Remember when the media said that NRA was nuts for suggesting that schools consider a wide-ranging security plan, not only for school shooters, but for other security threats that weren’t as obvious? Yeah, most of us do.
Well, shortly after dinner, my phone started going nuts with alert to look up the local Amber Alert. I Googled it as a good little citizen, and it just goes to show that the schools don’t take security seriously at all. A 5-year-old was kidnapped from her own classroom and the school didn’t even bother to report her missing.
According to what has been released in the last few hours, a woman described as wearing “Muslim-style clothing” walked into a school before 9am–minutes after the girl was dropped off–told the staff she was a mother, didn’t show ID, scribbled a line that was not a name onto a log sheet, walked into a classroom to tell the teacher that she signed a kid out and the teacher handed the student over, which, needless to say, is not “protocol.” The teacher just allowed her to walk out with the little girl without being questioned or stopped. Neither the teacher nor school officials bothered to follow their own procedures to find out if this was a person who even had permission to pick up the girl. They didn’t report the odd circumstance. They just let the kidnapper get away for hours without any report of what kind of vehicle she might be in, what direction she headed, or whether there were accomplices.
It was only when the girl’s daycare program that picks her up from school noticed that she wasn’t present and called her mom to verify that she was legitimately absent that anyone took notice. By that time, it was almost 3pm. The kidnapper had a 6 hour head start, and all because the school staff member was too lazy to question why a stranger who never had to show any ID just walked into a classroom and demanded to take a little girl.
These people aren’t serious about the safety of other people’s children. The child was dropped off just minutes before, and not a single staff member thought it would be odd that someone would turn around and pick them up within 5 minutes. The staff just believed a nice little title from the stranger that she was “mom” even though they couldn’t see her face or recognize her if they had known her since she purposefully covered everything except her eyes. The teacher just believed the stranger that she signed a kid out and handed the child right over. They simply didn’t care enough to give a second thought to that child and the very clearly odd circumstances in front of them.
If you have the means, you might want to take more seriously the Buffy the Vampire Slayer quote channeled by Glenn Reynolds and consider that home schooling is “not just for scary religious people any more.” At least then you’ll know that the person supervising your children actually cares enough to consider real security.
Vox Day puts it more bluntly, “Home school or die”; I prefer the slightly more gentle “The world will not look kindly on people who put their kids into public school.”
Did the girl not raise a fuss to the teacher? That would seem to suggest that it was someone known to her. At least, if I had kids, I’d teach them to not go anywhere with someone they don’t know with the possible exception of a uniformed police officer.
If your Trusted Authority (teacher) says to go with someone, they are likely to go.
The girl is also used to being told by the school which daycare worker to go with since she has to go to an after school program. Even though it wasn’t after school yet, she was sent with the woman by the teacher.
Oh, even better, we now learn that the woman didn’t identify herself to the school as mom, but by just a first name that isn’t mentioned as being in any record as okay to pick up.
For what it’s worth, she was found this morning. I just hope that she’s okay. She was found out in the cold wearing only a shirt, hiding under playground equipment screaming for help.
My understanding is that it usually is someone known to the child – often it’s a parent, step-parent, or parent’s SO, when there’s been a split between the parents and the abducting party has lost or expects to lose custody. The child doesn’t know they’re not supposed to go with them, and the teacher involved probably doesn’t know anything about it, either, even if there has been a custody ruling.
Based on the reports coming out this morning after they found the child, it doesn’t seem to be someone known to the girl. Even if it had been someone she knows really well, the school admits that they didn’t follow a single one of their procedures and let the woman walk off with the girl. Based on their own admissions, anything short of the girl screaming bloody murder and being physically hauled off in distress probably would have been okay with the school.
“Based on their own admissions, anything short of the girl screaming bloody murder and being physically hauled off in distress probably would have been okay with the school.”
Which is exactly what I plan to tell my kids to do if I ever have any. Just like telling them to run like hell in any kind of active shooter situation, no matter what the school’s bullshit procedures are.
My wife homeschools our kids. She is armed. No kidnappings and no shootings.
And the kids don’t seem to mind being around guns (of course, they know how to shoot because I taught them, and they know how to handle guns safely, because I taught them).
Big city. Poor neighborhood. African-American child. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS will NOT be camped out in front of the school calling for better security procedures. Piers Morgan will NOT be telling us how this would never happen in Britain.
Let’s pray for this little girl, and hope that she is returned safe to her family.
I’d like to think that the parents of any child in that school would be rallying and calling for the jobs of the school staff who violated multiple layers of policies and willfully handed the kid over to the kidnapper. But, since the case won’t get major attention, they probably won’t. It’s easy for it to die off.
As for the girl, I’m not sure I want to know much more. The poor girl was found this morning in a park screaming for help (it was only a few degrees above freezing) and wearing only a tank top. Unnamed sources are saying the woman took her to a home with a man and they stripped her down, blindfolded her, and hid her under a bed. There’s no telling what else they did that’s not being reported yet, but it makes me hope that they catch these people and put them away for the rest of their lives.
So long as “the rest of their lives” is no more than another year or two.
The real downside to this is that it will get less than zero attention from the mainstream media because it contradicts their narrative.
I used to say that “someone needs to suffer ramifications” for this sort of activity. Since it involves government employees, knowing such ramifications are impossible, were I sufficiently intolerant I would suggest substantially more severe consequences, except that would result in government agents at my door.
I counsel patience, we’ll deal with this.
Clearly we need “Pen Free Zones” to prevent children from being signed out of school.