[lbo-talk] re: philly jokes - variations on a theme

[Carl Remick]

>From: Jon Johanning <zenner41 at mac.com>
>
>On Dec 21, 2004, at 11:58 PM, Carl Remick wrote:
>
>>[Just in from the City of Brotherly Love.  It is not clear to me whether 
>>this is a joke or not.]
>
>There are occasional cases like this that seem rather ridiculous, but there 
>is a serious problem of violence in some schools. Kids get shot or 
>otherwise injured all too frequently, though it usually happens in the 
>neighborhoods of the schools rather than in them, it seems to me. And of 
>course there are multiple maladies of various kinds in the school system, 
>as in every big city school system in the country.

No, quite frankly I have never seen a school-security story from any other 
city as stark raving insane as this one is.  As the article I cited noted:  
"Just this past week, a 10-year-old girl who brought a pair of scissors from 
home to school in her school bag to continue work on a magazine clipping 
class project, was summarily turned over to police in Philadelphia by a 
bureaucratically blinded principal, who allowed her to be shipped off to 
jail, handcuffed, [!!!!] in a police wagon."

I can understand transporting the girl in a police wagon (ten-year-olds can 
be pretty fierce), but it was the bit about clapping her in irons that 
flabbergasted me.  That seemed excessive even for a city once overseen by 
self-described "world's toughest cop" Frank Rizzo, originator of the classic 
comment:  "The streets are safe in Philadelphia.  It's only the people who 
make them unsafe."

Carl