A few weeks ago in Kitchener, Ontario, a 26-year-old father named Jessie Sansone was surprised to find himself being arrested when he went to pick up his three young children from Forest Hill Public School.

Sansone, who was thoroughly bewildered and unaware of what crime he could have possibly committed, was handcuffed and hauled to the police station where he was then forced to remove his clothes and submit to a full strip search.

After finally being allowed to speak with a lawyer, Jessie Sansone was told that he was being charged with possession of a firearm and was to appear before a judge the next morning (presumably after spending the night in jail).

While all of this was occurring, Sansone's three children were taken, without their parents' consent, to be interviewed by the local Family and Children's Services.

Police officers also went to Sansone's home and brought his wife, Stephanie Squires, along with their 15-month-old child, to the police station as well. "Nobody was given any explanation," Squires said. "I didn't know why he was being arrested."

Just a few hours later, a detective came to Sansone to apologize and notify him that he was being released and the charges had been dropped. It was only then that Sansone was informed of the reasons behind the whirlwind of abuse: during class, his four-year-old daughter drew a picture of a man holding a gun. When her teacher asked about the gun, the four-year-old answered, "That's my daddy's. He uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters."

So, let's just take a moment to get this straight.

A four-year-old little girl made a drawing at school of her father using a gun to protect her from bad guys and monsters. Her teacher then apparently saw this as something worth reporting to the principal who thought the police should be involved. The police then saw fit to drag an innocent man to jail without any evidence, humiliate him, terrify his wife by bringing her to the station without information and most egregiously, they felt it necessary to kidnap his children to have them interviewed by the bureaucrats at Family and Children's Services.

This is clearly a blaring case of shockingly overzealous idiocy on several fronts. First, we ought to examine the teacher's behavior.

The idea of a father with a firearm in a region with strict gun laws can be a red flag, but this drawing is not sufficient evidence to prove Sansone's ownership of a gun, let alone the notion that said gun may be putting his children in danger. Still, I can not fault the teacher for erring on the side of caution and putting the situation in the hands of the principal.

The story should have ended in the principal's office.

Sansone and the principal knew one another, as Sansone was offered a job as a student counselor at the school (he is a certified personal support worker and life issues counselor).

The principal could have simply called Sansone into his office, as he was at the school anyway, and asked if there was a gun in the household that was not secured away from the children.

If this principal trusted Sansone at one point to work with and counsel children at the school, surely he also must trust Sansone to be responsible with his own children. Rather than proceeding with initiative and rational thought, the principal instead chose to shy away from accountability and passed the ball on to the police department.

The police, too, could have simply questioned Sansone about the drawing and would have discovered only pure innocence. If they were truly apprehensive, they could have asked for a warrant to search his home—which Sansone allowed them to do after he was released without a warrant. Instead, they chose to display a vulgar abuse of power and authority.

With no evidence, the police department elected to terrorize a family in the name of their own safety.

Canadians should be ashamed that their legal system encourages such a heinous disregard for the centuries-old principle of habeas corpus.

Unfortunately, such incidents are to be expected from governments and bureaucracies that are given too much power with near-zero accountability.

When a teacher, a principal, or a police department is given the authority to bypass the system, this sort of overreaction will become increasingly commonplace. Both in the United States and in Canada, we are fortunate to have legal systems that are designed to protect the rights of the citizens.We are guaranteed due process of law, which prevents such hasty errors as this.

Nonetheless, even in such a functional legal system, abuses can occur if we are not vigilant in looking out for them and decisive in ending them.

Let what happened to Jessie Sansone serve as an example of why due process is necessary to a free society and as a reason for why we should always fight to protect it.