That seemed like overkill to me at the time and I was surprised that I had never even heard from any of these agencies.
E-mails sent from Joplin Schools administrators to each other indicate there was a good reason I was never contacted- the alleged crime that was being reported had nothing to do with me, except that it involved a reference to my book No Child Left Alive.
On May 1, an apparently fictitious person named Kai Alexis Price posted a message on the East Middle School PTO website saying, "If the shooter doesn't get you, the East Middle School Administration do," an obvious reference to the tagline of No Child Left Alive, "If the shooter doesn't get you, the system will."
After that was reported to EMS officials by a PTO officer, the school went on lockdown as the "threat," which seems to me to be more of a reference to school politics and what happened to me than to a mass murder plot, was being investigated- which was exactly the right thing to do, you cannot automatically assume that the message was not a threat.
As far as I can determine, no one was ever able to locate Kai Alexis Price, or connect him or her in any way to me, anyone who supported me (though that would appear to be the motivation), or anyone who wanted to damage my case (which would also be a strong motivation).
Despite that, it appears this investigation was used to smear me May 23 in the same way that administration indicated that student support for me suggested that I was a child predator (Their reasoning appears to be why else would students support a teacher?).
The posting of the message on the EMS PTO website was wrong, but as with everything else that has come up in this circus- administration knows full well I had nothing to do with it, but took advantage of the opportunity to make it look, by shading the truth slightly, that I had been reported to all of these agencies.
Screen shots of the messages and reports involving the PTO Facebook message are printed below:
3 comments:
From what I see, the school cop is the one to blame. The school officials kept their hands clean.
What happened to reasonableness? What happened to the duty of the school administration to protect the students?
This is sickeningly like the Florida in-school cop that took control of a science fair mistake by throwing the 16 year old in jail, ignoring school officials.
Who IS in charge?
Calling the DA for the go-ahead rather than the school administrator was the sign of a complete sellout.
Why didn't they bring in the National Guard or a SWAT team while they were at it? Overkill seems to be the theme for this whole situation. The whole damn mess is absolutely ridiculous, and it is impossible to believe that upper administration did not realize that there would be a huge reaction to the mess that they made. In any other district, this would have been handled in the building if at all possible. I wonder if they regret their actions yet?
Post or censor this as you choose. I can think of several reasons for you to not post it.
I wonder when the administration realized that the person might have posted the comment which caused the lockdown under his real name. They do know this by now don't they? Did they know this before they apparently brought this incident up on May 23?
Since you have posted the reports, the FB identity referred to in the reports appears to be https://www.facebook.com/kaiprice
That Facebook identity appears to have posted other comments in other places over a period of time. An open source analysis quickly revealed a real person likely associated with this FB identity and other internet identities, with internet activity going back well over a decade.
Here is just one example.
Kai Alexis Price · Monson, Massachusetts
What a great example to set for children: so long as you have the money to pay for the lawyers, f*ck the law, f*ck the Constitution, just do whatever the heck you want. Christian supremacism is a form of bullying and it has no place in a public school--keep that sh*t in your da*n churches where it belongs!
Reply · 1 ·
· December 16, 2011 at 6:03am
Go to the following link and expand all the comments and it is near the bottom.
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/school-vows-to-fight-for-nativity.html/comment-page-4
Additional questions raised by this episode seem obvious. Some of these questions might include:
Who performed the appropriate internet searches to evaluate this perceived threat, and what did the searches reveal?
When did they determine the alleged poster's claimed location might be Monson, MA instead of the geographically nonexistent Monsoon MA?
When was the administration informed, and what were they told?
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