The influential Ann of Althouse, retired UW Law school professor and bloggueresse, asks “Why don’t schools call the police when crimes are committed in school?”

The short answer is that Madison WI schools a year ago enlisted in the War on Police. With the connivance of Madison’s woke city government, the school board evicted school resource police officers. Let Ann tell it: 

There’s an interview with Tim LeMonds, MMSD Director of Communications. If I understand him correctly …  the school’s policy is not to call the police unless a weapon is involved or police are needed to stop the fight. The message I hear is that there’s a plan never to call the police if attacks are quick and done with bare hands. The video shows a defenseless child getting pummeled at his desk. As LeMonds put it:

“When the attack took place, the teacher reached out for assistance and by the time staff were able to respond the incident was over.” 

Althouse asks: “How is that a reason not to call the police?!” 

The Werkes answers: Student discipline has been sucked into a bureaucratic black hole. Woe to the educator who does call police! We reproduce the critical response incident flowchart. It is contained within the school district’s 111-page MMSD safety plan. One Hundred and Eleven pages! At the very least, one hopes that each and every one of 4,985 school district employees (including the hot lunch ladies) are given a laminated copy like the kind the football coaches carry on the sidelines. Sort of a Chinese restaurant menu.

Merely working through the labyrinthine flow chart will eat up enough time for the victim to suffer a good pummeling, the perps to dissolve into the student body, and emasculated educators to keep their jobs. It is critical race theory in action, designed to frustrate justice. (There should be a hunk of cheese for the employee who works his way through this maze.) See if you can find where the chart directs: Call The Damn Police for heaven’s sake! We looked; we cannot.

Once was a time when the teacher controlled his/her classroom. The wimpoled Catholic nun with a ruler. AKA: The Good Old Days. Blaska ran for school board on that premise in 2019. Lost big time (Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown!) to Ali Muldrow, who is now school board president and chiefly responsible for the chaos of our public schools. 

Today in Madison WI, something called a critical response team diffuses responsibility to the point of evanescence. A Woke version of Alphonse and Gaston routine. Who be the critical response team? These guys:

• Chief of Staff
• Chief of Schools – Operation
• Director of Student Services Operations and Accountability
• Director of Physical, Mental, and Behavioral Health
• Director of Media and Government Relations
• Director of Safety and Security
• Coordinator of Intensive Support and Critical Response
• Public Information Officer
• Coordinator of Cross Systems & Critical Response.

---

UPDATE: A reader points out, correctly, that MMSD policies & actions are in clear violation of Wisconsin State Statute 48.981, which mandates the reporting of any assault on a child under the age of 18 to a law enforcement agency or county social services.

---

Ann of Althouse’s Bottom Line: “There used to be a police officer — a student resource officer — stationed in the school, but last summer, the school board voted to end the program — after it was characterized as a racial problem. … Now, we’re seeing how the school operates, resisting calling the police when there is obvious violent crime. This is an untenable solution, victimizing peaceful students.”

Who YOU gonna call?