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Comment by mvdwoord | Hacker News Reader

Insanity in slow motion.

It's really a slow motion apocalypse for American jurisprudence, common sense, and dignity.

Just when you think you've read the ridiculous part, it keeps getting more and more ridiculous:

> The authorities shut down the day care center midday on January 24, calling parents to immediately come pick up their kids. Terrified moms and dads raced over to find six armed deputies and a slew of cop cars.

Would you expect the deputies to remove their firearms just before arriving? Should they have arrived on bicycle instead of by cop car? Perhaps the ridiculous sound of the story is from the sensationalist writing.

No, I would expect an administrative shutdown of a daycare facility to not be done by armed positions in the first place.

It was a criminal investigation, and the directors were charged with crimes. We can argue about whether the law is right here and about whether cities and counties should defund the police to pay for more non-armed law enforcement, but given what the town had to work with, this doesn't seem extraordinarily ridiculous.

In many developed countries, yes, we would expect that. It’s a pre-school and it’s essentially an administrative issue. And we would probably not need more than one officer, perhaps armed with a notepad and a pen.

Refer to the legal principle of proportionality.

This is America. Law enforcement officers do not remove their firearms.

The law requires some minimal amount of adult supervision in childcare settings that was already violated when none of the supervisors were being interrogated. Sending one person to remove one child supervisor would have exacerbated that problem.

I don’t understand what your second paragraph has to do with my comment. Or maybe it was just a failure of the imagination? (ie.: it’s possible to jot down some notes at 5pm, it doesn’t have to happen at 10:32am, this is not a 911 call. Someone being late for dinner is a smaller inconvenience for all involved.)

And yes, I understand that Colorado is in the United States and that the United States has a very bizarre idea of what it means to protect citizens (or to protect children).

I'm with you on this (Australian here), but the difference is in the US the police basically need to be prepared for any issue to escalate due to the US being an insane dystopia.

Gotta love when these pre-schooler situations escalate! I'm imagining (pausing to think about an aussie cultural reference) marmite... Marmite everywhere! hahaha :joy-emoji:

Vegemite* close enough though :)

Oops!

The second paragraph is about why they didn't send just one officer. If they're shutting down the school, that can't happen at 5 p.m.

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