The downfalls of zero tolerance

A question posed at last night's School Committee debate by Brendan Melican cited the falling homicide rates and asked about Clive McFarlane's column of September 11 discussing the number of students that were arrested in school. Specifically, he raised the concern about the number of students, arrested not for threatening violence but for "disturbing school assembly" or "disorderly conduct" charges.
A timely question.
Yesterday's New York Times carried a story from Delaware about a six year old currently suspended from school for bringing in a camping utensil with which to eat his lunch. He was so excited about joining Cub Scouts that he brought it into school...and thus ran afowl of a zero tolerance policy on weapons in schools.
Now it's clear from the article that the state of Delaware has already been dealing with the more ridiculous ways in which a zero tolerance policy can come home to roost; a girl was expelled last year for having a knife for cutting her birthday cake in school, and lawmakers have been working to make the law more flexible.
The danger here is creating a system, in Worcester and around the country, in which the judicial system is brought in when we ought to still be in the realm of the disciplinary system (if, as in the Delaware case, even that). To bring a police officer in to deal with a kid misbehaving in assembly, or to suspend a six year old excited about Scouts, is to badly overreact. It also gets kids involved in the criminal justice system who don't belong there, and it eats up resources that could be better spent elsewhere.
This warrants a reconsideration.