Slashdot Mirror
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?
Since when was being anti-social a crime?
Since there were "restraining orders" in the US, and ASBO's in the UK.
"you were an asshat....don't do it again, or you WILL go to jail"
FTFA (bolded text was done by me):
... civilized my ass.
Questioned by police, the scared friends admitted they had broken some loose branches because they had wanted to build a tree house, but said they did not realise what they had done was wrong.
Officers considered charging the children with criminal damage but eventually decided a reprimand - the equivalent of a caution for juveniles - was sufficient.
I can think of many other people to be arresting for criminal damage.
What the heck is this world coming to? Kids playing in a tree, break a few branches and get arrested (and DNA tested!? WTF?). Meanwhile, corporations are allowed to get away with this garbage. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with world
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
linky
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
The term anti-social is a little confusing. It can mean "averse to the society of others" or "hostile or harmful to organized society; especially : being or marked by behavior deviating sharply from the social norm".
Where I live, some kids were charged with "terroristic activities" after they used baking soda to create "bombs" out of plastic bottles. As a result, the school system is now mandating that students use clear plastic backpacks at all times next year. Sure, everybody will know when little Suzie's on the rag now, but we all know kids will treat such subjects with maturity, and it's all worth it if we can save even one plastic bottle.
Granted, such activity should not be tolerated in school, but when I was a kid we called them pranks, not terrorist plots.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Jean Charles de Menezes was not wearing a winter coat, but a normal denim jacket ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menez es ); false "eyewitness" reports are the source for the misinformation about his "suspicious" clothing. Despite his normal appearance and behavior, he was still gunned down in cold blood by men who face no consequences. War is peace.
One current scheme is to setup fingerprint access to schools, this is funded by the DfE (Department for Education) and comes from a special budget. The DfE are reluctant to discuss what is done with the data and how long it will be kept. However, given the present administrations desire to collect biometric data and centralise it, its not too big a step to believe that this too will be centralised. It would mean that the government would have biometrics on the population from when it enters the state education system. Initially this will be fingerprint only but once that has been proven possible to defeat other data will be stored, DNA etc.
There is an argument that all of this will help the authorities prosecute offenders. It smacks too much of a police state for me. This action by the police is merely following the trend that has been established. The police can do no wrong at the moment.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
That's unsocial. As in, ignoring social trends. This is antisocial. It means deliberately breaking them and being malicious towards other people.
It's a distinct difference. The same counts for amoral and unmoral.
I've got the spirit, lose the feeling.
Welcome to UK law. Go read up on it. "Anti social" behavior is a criminal offense. But be aware that your definition of "anti social" (say, gloomy or impolite) may not be the same as that in the UK / UK law (say, offensive or obscene or psychotic). Read the links provided in other comments in this branch and do some googling ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
Since when was being anti-social a crime?
In the UK being anti-social isn't itself a crime.
But if you are anti-social, they get to make up special laws, just for you.
They are called 'Anti-Social Behavior Orders' or ASBOs.
And then they can make just about anything a crime. For you.
Sooner or later someone will get one like:
"Must not raise right hand above waist height in a public place or where likely to be viewed from a public place".
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
While it was not (yet) as bad as The Sun when I left the UK in 2002, the Daily Mail was a strident, hysterical, sensationalist muckracking journal well on its way to parity. I would believe maybe 15-20% of what is reported here as "fact". The paper also carries a political/social agenda on just about everything, and I suspect very strongly that we are seeing an extremely distorted story that is being "economical with the truth".
So, if -- and that's a VERY big if -- everything reported is true I deplore it, but I have serious doubts as to whether the story is at all objective.
If the Mail was looking for a reaction, I'm sure it got what it was after.
It's interesting that Google News and Google proper only carry two reports of this, and there is no mention on the BBC web site (as of 21.38 PDT).
This has all the hallmarks of a carefully manufactured and groomed story deisgned to garner publicty and web page impressions.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
and here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_beha viour_order
150 quid for littering, kids ordered to clean up hop scotch grid. This place is definitely one of the must see places in the UK. Unless you're from a civilised country.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
worse.... the DNA recording is no longer limited to "serious arrestable offences", you can have your DNA taken for what they define as a "recordable offence" which means they needn't even arrest you... they will take the sample out there in the street while giving you a caution or writing up your ticket for dropping litter... if you object, they'll arrest you... simple innit...
and soon they'll be fingerprinting newborns in the maternity suites... it's the only way they can get a massive database as the rest of us are all refusniks
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
For a long time. While there are plenty of examples of police (at the instigation of neighbours, mind you) taking it too far, there really is a big problem in the UK with kids, both in gangs and individually, going on the rampage. Cars and property being damaged, people assaulted, shops robbed, loud noise, intimidation, drugs...it's widespread if not quite the reign of terror some of the tabloids make it out to be.
That's countered by, among other things, ASBOs - Antisocial Behaviour Orders - which enforce things like curfews and prevent the recipient from going into certain areas. Not just kids - anyone can get an ASBO. It's supposed to be a way to reduce the likelihood of offence without having to actually arrest someone or cart them off to a juvenile facility.
How well it works is another question entirely (ASBOs have been handed out in some really quite doubtful cases), but to answer your question: antisocial behaviour has been a crime for years.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makesthem. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. ... Create a nation of law-breakers, and then you cash in on the guilt."
-Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged", Chapter III, "White Blackmail"
That whole law is utterly rubbish! The Law;
* dictates child rearing and punishment,
* allows police to disperse groups of any TWO people at will,
* bans immitation weapons,
* allows city councils to label any publicly displayed painting or artwork as "graffiti" and order the land owner to remove it at their cost (even if they weren't the ones to create it),
* if you have 20 or more people on your property, or in your house, police can label it a rave, and incarcerate everyone at said "rave,"
* allows city councils to set a hight limit on plants so as to not block the light onto your neighbor's property, and charge a fee to perform the maintainance if the owner is not willing to cut their plants down to size,
* Strengthens ASBOs which basically criminalizes behavior that is otherwise lawful.
If the United States were to pass such a law, I would call the USA a lost cause, and move to Mexico.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
struck on the back of the head by a full 2L PET drink bottle. The kid still had the bottle in his hand and when my friend turned around, there were 5-6 or so kids ready to "go at it"
It's situations like this that ABSO's were created, which is why I'm all for them.
No, it's situations like this (assault) that PRISONS were created.
All an asbo does is say "Don't do it again". ASBOs are relavent when somebody is repeatadly causing a nuisence but not actually breaking any laws -- e.g. loud music every night.
Read the article, they weren't climbing a tree, they were ripping it apart.
b ase
To the 12-year-old friends planning to build themselves a den, the cherry tree seemed an inviting source of material.
Climbing doesn't get you wood.
Officers considered charging the children with criminal damage but eventually decided a reprimand - the equivalent of a caution for juveniles - was sufficient.
They got off with a warning.
As far as DNA samples, well maybe if the UK wasn't so focused on getting everyons DNA they wouldn't have done so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_National_DNA_Data
In a situation like that, in addition to anything else you do, my advice is to get the licence plate. Jot it down on your hand or something. It might be nothing, but it might be everything. You can put it on a scrap of paper in your wallet and throw it away in a month when you find it again.
qntm.org
There is a mistake in the article. It states that the police records will be kept fo five years. This is not strictly accurate as the DNA samples will be kept indefinitely on the UK's national DNA database.
Here's a handy little editorial device you might want to learn: [sic]. From wikipedia, "Sic is a Latin word meaning "thus", "so", or "just as that". In writing, it is italicized and placed within square brackets [sic] to indicate that an incorrect or unusual spelling, phrase, or other preceding quoted material is a verbatim reproduction of the quoted original and is not a transcription error."
Proper use of this device will shift the blame for grammatical stupidity away from you and onto the submitter where it rightfully belongs.
Yours in pointless pedantry,
Acy
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Back in the day (1976-ish) my father was in the Marines. We lived on a Marine base. My older brother (he was 12) and two of his friends were playing in a creek. They followed the creek (which was beside a road) looking for frogs. At one point a vehicle pulled up and out jumped two armed Marines - guns fully drawn and pointed them at my brother and his friends. They were hand-cuffed, arrested and tossed in a cell.
Then they made the requisite phone calls to their parents. They couldn't reach the first two kids' parents when they called my father. They told him that his boy was in the base brig. They also told him that if he knew the parents of the other boys that he should contact them. They gave my father the boys' names and my father grinned ear-to-ear.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
The base CO had the two MPs severely reprimanded, stripped of rank and transferred for type writer maintanence in Poedunk, Alaska for pulling guns on his two boys and my brother.
Moral of the story - Don't pull weapons on the base COs children.
I believe what he was going for was:
Lawerence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I had a million dollars I could hook that up, cause chicks dig a dude with money.
Peter: Well, not all chicks.
Lawerence: Well, the kind of chicks that would double up on a dude like me do.
Peter: Good point.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Don't confuse asocial with anti-social... there is a significant difference. What you're describing is asocial - that is, not desiring to participate in society. Antisocial, on the other hand, carries the implication of being actively harmful to society, not just avoiding it. Yes, "anti-social" gets used that way a lot - hence the (fairly recent) addition of that first definition listed - but I, at least, feel that it's an important distinction.
Sig broken, watch for
I would not take seriously a single word that that rag published. A recent example: They published something about my website and claimed to have spoken to me the previously day - a lie. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/new s/news.html?in_article_id=395688&in_page_id=1770. They lied, were factually incorrect, they nicked pictures and text without attribution, god help anyone who takes the DM seriously.
Charlie.