WHAT?@@!??

A young mother's apparently disturbed young friend steals her baby Thursday night so on Friday

the Department of Social Services took custody of the baby and his 16-month-old sister, and Sterrett's third child, a 2-year-old boy, was placed with relatives, according to a spokeswoman for the agency.

DSS previously investigated Sterrett for alleged neglect involving one of her other children. That case was closed last year, according to Alison Goodwin, a spokeswoman for DSS, who gave no details.

Does DSS not realize, like the Texas authorities in the FLDS case didn't realize, that they need specific, articulable "reasonable cause to believe that the removal of the child is necessary to protect him from further abuse or neglect"? See Mass. General Laws chapter 119, section 51B (emphasis added). Doesn't "further" imply that there had to have been some abuse or neglect in the first place?

Nothing in the Globe article about poor Ms. Sterrett's troubles indicates that there was any evidence of

reasonable cause to believe that a child under the age of eighteen years is suffering physical or emotional injury resulting from abuse inflicted upon him which causes harm or substantial risk of harm to the child’s health or welfare including sexual abuse, or from neglect, including malnutrition, or who is determined to be physically dependent upon an addictive drug at birth

which is the applicable statutory definition from the infamous section 51A.

It's hard to tell for sure from the Globe article, but it seems as if this is another case of DSS breaking up a family in the name of protecting children from a parent they don't need protection from. Will the Globe report on Tuesday, after Ms. Sterrett's 72-hour hearing , if she gets her children back from the juvenile court judge? Will DSS apologize or even have its spokesperson report that they were wrong if Ms. Sterrett does get her children back?

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives even young mothers the right not to have their children seized by the state without probable cause.

Now they're suspending students for writing a list of names!

According to the Boston Globe:

High schoolers investigated
By Martin Finucane
Globe Staff / May 23, 2008

Two students at Silver Lake Regional High School are being kept out of school while police investigate whether lists the two students made of fellow students constitute a threat to the school community, the school district's superintendent said yesterday.

A teacher became concerned when she saw a male student throw away a piece of paper last Friday. She retrieved it and saw a list of four names. On Monday, a female student was found to be writing a list containing two names.

"At this point in time, we're taking it very seriously. . . . Frankly, we take any threat as a serious threat until it's sort of proved otherwise," said Superintendent John Tuffy, who would not describe what raised school officials' suspicions about the lists.

Tuffy said it was not clear if the two students were linked.

"That's being looked into right now. There are a number of questions that we all would like answers to," he said.

Kingston Police Chief Joseph Rebello did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

Read it online here.

~~~

After attending "School Discipline, Juvenile Justice and the Realities of Race" sponsored by The Boston Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the Juvenile Justice Center at Suffolk University Law School and the Criminal Law Section of the Boston Bar Association at The Boston Public Library Tuesday night and being reminded of the School to Prison Pipeline, I couldn't help but be astounded at the evidence of overuse of zero tolerance policies that seems to be exhibited by the above article.

It amazes me what we criminalize these days and what our "authorities" want to "take seriously".