According to the Savage Pacer’s Police calls from the Dec. 24 edition, a 13 year old girl was charged with underage tobacco possession after being caught with a lighter and cigarettes following an incident at a local junior high located on the Savage/Burnsville border.
From the article:
Dec. 14: A 13-year-old girl was cited for underage possession of tobacco while she was at Eagle Ridge Junior High. The girl allegedly pulled a lighter out of her pocket and lit it near another student’s face, threatening to burn her. The student told a teacher about the incident and school administration spoke with the girl. The girl admitted to having the lighter, and when she was asked to empty her pockets, an aluminum container with 14 cigarettes inside was found.
Do you find it surprising that a teenager who threatened to burn a another student with a lighter later found on her person was only charged with underage tobacco possession? Do you think the original claim was blown out of proportion based on the final charges? If the school decided to handle the incident in-house don’t you think the tobacco should have been the issue which was done internally and the threat of bodily harm is the one which should have garnered the charge? While we have discussed this sort of officer discretion before do you really think the right move was made here?
Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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December 28th, 2011 at 7:22 am
What I find interesting is the disparity between the handling of her tobacco charge on the 14th, and the handling of a tobacco charge on the 15th against another student. The second student, found with a partially smoked cigar, was not charged, as the school was going to handle the discipline.
As far as the assault charge goes, it may be a case where it is one person’s word against another’s. Perhaps the smoker (who admitted having the lighter) is known to have greater veracity than the accuser. A report was probably drafted, and the State may charge the assault later after evaluating the evidence. The cigarette charge on the other hand is a no brainer. She had the goods.
December 28th, 2011 at 8:21 am
I don’t know that lighting a lighter near a person’s face constitutes harm and calling it a threat is pretty subjective. Unless the “threatened” student lacks the ability to blow and also has no arms to push it away, I hardly see how one could hurt another with a lighter.
I would totally understand it if it was a flamethrower though.
December 28th, 2011 at 9:14 am
Bill, do I have to remind you what the word “allegedly” means in the article? Maybe the PD knows more than you do about what really happened.
December 28th, 2011 at 9:38 am
lefty – You don’t burn people with the flame on the lighter, but rather the hot metal end.
Matt- It doesn’t matter what the “accused” has really done, they are a perpetrator and in our society guilt depends on how the “victim” perceives the situation.
December 28th, 2011 at 9:43 am
How do you know they are a perpetrator? I’m not saying I have any reason to doubt the alleged victim’s account of the story, but I don’t have any reason to outright believe it either. What if the whole thing was fabricated? Then do we still go on how the victim perceives the situation? Again, I have no reason to doubt their story, and if true I feel for the victim who was threatened and I also am saddened by the fact that a 13 year old child would be compelled to do such a thing.
December 28th, 2011 at 9:50 am
Fast Times at ERJH It certainly was a busy week at ERJH!
From the Savage Pacer:
Dec. 12: A student reported that $50 had been stolen from his wallet while he was at Eagle Ridge Junior High
Dec. 14: A student reported that her $100 cell phone was stolen while she was at Eagle Ridge Junior High
Dec. 14: A 13-year-old girl was cited for underage possession of tobacco while she was at Eagle Ridge Junior High
Dec. 15: A student reported that her $100 iPod and accompanying $10 case were stolen while she was at Eagle Ridge Junior High
Dec. 15: A teacher at Eagle Ridge Junior High reported that her $50 purse, which contained two checkbook covers valued at $11 each, was stolen while she was at the school
Dec. 15: While doing a locker search in relation to the Dec. 15 theft of a female student’s iPod and iPod case at Eagle Ridge Junior High, a partially smoked cigar was found in a 15-year-old boy’s locker
December 28th, 2011 at 10:06 am
Why in the world would a teen aged child have not one, but two check book covers? Not only that, but she paid 11 dollars for each? I didn’t know kids even knew what a checkbook is anymore.
That is hilarious to me.
December 28th, 2011 at 10:11 am
That was actually a teacher, Lefty.
December 28th, 2011 at 10:34 am
Oops, thanks Tim. That makes more sense.
December 28th, 2011 at 11:45 am
They still call their post elementary schools “Junior High”? I thought that most of the districts had so-called “middle schools” with 6-8th graders or something like that.
I’m glad to see not every district follows the latest trends.
December 28th, 2011 at 11:46 am
I don’t think it’s recent. My father went to “junior high”. I went to “middle school”.
December 28th, 2011 at 11:54 am
As the parent of a 4 year old, I can honestly say that all of this is scary to me.
December 28th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Chad. As the parent of one 20 year old and another child who has less than 6 months of public education left, I can tell you it is really not that bad.
The kids who want to stay out of trouble generally can. Key in on the word “generally”. I realize there are some things that can happen to anyone.
December 28th, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Nurd52 and Bill, the Junior High / Middle School distinction usually correlates to if it’s a 6-8 school or a 7-9. When Lakeville pushed 9th grade into the high schools, they renamed the Junior Highs to Middle Schools.
December 28th, 2011 at 1:16 pm
I think it was handled appropriately. I don’t think there is any concrete “right way” for handling a situation like that involving kids. If the threat was made it should be addressed and resolving things like that isn’t necessarily a matter for the juvenile justice system.
December 28th, 2011 at 1:45 pm
I would have freaked out if someone threatened to burn me when I was 13.
December 28th, 2011 at 4:30 pm
Curious if the kid still is allowed to attend the school? It seems that the anti-violence and anti-weapon policies coupled with 0-tolerance policies would have that kid on the street. I don’t think schools can pretend to be hard on drugs or the state to be hard on illegal smoking if they don’t charge kids when caught.
At a minimum I would think the threat of burning someone with a lighter could be considered terroristic threat. On or about the face can lead to some significant issues, get a lighter close to someone’s hair and it could go up pretty quick.
December 28th, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Seems like the rules are applied differently at different times. In some cases, that could be good–The hard and fast rule about zero tolerance can get a little crazy–remember the story a few years ago about the kids that bought a souvenir sword of some sort on a band trip to Europe that were facing expulsion? Or you occasionaly hear about a boy scout that brings a pocket knife to school and gets expelled. (I admit that the whole story on some of these situations may not come out, so there could be different circumstances than what it seems on the surface) I remember growing up in a small town and during hunting season many of the students had their deer rifles in gun racks in their trucks in the parking lot at school. Wow how things have changed.
Hopefully in the situation that Bill has posted about, there will be some consequences for breaking the rules–how it was handled may be based on the past record of the kids–if they have been in trouble before and if this is a pattern of troubling behavior. I think there should be able to be some discretion used in these kinds of situations based on the entire situation, not just what is mentioned in a police report. It’s hard to get a feeling for what really happened.
I do agree that although these items sound scary, if you have a basically good kid with good parental backing, they will most likely stay out of most trouble. I think especially in some of the larger schools, the good kids tend to hang together and the kids that may have a tendency to not do the right thing kind of hang together and they rarely mix–at least that was my daughter’s take on it.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:05 pm
I believe I commented on another thread here once about how a kid on the bus once told my kindergartener that he had a gun in his backpack and was going to shoot him. The school principal asked the older kid if he did that, the kid said “no”, and the principal decided that was enough. This bozo was promoted shortly after.
That said, kids goof around. Intent and attitude make a huge difference in how each case should be handled. The teachers know who the scary kids are and who the jokesters (with perhaps a bit of temporary bad judgement) are. The former need to be dealt with differently than the latter. The latter group needs to receive a teaching moment and some sort of mild punishment. The scary group needs intervention to hopefully put them on the right path.
I am not sure that expulsion, police records, etc., are helpful in the redirection of any of these kids. Observation and instinct are important on the part of the administration. They are there to try to help direct/create productive, contributing citizens, not to help them down the bad path with a juvenile police record.
December 29th, 2011 at 3:43 pm
sandy,
Do you mean to tell me someones judgement is at play here? ;-) …and it isn’t a black & white world? …who knew? (thumbs-up)