Nine-year-olds plotted to tie up, hurt teacher

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Nine-year-olds at a school in the U.S. state of Georgia brought a broken steak knife, handcuffs and electrical tape to school in a plot to injure their teacher, authorities said on Tuesday.

Teachers at Center Elementary School in Waycross, Georgia, uncovered the plot on Friday when a pupil reported that a child in the third grade had brought a weapon into the school.

"The plan was to handcuff the teacher, put tape over her mouth and hit her over the head with the paperweight and possibly cut her," said Lt. Duane Caswell of Waycross police, adding that some students said the knife was simply there to cut the tape.

"It was a rather elaborate scheme for children of that age," he said.

The students spent a week planning the attack and planned to carry it out on the day they were caught, Caswell said.

Nine pupils in the grade, most of whom were 9 years old, have been disciplined and some were given long-term suspensions, said Theresa Martin, spokeswoman for the Ware County school district in the southeastern part of the state.

Caswell said police were also planning to charge three of the children in the juvenile court system with conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and possession of a weapon on a school property.

(Writing by Matthew Bigg; editing by Jane Sutton and David Storey)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080402/od_nm/school_plot_dc_1

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Obviously an extreme example of problems in schools but nontheless it makes me think that there is a growing problem with kids and extreme violence. In the UK the knife culture is pretty bad especially in "poorer" areas indeed there has been talk putting Airport Style security checks in certain schools.

Sometimes schools tend to get an unfair proportion of the blame, however, I think it is more to do with a decline in parenting skills and a basic lack of discipline in the home. Am I wrong? I hate it when people just mutter "oh kids today we never would have done that" especially when I remember the trouble I got into; I have to smile. However, we would never have considered something like this...not even entered our minds and if I'd have been caught with a knife outside the house my old man would have flipped his trolly!! So is there a fundemental difference between kids nowadays and say 25 years ago

 

See I'm not so convinced that knife crime in the UK is that bad - the media just find a bandwagon to hop on. America is a bigger place, and thus has bigger crime but if the media decided to jump on the bandwagon of knife crime in America the headlines wouldn't look good.

It's pretty much confined to very small areas of London, Leeds and Liverpool where a couple happen in a week and are then called a "spree".

 

Hi there 9sublime,
I am not sure if you have access to the American cable news outlets or not, but the issue is not so much a broken steak knife as is the subject here, but the ages of the kids involved 8-10 and the apparent conspiracy involved. I am not sure how much of the whole story I buy just yet, I am sure many many more facts to come out that havent yet. I am not one who thinks the national media need waste the airtime for something like this.

As for crime, sure knives can be dangerous but so can any number of other things. What we are dealing with in general is human nature. In the UK, the citizens largely dont have guns. So they turn to the next best thing, a knife, if it wasnt a knife, it would be a club of some sort all the way down the line until finger nails are forcibly removed due to thier scratching threat.

 

I know that UK police are not allowed to carry firearms, so logically knives would be a pretty useful tool for a criminal. In fact, I think police can't have knives either. I'm amazed they actually make arrests at all.

 

Yeah I know what you mean, the Daily Mail hyperbole - why let the truth get in the way of a good story!

I suppose to a certain extent its not the weapon itself that concerned me here its more to do with the age of the kids and the fact that it was planned! - FFS these are nine years olds!! As bunz says there is probably a bit more of a story to this - Bunz maybe you could keep us up to date?

Generally it concerns me, certainly in the UK not only the level of violence seems to be increasing but more worryingly its the nature of that violence. As ANDY says about the police "I'm amazed they actually make arrests at all." There's a town down the road from me called Gravesend, with a notorious place called the Kings Farm Estate where the kids rule and Police will only go with a Regiment of Gurka's and change of underwear!

 

Haha yeah, I live near Oxford so we have Blackbird Leys and Aylesbury which are pretty rough.