The teevee reporter seems to have the lede right. Without much fuss, Indianapolis cop Jeff Patterson talked down a "special needs" student who had locked himself in a home ec room full of knives. When he threw one at the officer, Jeff grabbed a garbage can lid to shield himself as he persuaded the lad to surrender. No gunfire. No Taser. Just a cop with no yen to shoot somebody, a lone policeman thinking fast under pressure.
Two problems in the report. One may seem a quibble, but it is important enough to note. The journalist wrote that the lad surrendered before the officer "could" taze him. In fact, it appears Jeff handled things so that the surrender happened for he "needed" to shoot.
The other is a journalistic sin of omission. Where is the outrage at the presence of sharp knives in a school? A school, for God's sake. Where there are children. Maybe they'll get around to it. Dare you doubt that someone, somewhere, is jotting down a plan to turn the french knives over to the proper authorities and teach the budding cooks to do their cutting with dental floss and blunt scissors?
H/T Roberta
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Does anyone else hold a memory of sword fights in the back yard? The well-equipped 7-year-old Lancelot wielded a pine Excalibur, a long lath for the blade and a shorter one, nailed on, for the cross guard. Universally, his shield was zinc-plated sheet metal from Mom's outside garbage can. It made a neat noise when struck by your foe's sword, even neater when the blackguard cheated by throwing rocks.
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