Kindergartners Suspended for Playing ‘Cops’

SAYREVILLE, N.J. — School district officials plan to review a zero-tolerance policy after four kindergartners playing “cops and robbers” were suspended for making threats.

The 6-year-old Wilson School students were suspended for three days after the March 15 incident, in which the children pretended their fingers were guns and said they wanted to shoot each other.

Classmates reported them.

“This is a no-tolerance policy. We’re very firm on weapons and threats,” district Supt. William L. Bauer said.

He said the district would review the policy because a parent had complained that officials overreacted.

Assistant Supt. Dennis Fyffe acknowledged Thursday that officials were overly cautious following a number of school shootings in the United States, particularly the April 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., in which two of the school’s students killed 12 students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves. Twenty-three others were wounded.