Lorini wrote: ↑Sun Mar 08, 2020 8:52 am
I seriously doubt that an 'arrest with no charges' has any meaning to a six year old.
I’m done with discussing this with you.
That's, fine. I will respond anyway. Not to rile anyone up, but because I think this is still a good discussion to have.
I never said it has no meaning, and I, in fact, implied the opposite. I said that it could have a possible positive impact, but again as I mentioned, it also depends on the history of this.
I had a friend growing up who wasn't a really bad or nasty person, but he did tend to shoplift and steal as a kid... I knew about it when I was around 8 or 9 but it was happening since before then for sure.
He always got away with it either by the family who did minor punishing of him when caught stealing a few dollars from them or by stores that didn't catch him (He wasn't walking out with 30 inch TV's)
This kept going right until he got caught by a store with a 100% arrest policy. No matter how minor, they made sure to call the cops and press charges both as a deterrent and also as an assumption (rightly so) that most of the time someone is caught, chances are that it wasn't their first time stealing, just their first time getting caught) It was a bunch of silly crap of less than $100. Some small toys and comic books and whatnot. He had been getting greedy and not just grabbing stuff and going, but also grabbing stuff, hiding it outside and going back for a few trips if needed.
This was the first time that he was really in trouble. The store called his parents since he was 12 at that time and still a minor, but just had them wait for the police to show up. They came and took him out in handcuffs.
The prosecutor worked with the store and the parents' attorney and ended up getting him off with a minor fine and some community service and probation. Basically, as long as he stayed clean for 2 years, that would be that, but if he was caught for anything else, they would void the deal and prosecute fully (which probably wouldn't have been a much bigger deal based on the dollar amount, but he was told he was looking at serious jail time)
To the best of my knowledge he never stole again in the time I still lived in the area. No idea what happened to him, where he is now, or if he went back to his bad ways, but for the remaining years I knew him, he seemed "clean"
So while this isn't the same exact thing, I also don't know this kids history and maybe this will be a wakeup call for her (if it was needed)
You previously said, "When you want to talk about 'committing a crime' I think you're going way out there if you think six year olds can even commit crimes."
One of the points of my story was the age of my friend. He was stealing (I'm pretty sure it was a crime, even back in the 70's and 80's when I grew up)
While age has some bearing on situations, I dislike when people completely dismiss everything else when children are involved.
Are there cases where police or SRO's or even just school security guards abuse their power? absolutely. Are there cases where seemingly these same people are "going too far" but are really justified for it? absolutely.
Do police, SRO's, etc need more training for things like this? possibly. But I'll go a step further and say that they should probably just not be involved in the first place. Let them be there to protect from outside threats and, while it's subjective, things that are leading to serious bodily injury against someone and have the parents deal with the rest. I'd even advocate for build a safe padded room in every school and if a child of ANY age is acting out violently, they get locked in, monitored for safety and have their parents called to come and get them. Then make it the parents call if they want to call police with the understanding that the police are NOT there to talk anyone down but at that point are there to subdue and arrest the child on the parents' authority.
I expect there would be mass outrage that we are now locking children in padded rooms though.
I think we place WAY too many hats on police and don't properly train them and expect them to be able to deal with things that they have no training in. We might as well take a random OOer to go to the school to deal with an unruly, violent, or mentally troubled child. They probably do need professional health, but if a cop had a child psychology degree they'd probably be a child psychologist instead of a cop. (This also goes along with my feelings when we expect them to identify and deal with mentally troubled adults as well)
You don't call the fire department and expect them to defuse a bomb, do you?
Since none of us know the whole history of this incident a lot of what we say is subjective and filled with conjecture and I'm just offering possible explanations for what is truly going on.
