[fabsroman]

Do you really think that this little girl needed to be charged with assault. - I don't know. I wasn't there, I didn't see what was going on, didn't see the victim and injury, nor did I speak to her. I didn't get to hear her behavior record at school and I didn't get to speak to her parents and hear their response. I know my brothers have been allowed to go home after bar fights and nobody was charged whatsoever on either side. -"One time at band camp..." So everyone should be treated like your brother? It was the exact same circumstances in your brother's case?

When I went to high school, fists fights weren't anything unusual. -Times change. Bet you didn't have people high on meth when you went to school either. If the police were to have reacted in this manner, tbey pretty much would have had 3 cruisers, 3 officers, a helicopter, and a mini court at my high school.

At least we can both agree that we don't have all the facts here. However, I am surprised that the police department wouldn't have released anything in their favor to quite the news media (e.g., this girl was a problem in school, she had committed assaults in the past and been given warnings).

I don't believe that LEO's do a spectacular job and I don't believe that they do a terrible job. Each LEO is a different person with a different personality. I like to look at each individual case as just that. I am sure that most of the time they do a great job, everything goes smoothly, and I never hear about it. However, there are those cases where things don't go smoothly and I do hear about it. I think we have already agreed that LEO's are human too.

As far as charging discretion goes, I have been pulled over and let off twice within the last year. Once on the way home from picking up my brothers after a bar fight wherein I forgot to turn on the beams (i.e., I had the parking lights on) after picking them up. I got pulled over by the same LEO that was at the bar and let my brothers go. He approached my truck, asked me if I knew why I was being pulled over, and I explained that I did and that the lights were now on. I also explained where I was coming from, and that is when he looked in the passenger seat and told me to get going.

The other incident happened in Arizona on my way to the Grand Canyon. I was pulled over for doing 68 in a 55 as I just came off the interstate. I was trying to get my cell phone out of my pocket and wasn't paying attention. I saw the officer make the U-turn so I started to slow down and get the renta;'s registration and driver's license ready. He ended up giving me a warning and I made sure I obeyed the speed limit the rest of the week.

I have received 3 speeding tickets in my 18 years of driving, and am fine with two of the ones I received, the first and third. With the second one, the officer was lying on the stand, but the only way for me to prove it was to show that I was actually racing another car and that she had not paced us whatsoever. I was 19 back then, stupid, and pissed that an officer would lie about what happened because she was dead set on me being found guilty.

I experienced the same thing in a couple of other instances with a county police officer charging me with discharging a firearm within 150 ft of a dwelling and with a female game warden charging me with having a loaded gun in the car. The county officer didn't want to hear what actually happened and completely ignored what my father told him. However, he was honest on the stand, which I commend him for, and we were all found not guilty. The female game warden was pissed at me because she thought I knew who shot a mockingbird on opening day of dove season and I kept telling her that I didn't. So, she said she was going to charge all of us with it, and I responded that she would still have to prove who it was. That really pissed her off, so she wrote me up for having a loaded gun in the car and she lied at trial. She said she was 20 ft away from me when I got out of the car and she never heard me "rack" a shell in the gun. Well, if she were 20 ft. away, she would have been able to tell I was shooting an o/u and know that I didn't have to rack anything when I got out of the car. There were several other lies too.

Anyway, I think I already told you about the above stories and have said a bunch of times that there are good and bad in every profession just as sure as there are good and bad people, and there always will be.

At the end of the day, maybe life is a lot worse in schools than when I was going to school, but somehow I doubt it is that bad in an elementary school. If this girl was 11, she was probably in 6th grade. Without hearing the 911 tapes, I am sticking to 3 LEO's, 3 cruisers, a helicopter, and assault charges being a little much.