A school district and local prosecutors in Texas are refusing to drop charges against an 11-year-old who was held in solitary confinement.
A school district and local prosecutors in Texas are refusing to drop charges against an 11-year-old who was held in solitary confinement.
Officers detained the boy and placed him in solitary confinement for three days at the Darrell B. Hester Juvenile Detention Center. Cameron County prosecutors argued for charges of "terroristic threat."
Despite being accused of ignoring Texas laws which require parental involvement before such interventions, Cameron County District Attorney Rene Garza told a hearing Wednesday that his office was gathering further evidence against Murray, rather than deciding to drop the charges.
irked Palm Grove Elementary principal Myrta Garza so much with his requests, as well as questions about school dress code, that she called Brownsville Independent School District police.
WTF?
Cameron County prosecutors argued for charges of "terroristic threat."
How can this keep getting worse and more ridiculous at the same time? WHAT DO I DO WHEN ALLCAPS AREN'T ENOUGH?
ignoring Texas laws which require parental involvement before such interventions
Okay, I give up. Is rule of law no longer a thing? Like people aren't even pretending anymore?
If it were just the principal then this child would never have been arrested. Sadly, a lot of people in this story should be removed from any position of authority, or possibly society altogether.
“[Garza] has a lot of people to back her up. She has people in high places. So I guess she can basically do whatever she wants and she receives no consequences for it.
So his father dies and he asks his school for counselling and they respond by calling the police who lock him in solitary confinement and CPS threatens his mother with taking him away?
On Dec. 5, administrators, who had worked alongside Principal Garza, sought to file further charges against Murray of aggravated assault. He allegedly pulled another student's hair and tried to cut his finger with scissors, which Murray apologized for and said he had mimed cutting the boy's paper, not his finger.
...
Data from Brownsville ISD seen by The Observer showed its officers made 3,102 student arrests between May 2021 and Nov. 2023. Nearly 60% of those were on felony charges and 76 of those kids were in elementary school.
This is insane. It seems like it's really true that the wickedness a nation imposes on another it will eventually impose on itself. It's especially heinous that the weakest member of the nation (a child) is subject to cruel punishment and legal charges like aggravated assault while the most powerful member (the literal president) boasts about "grabbing [women] by the pussy", has several charges of sexual assault against him, yet nothing happens. It's becoming obvious that the law is meant to keep the powerless subservient.
that's one elementary student arrested every one week? I would not send my kids to school there, my mind would crack if someone locked my kid up like that.
That's a great article. This part towards the end really stood out:
Based on an analysis of district juvenile justice referral data we received from Brownsville ISD, the district police made 3,102 student arrests over a period of roughly two and half years from May 2021 to November 2023. That’s 135 arrests per month in the school year. Fifty-nine percent of those arrests were for felony changes.
Of those arrests, 3.5 percent were for elementary school-aged children. From the beginning of the prior school year to November 3 this year, there have been 76 arrests of students 10 to 11 years old. Charges for terroristic threats accounted for 20 percent of those arrests. Most, 66 percent, were felony charges. There were no charges for aggravated assault for this age group.
I was curious so I looked up how large the district is and they have almost 38,000 students. . Such a large district puts those numbers into perspective a little bit but that still seems unbelievable.