UPDATE: To everyone who’s shared my post and signed Jack’s Petition, the sheriff’s department has clarified that they do not have any involvement in cases like Jack’s. This post has been misdirected due to a lack of information and an assumption on my part. This post will be edited to direct the attention where it needs to be, as well as the wording of our petition. I’d like to thank everyone for their overwhelming support and response to this issue.
*SHERIFF RYAN EVERETT HAS CLARIFIED THAT LEGALLY THE LCSO HAS NO INVOLVEMENT IN THE CHARGES FILED AGAINST JACKSON LEE. THESE CHARGES ARE FILED SOLELY FROM THE TRUANCY OFFICER OF LAWRENCE COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL.*——————————————————————————
Long one. Absolutely worth it. If you feel like this is accurate or it drives a point home give it a share. This is going to be problematic to some, but I can assure you that one thing nobody is gonna get here is an apology from me.
Story time.
As of Tuesday of this week, 19 year old senior at Lawrence county high school, A good friend of mine, and a good kid, Jackson Lee is now facing a 5 year sentence for the crime of showing up to school in a borrowed car. I’m sure it sounds a bit dramatic, and if it don’t I’m gonna make it that way real quick. Jack ain’t ever been perfect, Jack’s life ain’t ever been perfect. Jack lost his daddy at a young age. Jack watched poverty and drugs eat up just about everybody he ever had to look up too.
Like we see year after year, decade after decade, coming from this background, Jack dropped out prior to his senior year. Jack went on the road working, Jack ran with older friends and grown men, Jack busted his ass and paid bills and made a year living that way when he finally let the advice of his friends and his own good judgement send him back to school to get his diploma. Jack went back at 19 to round his shit out and take a huge step towards making sure that his future doesn’t have to be the hell his past has been. He’s been talking about his plans to go to college afterwards for months. Baby Jack, we call him, is the youngest of the bunch. Jack don’t live at home with his immediate family all the time. Jack lives with two of his buddies. Both of these young men Jack lives with work for a living. One travels and works in plants, one works on a tug boat. One is on a boat TODAY and has been for weeks. His hitch has drug on and that man is working overtime trying to help his folks keep the lights on, the other one busts his ass year round and has taken a break any working man is entitled too and gone on vacation out of state with his family for Christmas, which he Damn well earned. These young men pay the bills at this house Jack lives in, Jack helps when he can with what he can.
This is where the story takes a turn. Neither of these men Jack lives with are home. One, out of the goodness of his heart, had the decency to help his friend out and loan Jack the vehicle he pays the notes on, to commute back and forth to school while he was on vacation so Jack can continue to work toward his high school education and get his diploma. So a kid coming from a hard time can get his ass an education that he finally had enough support and forward thinking to try and complete. This man who lets Jack live in his home and borrow his car is old enough to legally own a firearm which very rarely spends the night in his vehicle, and when it does it ain’t a crime. Jack took this vehicle to school, he showed up and made most of his day, unaware that the very institutions founded to support him on our tax dollars, were setting him up for failure.
Found in the driver seat of the car he’d borrowed from a grown man, was a vape pen you can buy in any gas station in this state. Menthol nicotine cartridges in a $5 dollar battery pen. Obviously, because the Great United States of America had the testicular fortitude somehow to outlaw tobacco to anyone younger than 21 a couple years back, this is a problem, but one anyone with common sense or human decency could overlook, at the very least make less of a deal about it. The truant officer became aware of this vape pen and abruptly asked Jack about it. This prompted a search of the vehicle, going on to find two coils for a different and completely legal vape device that belonged to the man who loaned Jack the vehicle. After that, the truant officer who almost certainly went through that vehicle before contacting Jack initially, asked him more than once if there was a weapon to be found in the vehicle. Jack told him to his knowledge there was none, because TO JACK’S KNOWLEDGE THEIR WAS NONE, then the truancy officer instructed Jack to open the center console, which revealed that the firearm belonging to the man who’d loaned him this vehicle was in fact in the car, unfortunately for Jack, on school property.
Subsequently, Jack wound up spending 30+ hours in a cell, (and was only released when the 23 year old man who gives him a house to live in and loaned him a car to drive to school in sent the money to bail him out) is facing 5 years. Jack had no intention of hurting anybody, Jack didn’t have plans to shoot anyone. Jack was unaware that the gun was in the car, because it doesn’t normally stay there. This kid is facing 5 years in the MDOC, and all He had to do was show up to school like he is expected, in a car loaned to him by a friend trying to help him do exactly that.
Yall wonder why kids don’t trust the school system and the staff? Why fewer young people every day have trust or confidence in institutional authority of any kind? Let’s cut the clueless bullshit act because this is the problem. People, especially kids on the lower end of the financial scale CAN’T and they WON’T EVER trust the institutions that are set up to “help” them, because routinely these organizations are affirming to them what they are already aware of; that they aren’t shit but food for the system, and that money and perceived status of authority are worth more than their quality of life. If these charges stick:
*(4) counts of a minor in possession of contraband, (ALL TOBACCO PRODUCTS) and (1) count of Minor in possession of a firearm on school grounds*
-The truancy officer of Lawrence County High School is about to prove this point publicly, failing Jack, his peers, and their community, and I ain’t even sorry.
CHOOSE EDUCATION OVER INCARCERATION.
PROSECUTORS: DROP THE BOGUS CHARGES AGAINST JACKSON LEE.
LC SCHOOL BOARD AND DISCIPLINARY COMMITTEE: DO NOT EXPEL JACKSON LEE WHICH WOULD PREVENT HIM FROM GRADUATING AND ALLOW HIM TO FINISH HIS LAST MONTH OF SCHOOL AND WALK WITH HIS CLASS IN MAY.