I just can’t make that connection. Perhaps somebody can help me understand. The thread title is:
Would anybody mind if I modified that slightly to read:
I mean the gift is his, right?
So distilling it down a bit we get:
opening [his] Christmas present early = stealing
I’m sorry but I just don’t see that equality. I don’t disagree that the boy needs to be scared straight and the police might be the best way to do it (that’s why I suggested getting him for breaking & entering), but I just don’t see where an act of theft has taken place.
“His” Christmas present only means that the present will, in the future, be given to him. If it has not yet been given to him, then it does not belong to him, the item belongs to the buyer until it is given away. He took something that belonged to someone else.
I’m certainly glad that the local crime rate there is so low that the police can take time to go after a kid for opening presents early. What a waste of public resources.
If we had a magic crystal ball that let us see into the future and we found out that without this little “scare straight” tactic, the kid will be in and out of juvie multiple times as a kid and through rehab twice before being incarcerated for armed robbery at 23, would you still consider it a waste of resources? What if he’d just be dead of an overdose at 17? Because, statistically speaking, either scenario is a very, very likely one for a kid with a history of behavioral problems. OTOH, kids who have personal interaction with police officers at a young age are less likely to commit crimes as adults (according to the paperwork sent home by my kids school for their “Officer Friendly” program, anyway.)
Sounds like not “wasting resources” on birth control education, when having children is much more expensive. I’m sure the cops would rather scare the little fella now than be on a first name basis with him in ten years.
The way I see it, the decision to actually give him the gift had not been made yet. It may have been purchased with the intention of giving it to him, but until the transfer had been made, it’s not his. Who knows if they had some criteria hinging on whether or not he was going to get it? If my kid was in the kind of trouble he had been in, there would have to be some serious shaping up before he would get a present that nice, and maybe the mom was still waiting to see if he was gong to shape up or not.
The mother wants to enter her child into the juvenile justice system. It’s not just a “scare tactic”. Her intent is to show up in court and plea to the judge that her child be put into Department of Juvenile Justice custody.
She wants the justice system to rehabilitate her son because she is unable to. One cannot just hand over her child if he hasn’t committed a crime.
I think it was a very good move on her part. Her lack of proper parenting skills up to that point most likely put her in this preventable situation, but that’s another thread. . .
Kid took present from his grandma’s, even though it was intended for him he hadn’t been given it yet. He’d been causing trouble in the household for some time before this, so his mother called the police and filed a petty larceny charge. Harsh, but I can’t work up the bile to get really angry about it. His mum sounded like she was under a lot of stress trying to figure out how to get through to this kid.
However, it’s hard to take the police report seriously when they put the system down as a “Playstation Game Boy”. Which is it, people?
I do. First off, I doubt very strongly that there is a law in South Carolina prohibiting minors of the age of 12 from entering the homes of family members. Second, there is normally a provision in crimes like larceny calling for forming a criminal intent. It is not criminal to take propery that rightfully belongs to another under the impression that it has become your own property – and I submit to Bricker that there was a clear deed of gift, in the form of the tag on the package, indicating that it was an adult (the mother?)'s intent to convey the gift to the child. Or perhaps we should arrest every person in America over the age of 3 for the criminal act of “casing the joint” by checking out presents under the tree prior to Christmas morning?
More importantly, the function of the police is to enforce the law by arresting or ticketing people who they reasonably believe to have committed crimes and other penal offenses. It is not to “put a scare in a kid” – that is precisely what is wrong with attitudes towards police today; they are not, in the minds of many people, public servants protecting us, but the Uniformed Boogeyman intent on finding anyone not in uniform guilty of crimes. I have gotten very peeved at some of our resident conservatives for harping about “nanny government” – but when you make it literal, for God’s sake, they may have a point. Discipline by parents, or if needed by juvenile authorities, is what’s called for, not the police “putting a scare in the kid.”
Finally, probably the absolute first principle of criminal law is that it is to be construed strictly. Anything is legal which is not prohibited by statute. I am sorry you “see no reason to assume he was there lawfully,” but unless you can show me a statute prohibiting his being there, bearing in mind that he is a 12-year-old child in the home of a family member, so trespassing does not apply, any court in the land is going to scoff at your assumption.
And, of course, it’s the Christmas season – there’s no place in it to consider family love, mercy, or any of those other outmoded concepts!
A Prefrontal Lobotomy sounds like the perfect answer to me, the kid’d spend more time drooling and looking at the pretty colors, and less time pilfering presents
The New York trespassing statutes refer to “entering or remaining unlawfully” , and unlawfully is defined as "not licensed or privileged to do ". There are all sorts of qualifiers, (such as a person is licensed or privileged to enter or remain in a public space unless the owner personally communicates an order not to enter or remain), but no where does it state that the any 12 year old relative is licensed and privileged to enter my house unless I order him not to.
I keep seeing real hardass responses to posts about kids misbehaving. Ranging from ‘jail the bastard’ to ‘shoot and kill the slimebucket’. WTF is up wid dat? You sorts never had kids? Never were kids? I’m very curious to know the demographic whence these Ps OV derive. Is it the atheists? The ultra-religious? Pubs? Dems?
It’s another very troubling aspect of US society to the outside observer, this disproportionate reaction to minor incidents. If you must vent your spleen, why not do it on the true criminals - Shrub and his minions? Why foist your hatred/anger/hostility on kids?
Quiddity has the same notion as the kids themselves… that any anger or frustration directed at them is arbitrary and nothing to do with their own behavior; that discipline is hateful; that actions don’t have consequences; and that the notion of “justice” only applies to their own rights, not to the rights of others. It’s a shame that adults would reinforce these sociopathic delusions by taking the preposterous stance that kids are not responsible for their actions and that any consequences of those actions is cruelty.
I am completely incapable of seeing the outrage of these daily posted threads over kids who break the law being treated like they’re criminals.
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