Sure It Is
A man is accused of holding his 4-year-old daughter's head under the water in the kitchen sink at their Yelm home Sunday night because she would not recite the alphabet, according to police and court papers.
The Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney's Office filed a charge of second-degree assault of a child against Joshua Ryan Tabor, 27, on Tuesday. His arraignment is scheduled for Feb. 16.
According to court records:
Yelm police responded to a disturbance Sunday night after Tabor's girlfriend reported that Tabor, a Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier, "was irate, intoxicated and walking around the neighborhood with his Kevlar helmet threatening to break windows."
Tabor's girlfriend told Yelm police that Tabor beats his 4-year-old daughter and that the child's back was covered in bruises. The girlfriend reported that the 4-year-old had locked herself in a closet because she was afraid of her father.
The girlfriend also reported that when the child wets herself, Tabor "makes her sit in the urine-soaked clothes" until he gives her permission to change.
The girl spoke to a Yelm officer, and he observed that she "had severe bruising on her entire back," along with scratch marks and bruising on her neck, throat, chin, arms, legs and buttocks.
She "was asked how she got the bruises and she replied 'Daddy did it.'"
Asked how or why it happened, the child would not reply, then said, "I don't know why he did it."
Tabor spoke to a Yelm police officer and said that he and his girlfriend had "held her down on the counter and submerged her head into the water three or four times until the water came around her forehead and jawline." He said that she was face-up when her head was in the water. He added that they gave this punishment for the 4-year-old "refusing to say her letters."
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School safety is important, but some are saying an elementary school principal overreacted when she saw one of her students playing with a tiny toy gun in the cafeteria.
Mom Laura Timoney went ballistic when she received a call from her son's school. Staten Island fourth-grader Patrick Timoney was in tears, the mad mama told the New York Daily News, because he was being threatened with a suspension by P.S. 52 principal Evelyn Matroianni.
His crime? Possession of a 2-inch toy gun, which Patrick had placed in the hand of a Lego police officer during a lunchtime toy break.
Patrick's father, a retired police officer who shares his little boy's name, tells the Daily News that he has "no problem with the rules" but doesn't see why the tiny gun caused such a big problem.
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(WTF is wrong with these people. Have we lost all common sense? Political correctness gone way beyond extreme!)
Bottom Line: Sudden unintended acceleration is not a problem limited to Toyota. Many car manufacturers, including the other four with the largest shares of the U.S. market, have had to recall vehicles because of this issue.
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For years the NYPD has tried to send a clear message to the NYC student body that there is zero tolerance for defacing DOE property; in 2007 cops made an example of 13-year-old Chelsea Fraser by dragging her out in handcuffs after she wrote "okay" on a desk at her Dyker Heights school. It's NOT okay, Chelsea, but these punks just won't learn. On Monday 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez was "doodling" her little heart out on her desk in Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills when she got busted, handcuffed, and escorted to the police precinct across the street, where she was detained for several hours.
The vandal-in-training was using what she says was erasable marker to write "Lex was here 2/1/10'' and "I love my friends Abby and Faith'' on her desk. Harmless "doodle" or wanton destruction of taxpayer property? "I started crying, like, a lot," Alexa told the Daily News. "I made two little doodles. … It could be easily erased. To put handcuffs on me is unnecessary…I just thought I'd get a detention. I thought maybe I would have to clean [the desk]." Her mother, an accountant, said, "She's been throwing up. The whole situation has been a nightmare." But surely suing the city could make all those bad dreams go away! (The NYCLU has already sued the city over excessive school arrests.)
Alexa was released without bail, and has been assigned eight hours of community service, a book report and an essay on what she's learned from the experience, the AP reports. She says she has now "definitely learned not to ever draw on a desk." And yet the DOE is essentially apologizing; a spokesman tells the News, "Based on what we've seen so far, this shouldn't have happened."
Even the NYPD is backpedaling, with spokesman Paul Browne saying, "Even when we're asked to make an arrest, common sense should prevail, and discretion used in deciding whether an arrest or handcuffs are really necessary." Kids, the lesson is clear: the NYPD is getting soft on doodling!
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(Media-Newswire.com) - Humane Society International/Canada condemns the joint decision by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Nova Scotia government to allow a commercial slaughter of baby seals on Hay Island, part of the protected Scaterie Island wilderness area. The DFO will allow 2,220 seals to be slaughtered beginning on or around Feb. 8, just days before the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
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"Wit is educated insolence", Aristotle
