Schools Becoming Child Abuse Centers

Schools locked down over "ambiguous message" taken as threat

Beaver County schools had their lives "flipped, turned upside down" Thursday morning when a phone greeting involving the theme song from the 1990s sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" was taken as a threat.

All schools in the county were advised to lock down for about 20 minutes while police searched for a 19-year-old Ambridge Area High School student whose greeting to callers was mistakenly taken as a threat about "shooting people outside of the school."

The actual line from the song is "And all shooting some b-ball outside of the school."

Aren't they embarrassed to be so stupid? Doesn't someone - anyone - between the school secretary to the police department have any sense at all. Seriously. They locked down all the schools and took the kid (who was in the guidance office) into custody because he sang the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on his voice mail greeting?

"The procedures in place were efficient and quickly implemented and proved to be successful,"

Successful? It's the exact opposite of successful. They double down on stupid. It's child abuse.



They make it sound like it's funny in this newscast. And police say the student has learned his lesson? What lesson is there for the student? That adults are idiots? It took the police 3 hours and searching his locker to determine there was no threat? Couldn't they just listen to his phone greeting before flying off the handle? And yes, you can be too careful.