New category of violence

Oh no, he's making "basketball type moves," somebody stop the madness!

Such was the thinking at Hamden High School in Hamden, Connecticut, where police officers were called to the scene to deal with a potentially dangerous situation: a student pretending to dunk a basketball.

Principal Nadine Gannon placed the school in lockdown and notified the authorities after a staff member said someone had run toward heard in a threatening manner, according to WTNH:

Further investigation revealed that the student was running in the hallway, "making basketball type moves". When the staff member turned around, the teen was "making believe that he was dunking a basketball", according to a news release from Hamden police.

The lockdown was lifted by 8:00 a.m., and some students returned to classes. Crisis averted, I guess.

Is there any disciplinary matter a school feels comfortable handling by itself these days? Is it always necessary to go into full panic mode and call the cops, even when the "incident" isn't really an incident at all? Schools have somehow lost the ability to distinguish between rowdy behavior and domestic terrorism. Now they're just wasting everybody's time: the cops' and the kids'.