As has already been pointed out, a rich kid is far less likely to have had serious run-ins with the law than a poor kid, so why would you think they’d know to keep their mouths shut? That’s highly unlikely.
Nobody ever THINKS they’re gong to get caught.
Rich kids can get out of trouble easier for two simple reasons:
They’re likelier to be white (or, perhaps even more importantly, not black), and
Their lawyers are better after the fact.
White rich people are treated differently by the cops and if the cops do go all the way they have better lawyers. It isn’t anything more than that. and it’s not just an American thing.
Couldn’t this post have been written just the opposite way? Wouldn’t we expect that a murder at an upper-class high school would draw disproportionately intense police attention?
Others have touched on it, but I think it is because the cop knows that the rich kid will get a high priced lawyer. Every move he makes will be scrutinized to the max, so he better make sure that he does it right. You don’t want any accusations of brutality because he will be examined by a well qualified specialist, etc.
Now, you arrest a poor, inner city kid and the cop knows that he will get a public defender who is overworked and will take a quick glance at his casefile and tell him to plead out. No in depth scrutiny, so the cops don’t worry so much.
The rich kids are likely to run their mouths and act like a fool when arrested. Maybe even more likely to cry like a little bitch right in front of all the cops and everyone else in the holding cell.
The difference is that their lawyer will nitpick everything from the chain of custody of evidence to the moral fiber of the witnesses.
I think some lenience on the sides of the cops due to the idea that it’s an aberration might be true. But this idea that the rich kids are going to be more savvy with authority, I think is bullshit.
Cops generally aren’t going to risk their lives for you. Luckily, the backlash against the cops who stood around outside Columbine has led to a new approach to similar incidents in which people who routinely claim that they need to be above the law because they risk their lives actually do have to make good on the risking their lives part.
You make it seem so… malicious. Rather, up to that point the cops had a tendency to view such cases as hostage situations, where charging in pell-mell was likely to make things worse. Since Columbine (and to a far lesser extent an incident that took place at a Montreal college - that I once attended, by the way - in 2006), the lesson is that these situations aren’t about hostages at all and the perpetrators are likely to kill themselves anyway, so there’s no point in hesitating.
As an incidental note, Stephen King took his novel Rage out of print, but the situation it describes - a student shoots a couple of teachers and takes a class hostage where they spend a few hours talking about life - is actually quite dissimilar to real-life events.
It matches my experience. As a teacher, I’ve found that middle class kids are much more likely to point out a mistake in grading, contest a grade, ask for help on an assignment, and they have concrete ideas of their options (i.e., poor kid with a parent in the hospital would say “I didn’t do my homework”, and not mention his mom because he assumes the rules are the rules and no exceptions are made. The middle class kid in the same situation would know to say "My mom was in the ER all night and I didn’t have a chance to do it, can I turn it in by the end of the day?
Interestingly, the middle class kids also have a much better idea about how to kiss my ass effectively. They have a much more specific idea of what I want to hear. I’d love to say that makes no difference on how I react to them, but hell, I can’t be sure. There is not a perfect correlation: some lower-class kids have great people instincts, and some middle class kids are socially clueless–but it’s a strong pattern.
That’s dealing with a teacher, where the ruleset is known due to years of experience dealing with them. It’s not immediately translatable to dealing with the cops where a suburban kid is just as likely to start crying. In my experience the rich kids who deal with the cops only once are completely out of their element until the lawyer shows up, whereas poor kids who deal with the cops on a regular basis know better how to talk to and deal with cops.
Right, that’s because as a teacher you are a known quantity and not an exotic species like a cop.
In my experience and observation, kids from affluent families tend to be exactly as Manda JO described.
And what makes you think rich kids never deal with the police? They never get pulled over for driving their BMW too fast? They don’t smoke weed or do coke or go to house parties that get busted by the cops?
They don’t think of the police as “an exotic species”. They are just another authority figure for who if you pantomime all the expected actions, will produce the desired results.
Look, I hung out with rich suburban kids of exactly the stripe you are talking about. They simply did not deal with the authorities as much as the poor kids. And the poor kids knew how to deal with the cops better than the rich ones. Even if the rich kids did coke and smoked weed they were less likely to be harassed by cops. For poor kids the idea of the cops harassing them is something that they deal with daily. Rich kids just don’t expect the cops to bug them.
Right, and until they learn the right actions to pantomime by being in contact with the cops, they are out of their element.
I can smoke pot in the open in the East Village and be relatively certain that the cops are not going to bug me. Because I look like an affluent white guy. Black people who say grew up in the Bronx or whatever, don’t quite see it the same way.
On top of that, it’s not just some random lawyer Dad calls-- odds are they know and have known the family lawyer. Poor people tend not to have “my lawyer”, an actual person who’s number they have who will come help them on a Saturday night.
I know my family’s lawyer. He got a wedding invitation. Both of my best friends have similar relationships with their family lawyers (down to the wedding invite). Seems completely standard among our class.
Also, I can’t speak for other rich kids, but I remember from the time I was a teenager my Dad drilling it into me that should I ever get arrested, to say nothing, and call Eric. Eric would handle it.
I was re reading " Our Guys, the story of the Glen Ridge Rape" tonite, so this thread is very timely.
I think it depends…I do think that rich overachiever (think dark side of Stepford/prep school) types do get a pass on stuff like this. The scum in the Glen Ridge case gang raped a retarded girl with a bat and broomstick. They were stereotypical entitled brats…if they’d been black or poor they would have been put in jail for life…Think about it. A rape with a BAT and BROOMSTICK??? Not a " Oh we got drunk/high and misunderstood each other’s intetions"
Even clear cut sociopaths can get a free ride if they’re well off.
I’m thinking about it. If they were black or poor? If they were black, they automatically would have been jailed for life? If they were the black sons of a rich black lawyer, a rich black doctor, and a black major-general?
You think it’s absolutely inconceivable for any black people to wield political clout?
Upper class kids are less likely to be arrested for the same crimes as lower class kids. They’re less likely to be convicted then those kids, they’re more likely to be given probation then lower class kids, and they’re given on average much lighter sentences is they are given one.
Even if the last 3 had everything to do with the lawyers, the first one is before the lawyer is even involved.
Doesn’t this mean that rich kids are getting a pass from the cops though? It isn’t just that they are less likely to be arrested once they’re stopped or whatever, its also the fact that cops don’t harass the rich kids in the first place.
I should point out that it sometimes works in the opposite way. For example the Duke lacrosse students who were accused of rapeing that prostitute. Everyone was all set to call it another case of a bunch of overprivileged rich kids going wild.
Frequently when you have an elite college in a working class community that creates a lot of tension. The students are typically viewed as overprivileged outsiders who get drunk and create a lot of headaches. Typically when I was in school, you wanted to deal with campus cops instead of the town cops whenever possible.
Of course, they are simply much less likely to be stopped and harassed. Another factor of it is that rich kids often have a place to go for their shenanigans. They have cars that they can hang out in, that sort of thing. Poor kids are out in the streets a lot more than rich kids.
msmith537 Sometimes it works the other way, but that’s the exception, not the rule.
It really has nothing to do with class but money. The better lawyer you have the better chance you have of getting off, or getting a lighter sentence. Law has become incredibly complex and you need a lawyer who will fight for you.
Plea bargains in the US now amout to 90% of all criminal charges. In otherwords nationwide 90% of the criminal cases are decided through plea bargains. You need a good lawyer to get you a good deal.
Look at the OJ Simpson Trail, whether you believe he did it or not, isn’t the issue. Ask yourself, if OJ was regular black guy, working at say, General Motors, and the all the evidence in the case was the same, do you think he’d have gotten off? No his wealth and celebrity helped him to get off.
Again, I’m not debating whether or not he’s guilty but rather the fact his wealth was a factor.
Rich parents aren’t stupid. I remember when I first started out in life I worked overnights in a Red Roof Inn, in South Holland Illinois.
I remember once about midnight I had to call the cops and bust up a party in the room and there was coke and all sorts of drugs there. Of course all the partiers were teenagers.
I remember I had the cops in the lobby room and the parents who rented the room for their kids showed up and said “I had no idea what he was going to do?”
I said “What do you mean, no idea. You only live a few blocks from the Inn, you knew darn well what was going to happen and you rented your kid a room 'cause you didn’t want him to wreck your house.”
It’s like parking tickets, the message is “Don’t park there.” But if you can afford to pay the tickets it’s OK
