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Since many of us are quick to criticize our courts when they make bizarre rulings, it seems only fair to commend both a Denver juvenile court and the state court of appeals for a sensible ruling.
It came earlier this month, when the appeals court upheld the decision of Denver Juvenile Judge Dana Wakefield in the case of a boy found with a pocketknife at Henry Middle School in Denver. He had been charged with possessing a weapon at school.
The knife had a three-inch blade, and the relevant part
of our state law defines a dangerous weapon
as A
fixed blade knife with a blade that measures longer than
three inches in length or a spring loaded knife or a pocket
knife with a blade longer than three and one-half
inches.
In other words, size matters. You don't need a long blade to clean your fingernails, sharpen a pencil, open something wrapped in tough plastic, slice an apple or scores of other mundane tasks which are part of the schoolday or any other day.
Thus the juvenile and appeals courts followed the law: A pocketknife with a short blade isn't a dangerous weapon, unless you wield it as a weapon, which wasn't the case here.
After all, if you're serious about causing harm with academic tools, you could stab with a pencil, pen or compass, or for that matter, club somebody with a book.
Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter, who brought the charges that were dismissed, said he will join other prosecutors in asking the legislature to change the law during the waning days of this session.
Knives are sharp-edged weapons, and they really can
be used for assaultive purposes,
Ritter said. All
knives, because they are capable of producing death or
serious bodily injury,
he argued, should be prohibited
from school grounds.
Ritter appears to be about the same age I am, and when I was in grade school, we survived even though we were encouraged to carry pocketknives to school. The encouragement came from the Cub Scouts.
At some point in the progression from Wolf to Bear to
Lion, we were required to acquire a pocketknife. We were
supposed to carry the knife at all times (we aspired to be
real Boy Scouts whose motto was be prepared
), and we
had to pass a test on safety, care and maintenance, which
included keeping it sharp.
I barely passed that test, much to the shame of my
family. My dad, my brothers, my uncles, my cousins --
they're wizards of the whetstone. Give any of them an
oilstone and an old spoon, and in a few minutes, you could
be shaving with that spoon. Hand me a sharpening stone and
a real knife, and the longer I work, the flatter the edge.
This blade is so dull that you could ride to Europe on
it,
my father commented of one of my early sharpening
efforts, and I haven't improved.
Even if my knife wasn't sharp, I still carried it to
school, as did my fellow Cubs and most other boys. At
recess, we played a game called stretch,
which
involved facing each other and throwing your knife to your
opponent's side. If the blade stuck in the ground, your
opponent would have to stretch his free foot to the knife's
sticking place. You won if you made a stick your opponent
couldn't reach.
We weren't sure whether the game was legal at school, so we played clandestinely amid the trees on a remote corner of the grounds of Chappelow Elementary School in Evans, Colo. One spring day the sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Kaugh, had recess duty. She sneaked over and caught us in mid-toss.
We feared confiscation and a trip to the principal's office where a huge paddle was rumored to be waiting for our rumps. Instead, she said she had played the same game in grade school, and she'd been pretty good at it. She pulled a pocketknife from her purse, and challenged the current winner. She won on the first toss, a clean stick at least eight feet away. After that, we regarded her with awe.
Bill Ritter must have gone to school when most boys carried pocket knives, so he should know that they're not inspirations to carnage. Many implements can be used as weapons; pocket knives are among the most useful of tools.
The one I currently carry is a small Leatherman knock-off. It opens envelopes, tightens connections, removes bottle caps, files fingernails and cuts and strips wires. But Bill Ritter thinks it is a only a weapon, and that I should go to prison if I walked into a school with it in my pocket.
Fortunately, some people know better. They know that chairs, pencils, baseball bats, jump ropes and electrical cords and hundreds of other items can be turned into weapons. Useful tools that can be used as weapons aren't the problem -- misbehavior is.
Let's hope the legislature retains the current law, the one that knows the difference between a tool and a weapon.
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