Boy Arrested for Drawing Inappropriate Stick Figures by Police in Colorado, Taken Away in Handcuffs

Here's my question. What if that kid drew a stick-figure wearing a helmet and carrying an M16, complete with an American flag in the background and "Support Our Troops" written at the bottom? Would he still get in trouble?

reply to post by Marked One


Most likely. What idiocy this entire matter.
I drew much worse and more detailed pictures then that when i was his age and i can not remember ever getting any urges to go off someone ever since!

What retards! It is obvious that what happened here is merely that the boy, in class got a momentary feeling of anger (i dare anyone of you to say that has not happened to you during your school years) and instead of acting out on it he took his therapists advise and drew his feelings on the paper which he was about to discard when caught.
If anything this incident could worsen his ADD a lot as he was punished for dealing with his emotions in a "good" way!

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


When I was growing up, we weren't bombarded with images, TV shows, and video games that used violence as a means to settle disputes, and express anger. Today, that is all these kids see. It embeds in their brains. Hence, pictures of violence when they are angry or they think they hate someone. Maybe I'm old school in thinking, but I believe the environment plays a huge role.

give them more sick computer games, more violence, give hem the reality as you say, give them all...

treat children as adults and you will have to treat adults as children

reply to post by aero56


completely agree with you.

in a court house near by it is written on a wall:

it translates more less like this:

"Educate the children so you don´t have to educate the adults"

Originally posted by Whereweheaded
Though I dont condone arresting a child, but this kid has some serious issues! Regardless of ADD or not, if he is drawing " teacher must die " on a piece of paper, thats the making of a " Michael Myers ".

Oh now come on, when i was at school lots of kids drew that kind of thing, it wasn't serious. One guy for an art project drew a really violent picture, blood everywhere i still remember it. He's now an accountant, a father, plays football at the weekends and drives a beige car.

Kids do stupid things.

reply to post by ImaginaryReality1984


That's right. But I wouldn't even call this kid's work stupid, this is just expression of a child's thougts and it's actually healthy to express feelings with art.
This obsession with controlling everything and everyone is new kind of old thing called fascism, generated by fear. Don't know why people are so afraid of everything today, but it is, unfortunately, prelude to totalitarian state of the future. I'm just not sure is it normal human development or something deliberately induced by elite. This second probably. Divide and conquer.

I think what's being overlooked is the fact that Columbine involved High School upperclassmen. This kid is 11! The more appropriate route would have to called him down to the vice principal and/or his guidance counselor and talked to him, instead of suspending him and arresting him.

I went through school with ADHD (and still have it), so i can sort of see where this kid is coming from. I never drew pictures like this, but if i did, it would just be venting frustration, not because i would actually want to kill the teacher. At that age, what i did was have temper tantrums, threw things, kick, etc. It was just my way of releasing emotions. Sometimes i yelled things like "I hate school!" or "I wish the bullies would disappear" or "I wish the school would disappear". I didn't literally mean what i said, it was just a way of expressing my displeasure with school. Plus, those comments got me attention, which i very much wanted (albeit negative attention, but i didn't understand that). I think that's what this kid is doing.

But my biggest issue (as is many with ADHD), was my lack of respect for authority and impulsivity. If somebody told me to do something, and i didn't want to do it, i didn't do it. I never quite grasped until later why the teacher wouldn't just leave me alone. I felt that as long as i wan't hurting anyone, they should just let me do what i wanted (live & let live approach). Instead, i was labeled as a "bad" kid. Plus, there were many things i did, like walking out of class, or deliberately not doing my work. It sort of became a game, i tried to see how far i could push the rules. In a roundabout way, that got me attention (again, negative).

I feel like the school overreacted on something i did, as well. We had a substitute teacher, and he wrote on the board "PV" standing for "parent volunteers". I passed a note to my friend saying "PV could stand for Paula's Vagina hahaha." It wasn't anything sexual, i just liked to talk about penises and vaginas and toilets. The next day, they called me down to the office, and i had an office suspension for a day. But what was even more humiliating was that they called the wrong kid's mother and told her what happened, before realizing their mistake and calling my mother.

For tens of thousands of years, throughout human history in all cultures, killing and fighting wars has been an intrinsic part of our lives, necessary for survival. Most of the ADD boys would be fine if they had something to do which they were bred to be doing, like feeding the livestock and milking the cows, doing chores. Instead they go to school and learn the same boring lessons over and over again, drilled into their head until they no longer want to even think about school.

I know how the kid feels, I waded ahead of the courses, carried my studies far beyond what they teachers taught in the curriculum. The result was that I was punished for learning at my natural pace. And I went to one of the best school systems in the country, and it was plainly evident that the main purpose of school was to teach kids conformity.

It is all part of a bigger problem, which is that humans have yet to adapt to this modern, artificial world we have created.

We need radical changes on our school systems. Where kids are able to wade ahead in their courses, they should be allowed to do just that. By 8th grade, most boys have the fundamentals down to function on paper, and are ready to start learning a trade, where they will excel considerably more rapidly than in a classroom, and are most likely to reach their true potential and become skilled men of science and technology.

What we currently have a system set up to push out all but the most conformist, and establish a class system where the paper pushers rule over everyone else. This is what needs to end.

There are some kids who go completely insane, but drawing these pictures, especially when it was recommended by his therapist, is hardly a major concern. Of course it all depends on so many other factors.

All I can say is that my 6th grade teacher was my arch-rival. If that kid gets arrested for those then I should have been put on deathrow.

reply to post by SamTGonzalez


The problem is, either he is arrested and socially conditioned or he is allowed to express himself and then grows in to a killing machine at school in his later days. The authorites cannot win, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. ATS is an unfair playground sometimes.

I say throw the book at him and put him a rehibilitation centre for 'disturbed' children. When I was his age I was drawing a big sun in the top right of the paper and a little house below with a pond. Not, I repeat not holding a gun threatening to kill teachers!!!

I think this is a "we'll have to agree to disagree" moment. I have read the replies and I really DO understand where people on the other side of the fence are coming from...however I still stand by my original response to this.

I guess it's the fact that I'm raising a child with ADD/HD and I know the impulsivity, recklessness and violent tendencies that he has shown. He's made very poor choices at school (one BIGGIE that could've hurt himself and others and almost resulted in an expulsion) all under the "I don't know why I did it...I just didn't think about it..." category.

Again, we don't know the back story to this. Perhaps this child is a sweet, caring happy kid that only suffers from not being able to sit still during class. We also know that a good majority of kids diagnosed with this condition probably DON'T have it, so maybe he IS just a regular, if not hyperactive, kid. However there are kids with this condition that the symptoms go MUCH deeper and have MUCH more meaning. The other aspect to take into consideration is medication. I won't assume he's on any, but I'd have to think if the parents have taken things far enough that he's seeing a psychiatrist, that he may be on meds. My son has tried 3 different medications before we found the "right" one...and some of them caused horrible reactions both mentally and physically. A bad medication could send anyone over the edge.

I will be the first to admit that I too as a child had horrible thoughts about people when they ticked me off (I sucked at drawing so never put it to paper lol), but I also didn't have a diagnosed psychological condition nor was I seeing a psychiatrist. And, like many of you, I too have turned into a pretty good human being! I just can't shake the thought of this kid having these feelings...enough to put them down on paper...just getting really pissed off one day and making good on his thoughts. We see it much too often, and blowing this off could be one of those "in hindsight we should've seen this coming...." moments. It also could, as most of you are saying could just be a kid expressing himself. Who knows....none of us do because we're not inside his head.

Again, I think that arresting this child was a horrible over reaction..there were far better ways to handle this. But I think blowing it off is the wrong thing to do in this situation.

Michelle

The thought police have arrived in full force. Wow! The rot we feed our children, then its reflected back at us and the kid's taken away in handcuffs! 'To see ourselves as others see us'.



'because a child watches 1500 murders before he's twelve years old'

We feed these kids dross on tv and outright psychopathic video games which are sanctioned by government and then get disturbed by stick drawings. Good grief. The hypocrisy is sickening.

Originally posted by windword
For gosh sake! With all the violent TV programming and video games, even I, at 56, still imagine shooting people who piss me off! Always have, never acted on it. Good thing there aren't "thought police", yet, just "art police"

This is such an overreaction!

As for "music sucks" for all we know, his teachers weren't like "Jack Black" in "The School of Rock." They may have actually been having the kids listen to Bach, or something the teacher liked but the student didn't.

Dumb and dumber has a scene where he shoots the boyfriend several times with a handgun...

Are we getting paranoid? Probably. Dysfunctional? Ya. But who isn't these days?

It's a complicated confusing stressful world to live in anymore.

Originally posted by Michelle129th

.........

I will be the first to admit that I too as a child had horrible thoughts about people when they ticked me off (I sucked at drawing so never put it to paper lol), but I also didn't have a diagnosed psychological condition nor was I seeing a psychiatrist. And, like many of you, I too have turned into a pretty good human being! I just can't shake the thought of this kid having these feelings...enough to put them down on paper...just getting really pissed off one day and making good on his thoughts. We see it much too often, and blowing this off could be one of those "in hindsight we should've seen this coming...." moments. It also could, as most of you are saying could just be a kid expressing himself. Who knows....none of us do because we're not inside his head.

..........

Michelle

There'll always be things that happen that we'll wish we had prevented. Always.

Are we becoming a militant police state, one step at a time? I doubt it, but never know do yoU?

(btw, am i the only one that hates the formatting interface here.. i can't bold selected text in a post the way I want to. I have to cut it then paste it in the input box for bold. what a drag)

Originally posted by franspeakfree
reply to post by SamTGonzalez

 

The problem is, either he is arrested and socially conditioned or he is allowed to express himself and then grows in to a killing machine at school in his later days. The authorites cannot win, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. ATS is an unfair playground sometimes.

I say throw the book at him and put him a rehibilitation centre for 'disturbed' children. When I was his age I was drawing a big sun in the top right of the paper and a little house below with a pond. Not, I repeat not holding a gun threatening to kill teachers!!!

How much of it is just kids seeing this stuff on news channels or hearing people talk about it and fantasizing aobut it? Granted, it's creepy that a kid is imagining killing you, but... I've never imagined killing anyone in my life. I've tried to kill people in my dreams but I was in a war and in other dreams I was just trying to protect myself from a monster or murderer. They say if you get angry to get a punching bag. Is that bad? Does that mean that after using it too much when you get mad at someone you'll want to punch them? I don't want to over think this. I cant help but think that that is exactly what's going on. People want to prevent school shootings so we get a lot of false reports and paranoia and wasted public dollars and kids who's lives are forever damaged needlessly. How many of them were just fantasizing and will live the rest of their lives ashamed and feeling misunderstood. I don't think most people here realize what it's like to live a life like that. To too many people it's just a distant thought, not reality. The consequences of this won't be felt by most of us.

I've often blamed liberals for weak laws and weak punishment that leads to bad people doing whatever they want because they don't fear us or respect us. I tend to want to punish kids when they're bad or unruly. It comes naturally. I don't have patience for it. Criminals don't deserve sympathy either. We shouldn't be weak on crime or wrongdoing. But then again can we go too far? What happens when we do? How do we know when we've gone too far?

Well... when it's just a drawing I think we should be careful about judging what it means. Games and movies and art and books aren't real no matter how scary they look. I don't think kids should watch gory movies or movies that have bad themes when they're not adults, but I think that once we started pre-emptively prosecuting criminals that's when we've gone too far. We can barely predict the weather 1 week ahead. I think it's asking for trouble to predict the behavior of people and to throw them in jail just because they exhibit a characteristic of other criminals. Fact is, if they haven't committed a crime, yet, we should be very cautious how we respond.

Even just acknowledging that someone is a potential problem and making them aware of it can cause its own set of unexpected problems. It's like walking up to a suspicious person and looking at them funny because you think that they look like a murderer. This person might be a musician or somebody completely the opposite of what you think, but just the fact that you think this way and treat them this way will definitely impact them. How? Can't say for sure, but I think ti's unwise to convict people - even in our own minds - before they've even committed a crime. What if this person has extreme social anxiety or anti-social disorders and misreads or mistakes what you do for something else and then lives the rest of their life in fear of something or someone that doesn't exist?

Remember, not everyone is an extrovert or interprets the same circumstance the same way. You don't have to be insane to overreact or misread someone. People who're anti-social or have social anxiety problems tend to imagine things about others too. They can have delicate egos. They can mistaken things you do for something else. If you treat them like a rapist or murderer or like jared loughner without even knowing them they will detect this and they'll harbor their own imaginings about what it means. That's scary, isn't it? Maybe they'll start to think everyone hates them? Who knows what they'll do? Ever had a dream and you couldn't wake up? Be careful, don't judge others. That's why they say not to judge a book by its cover. We should do the same for people.

reply to post by SamTGonzalez


That picture is disturbing I would have my kid counsel'd too but i wouldnt have him treated like a dog from the police

reply to post by Evanzsayz

Would that be counseling along with his therapy hours then? The kid is already getting counseling and was doing exactly as told "draw his feelings instead of acting upon them" in order to vent them but was punished for it.

Following this stupid logic of the boy having done something wrong then shouldn't someone be talking to the psychiatrist that told him to draw his feelings/emotions instead of acting out on them and disrupting the class?

What a sick child, drawing something like that is crazy.
I feel sorry for his parents.
I guess it's best to put that kid away, lock it somewhere or whatever but don't let him running around the streets...god knows what he would be able to do if he writes stuff like teachers must die

reply to post by SamTGonzalez


Funny, when I was a kid, you could draw whatever you wanted to and not get into trouble or be sent to the principle office. If it was an inappropriate picture, the teacher would simple say, that inappropriate and you shouldn't draw stuff like that, because people don't like seeing those sort of things.

The difference is, when I was a child, we were taught what was right and what was wrong, and what may be OK for you is not OK for others, when to keep things to ourselves etc... Nowadays, teacher and schools freak out at every little show of indifference. How is a Eleven year old kid supposed to learn when he is taken away in handcuffs ? I don't take what he did as wrong. Inappropriate, yes, but wrong, no way.

Epic failure on the school and the law enforcement. Now, the child has scars from being arrested and treated as a threat, when all he was doing was venting.

Where did we go wrong on this. Why do we let this happen ? We need to stop this before it gets out of hand and kids are actually taken away never to be returned ...