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Children Arrested, DNA Tested for Playing in a Tree?
skelator2821 wrote in with another account of a police action gone way overboard. From the article: "To the 12-year-old friends planning to build themselves a den, the cherry tree seemed an inviting source of material. But the afternoon adventure turned into a frightening ordeal for Sam Cannon, Amy Higgins and Katy Smith after they climbed into the 20ft tree - then found themselves hauled into a police station and locked into cells for up to two hours." skelator2821's basic question in all of this: "What is this World coming to? Do you think they went to far?" Well? Do you?
Could they have been imprisoned for Climbing While Black? Sounds crazy, but so is the number of Afro-Carribeans pulled over in the USA for Driving While Black...
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
In the article, the parents only had things like "the police went too far" to say about their children being arrested. I probably would have been harder on the police department, but one has to wonder about the 12-year-old's responses to their experience (one of the boys was crying uncontrollably, and one of the girls went back to sleeping with her parents). These infant-willed "preteens" didn't belong in a 20 foot cherry tree.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
It seems unanimous that the cops went "too far". Probably so. And, yes, I hate the cops too. In the United States, most cops seem to me to be louts with too much power and too little education.
Nobody has commented, though, on the seriousness of the kids' behaviour. Destruction of a tree on public land is true vandalism. A twenty foot tree may be twenty years old--and much harder to replace than man-made targets of vandalism, such as signs, cars, or windows. The parents of these children should have taught their children to respect trees as common property of incalculable value.
I live near public land in the United States and the behaviour of children using the land is appalling. I've seen acres of land ripped up by dirt bikes, seedling trees intentionally pulled up for no apparent reason except boredom, and, yes, branches broken for the purpose of making "forts." Most of the land used regularly by children is simply barren, except for those trees tall enough to withstand constant abuse. Those trees, too, will eventually die, and there will be no young trees to replace them.
Depending on how much has been mediahyped vs the reality of what happened... Police say "destroy"... media says "a few lose branches"... Police says "ornamental".. media says "a tree in a public area" I think the only mistake the police mad was to actually put them in a cell. They should of definitely detained them and kept them for holding while their parents came to collect and discuss the problem. Did the police have a suitable facility (ie not a cell) to hold children in while waiting for the parents? In my opinion they should of been DNA sampled (if that is the standard procedure) and given the reprimands which they were. What if their DNA samples linked them to a series of known other criminal and anti-social acts? Then we would all be touting how wonderful the new technology is working, not that their persons have been invaded by DNA samples being recorded. What they did was a criminal act, destruction of public property. It was not an intentional breaking of the law. They should not of been charged for it as they are just children and the Police did not charge them. There is no mention by the media how the children behaved... this may of purposely left out by the media to pain the picture they wanted? If they were being openly offensive to the officers (anti-social behaviour) they may of got exactly what they deserved. For all we know the children could be known trouble makers who were spitting and abusing the officers, inversely they could be the sweet little angels which todays society produces (yes thats sarcasm). How fast do Cherry tree grows? I would assume a 20ft Cherry tree takes decades to grow? How badly did they damage something which may take 10?20?30 years to fix? The short of it... yes I think they went too far... but only for putting them in an actual jail cell.
I think complaining to the police about children playing in a tree should be considered "anti-social"...
Read the damn article. The kids weren't playing in a tree, they were tearing down a tree (that wasn't their own, by the way) so that they could build a fort. There is a difference. One is an act of play which demands a "Hey, kids, get off my lawn!" while the other is an action you'd probably call the cops about. If some neighborhood kids came over to my house and started ripping branches off one of my trees, I'd have to be in a good mood just to call the police - I'd probably go out there myself and raise hell at 'em. Wouldn't you do the same? What if they started ripping the siding off your house so they could make a fort? Or stole pieces of your fence? Even if you were in the best of spirits, I'm sure you wouldn't laugh it off, saying, "Oh, those kids are quite crazy these days, aren't they Ingrid?"
I don't know about you, but when I was twelve, I sure as hell knew better than to destroy something that didn't belong to me. I knew that if I did, there would be punishments. I would have to pay for what I took/destroyed, and probably would get punishment for it. Was the punishment too severe? Perhaps. But stop trying to paint these kids as angels who the police violently traumatized for no particular reason. They were "stripping every branch from it" so they could build their "den."
For those unfamiliar with the British press, this story was printed in the Daily Hate Mail, a vile right-wing rag known to, errm, stretch the truth considerably.
The kids are full of shit, and the article summary's got more spn than a Fox story on the inheritance tax ('death tax').
.... What was that about breaking off branches?
* They're on "public" land, and they "remove a few small dead branches from a cherry tree" is sandwiched between references that they were "playing in the tree".
Oh, you mean they were DESTROYING the cherry tree. Vandalism. OK
No matter. Those kind of trees grow like weeds anyway. Especially in the UK, where there are an overabundance of trees to begin with...
Here's what the story real says:
* The kids were looking for material to build a "treehouse".
It doesn't say if they were going to build it on THEIR property, or SOMEONE ELSE'S property. Most likely the latter.
As far as I'm concerned, they all aught to get switched, and then spend their next few weekends working for the park service cleaning up OTHER people's vandalism.
This boo-hoo about their "DNS" and all is a bit overblown. The kids set out to break someone else's property, cart off the goodies, and now they are deliberately misleading (or lying even) by portraying it as "playing in a tree". The details ARE in the story if anyone bothers to RTFA.
The fact is these kids did serious damage to an ornamental tree. You simply don't build tree houses in cherry trees. They weren't just 'climbing' a tree, they were vandalising it and by the sounds of it they did huge amounts of damage. Then there's building a tree house on public land "generations of children" have played there, why should the kids make it so that it's their own private play area and ruin what is usually a beautiful kind of tree when it's in bloom