by The quote of the day comes from Bitter at Shall Not Be Questioned. By now, I’m sure most people have heard about the Canadian father who was arrested because his four year old daughter drew a picture of a gun at pre-school in Kitchner, Ontario.
As Bitter notes there is a lot of people to blame over this travesty including the cops, the school principal, the teacher, and the social workers. She asks the logical question as to why no one stopped to ask the right questions and then put a stop to it before it spiraled out of control (which it obviously did.)
Ultimately, I do think that someone should have stopped the process and really inquired just what the hell actually happened in regards to the drawing and how the teacher asked questions about it. However, depending on how stories are passed along, concerns about a potential crime could continue to be blown way out of proportion. Ever played a game of telephone? Yeah, same thing, only with real lives on the line.
But, when we have a bunch of bureaucrats who believe they are there to do good no matter what impact it might have on innocent people and who fear not following an exact protocol that makes no accommodation for stopping to ask questions, then things like this will happen more often regardless of the country. At some point, we have to demand accountability from those who allow these things to get out of hand. Unfortunately, that’s not something that’s easy to do, especially with many protections in place for staff in these various jobs.
This is precisely what I'm trying to communicate to Officer Curtis over at my place. He's really not getting the problems with special protections for those in law enforcement. I guess he must really think that some people are more equal than others.