Can teachers confiscate your laser pointer and hand it over to the police if it is a 1 mw laser pointer?

Yes. It is illegal to take anything that may be used as a weapon into a classroom. You could have been prosecuted for having a laser pointer in class and your dad could be prosecuted for letting you use it unsupervised. The 1mW rule is a guide as to what will be tolerated on the street. Anything bigger is regarded as an illegal weapon and you can be prosecuted for carrying one.

You'll eventually learn that people in positions of authority can pretty much do whatever they want, whether the law supports it or not. As it stands, your teacher was probably justified in confiscating your laser pointer. Having a laser pointer is almost certainly against school policy, which gives your teacher the right to confiscate the laser pointer.

go back to the school and demand they teach you how to write intelligible english

1) All that has happened is that the teacher confiscated the pointer, which he was within his rights to do. This item could be used to cause disruption in the classroom or even damage someone's eyesight. Your claim to innocence would be useless if the school bully stole it from you. That is why these sort of things are banned from school premises. 2) The school would have handed it over to the police because they may not have known whether it was within the legal power limits of not. There is nothing wrong with their action in doing that. 3) The police obviously decided that it was within the legal power limits so they contacted your father to come and collect it. This was a sensible thing to do because they would not know whether you had the thing in your possession legitimately or not. 4) Cats can be blinded by lasers easier than humans can because their eyes are much more sensitive. There is always the risk that the pointer would at some time be shining directly at the cat's face, or refelcted from some shiny surface to it. If your 1mW laser shone into its eye then it would cause the cat pain and considerable distress, and possibly damage its eye. Use an old shoelace or piece of string, the cat will snjoy chasing that around just as much as a red spot on the carpet.

I don't like your chances, Sunny Jim.

Yes, teachers can confiscate anything from children in their care. They must look after such property and eventually give it back to the child or the parents, or pass it to the Police. Yes, they were entitled to try to pass the pointer to the Police if they suspected it might be an illegal item. It was then for the Police to either refuse to accept it, to accept it and return it (as they have) or if it actually had been illegal to confiscate it permanently.

No they can not, it is called stealing and they have no legal right to do it.