Firenze Sage: rosary beads as gang symbol

Red and blue are gang related colors. So no wearing of certain colors in schools. Now rosary beads are forbidden because used by some gangs.

Jake Balthazor, 15, of Coon Rapids, Minn., has been told by local school officials that he can no longer wear the black and silver rosary honoring his grandmother, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

A Minnesota high school student who wears rosary beads to school in support of his cancer-stricken grandmother was ordered to pocket them by school district officials, who said the beads could be a symbol of gang membership.

“He was told not to wear it again,” Chad Balthazor said Thursday. “He was upset when he came home from school. A teacher sent him down to the office, but the reason he was wearing it was for his grandmother.”

The school districtâ€s policy forbids any “apparel, jewelry, accessories or matter of grooming which by virtue of its color arrangement, trademark or any other attribute denotes membership in an organized gang,” Mary Olson, director of communication for the Anoka-Hennepin School District, told FoxNews.com.

Olson said Coon Rapids police informed the district in early May that some local gangs, namely the Latin Kings and the Surenos, do use rosary beads as affiliation symbols.

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Imagine all the things we can ban if we just put them in the gang’s hands first.

SmJAJ48@aol.com http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/109312