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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?
That's a pretty good way to introduce the kids to the way this country works - complete strangers can cause you large amounts of suffering for the smallest mistakes. That's not how the country SHOULD work, of course, but it is.
Cops are dicks.
They always have been and always will be. I can count on one hand the number of run-ins I've had with cops that have been anything other than shitty - and no, I'm not a criminal.
Of course they went too far, they often do.
The culture of deliberate, misleading, trumped-up fear we live in today isn't helping anything either.
Frankly, we need more stories like this so more people realize just what the hell is going on.
12 year olds....DNA samples (and stored for X years) taken without parental or legal approval? Insane.
Is the law in Britain to take (and store) DNA samples when you are simply arrested? Convicted, yes, I can see....but just arrested? Insane.
(this does not even go into the complete foolishness of arresting them for what they actually did).
Superintendent Stuart Johnson, operations manager at Halesowen police station, said: 'I support the actions of my officers who responded to complaints from the public about "kids destroying" an ornamental cherry tree by stripping every branch from it, in an area where there have been reports of anti-social behaviour.
Since when was being anti-social a crime?
Now at least these three kids and all of their friends will realize firsthand what sort of world they're coming into rather than having to wait until they're all grown up to figure it out like most people do (if they ever do). The people who start the action that fixes these sort of problems are often the same people who have suffered because of them.
I think complaining to the police about children playing in a tree should be considered "anti-social"...
Oh, no! Three twelve year olds having fun! I better call the fucking cops!
The people who called in are probably chatting with those kids' parents right now about how the police over-reacted.
I have heard of a lot of teens and college kids, not to mention full adults, breaking down upon being arrested and thrown in jail. Especially when they don't understand what's going on. Being totally powerless will do that to you.
If you are worried about hyperbole in the article, I'm interested in the police claim that they kids were trying to strip ever branch from the cherry tree. Now, I haven't seen this important civic landmark (not entirely sarcastic: trees can be significant, although it didn't really sound like this one was, except from the police description), but your typical tree has a lot of branches, many of which a 12-year-old would be hard-pressed indeed to remove. Of course, we might speculate that the kids had saws and axes, but then we're stuck trying to explain why that wasn't mentioned by the police defending their actions. So that brings us back to the question: how likely was it to the police that the kids were trying to strip the tree and kill it? Did they really believe that? If so, should we trust their testimony and their judgement on this and other case?
This is the same country where police executed an unarmed and immobilized man for wearing a winter coat on the subway. These kids should count their blessings.
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
No one doesn't. Kids climb trees. They don't normally get arrested for it. Their responses were normal.
These infant-willed "preteens" didn't belong in a 20 foot cherry tree.
Maybe you've never seen a tree before. So you might want to sit down for this.
20 feet is actually quite short for a tree. Most people would consider that a shrub, not a tree.
When you climb a shrub or a tree, it is not necessary or even possible to climb up to the very highest leaves at the top. They won't hold your weight. Therefore the fact that the tree height is 20 feet strongly indicates that these kids were at a much lower height at the time of their arrest. They were probably at varying heights from zero to about ten- the article doesn't say. This would further indicate that emotional stability (as determined by an arrest) need not be a prerequisite for climbing shrubbery.
Also, I'm white, on top of which I go to great lengths to be polite and act in a respectful way, even if I'm thinking "what the hell do you want from me?"
I'm black, I do the same thing as you do, and I've had pretty much the same experience. The one time I've actually gotten a ticket, the officer thanked me for being polite to him. Not that that's the only time I've been pulled over, but the previous three or so times, I got off with just a warning. I'm not sure why exactly, but being nice can never hurt. Luckily, I don't really have to worry about traffic tickets anymore, since I drive to work on 280. There are no laws on 280.
But I'm one of the people who see the implications of the Zimbardo prison experiment in everyday situations, probably to an extent where most people would be rolling their eyes and saying "you're really reaching now."
Exactly. You take normal people and put them into a position of power, and it changes them. In my experience, treating them with respect instead of antagonizing them tends to soften the effect. I don't see why more people don't give it a shot. Plus, out of all the cops out there, how many of them are truly bad people? I don't think there are that many.
Dear UK,
We feel sorry for the people of your historically important island, but for the rest of us, this is great news. We'll just wait and see how this 'police-state' experiment of yours turns out, and learn the lessons from that.
Please, speed up the Orwellization of your fine country, so that we may arrive at our conclusions the sooner.
Much thanks in advance,
Rest of the World
And I'm sure they made an impression, all right. These kids will dislike and mistrust the police for the rest of their lives.
Cops have been doing the "well, I should book you, but I'll let you go this time" routine for centuries.
Yup, it's called exercising sound judgement. They should have done it again this time.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
So, this isn't your personal property (and I agree that kids destroying a tree in my garden would offend me). As for "tearing down", I don't know if you've ever seen a tree, but they're fairly hardy buggers - we build houses out of them, and before steel came along they were quite popular for ocean-going ships.
I'd be fairly confident that an afternoon in the company of 3 twelve-year-olds wasn't going to significantly damage the tree. Perhaps a few broken twigs, and a little less foliage. Destroying something does after-all imply a fairly major difference to the tree - my dictionary defines it as "put an end to the existence of".
This is quite clearly an example of cops going well-over-the-top in response to a minor incident, just because they can. I'd be more tempted to arrest the busybody who called the cops in the first place, for wasting police time.
If I was the child's parent, I'd be writing to the chief-constable demanding action; writing to the local and national newspapers with the story; putting adverts up in the local shop-windows asking people whether they thought it was right; writing to the local council demanding they investigate; setting up a website detailing the incident so it's public knowldge; writing to my Member of Parliament, and even the PM; in short creating such a stink that the officers in question are likely to get formally reprimanded. On every one of those letters I'd have the officers identified by badge number, the name of their Sergeant, and the actions-taken-to-date by the police to rectify their mistake.
After all, if the police have done nothing wrong, they've got nothing to worry about, have they ? All I'll do is make myself look a fool. Unless, of course, the majority of people agree with *me*
You don't lock kids up for breaking a few twigs. Betcha that tree is there long after the kids are dead. Like I said, they're hardy buggers.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
How many trees do corporations, land owners, and the government itself chop down every day? My guess would be more than one!
Break a branch, become a criminal, go to jail.
Raze a forest, become a Captain of Industry, go to government.
KFG
Why on earth are murderers and rapists being mentioned in this article? I doubt that's where this kid's train of thought was going. I know when I was 12 I had a very bare idea of what a rapist even was. She was thinking "Fuck! My batshit fucking loco, Daily Mail reading mother is gonna tear my fucking hair out!"
The real reason for this article (as you'll see in the comments) is to squak a damning endictment of Tony Blair's Britain (Just search for Blair on the page). The DM readership is ultra-conservative and even the right-wing Labour Party isn't right enough for them. We're talking about a paper which bemoaned the number of Jewish immigrants into Britain during the 30s and 40s - almost as bad an attitude as the Irish government's...
While I have no doubt these pigs lost control (it's not an unusual occurence) the DM is not a source I can trust one iota. A quick check on Google News suggests that this is the only paper covering the story so it might even just be made up from scratch.
You seem to be missing the point. In news reportage, there's no such thing as a "healthy counterpoint" to any bias.
News media should strive for accuracy, fairness and balance in their reporting. If the Morning Star is too left-wing and the Daily Mail is too right-wing, that doesn't excuse the DM (or the MS). It merely means that both have failed in their duties as newspapers .
Forgive the analogy, but your position is a little like implying that paedophilia is a "healthy counterpoint" to violent child-abuse, since one is motivated by exessive anger and the other by excessive "love".
In fact, both are utterly wrong, and neither one excuses the other. It's not a case of "left" vs. "right", it's a case of "impartial" vs. "biased", and that puts the DM and the MS on the same side.
The Daily Mail, the Sun, the Daily Sport and the Morning Star are all comics, not newspapers. Read them when you lack enough feelings of moral outrage in your life, or believe you may have a few too many braincells that you need to get rid of.
Don't read any of them for news.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
If you can't define the crime in a reasonably precise manner, it's total bullshit. That's all there is to it. The fact that your government has gotten you to buy into the insanity doesn't make it right. If there are certain particular things that society needs to discourage, those need to be SPELLED OUT CLEARLY. You simply don't need to lump a bunch of things like assault, stalking, reckless driving or vandalism in some vague catchall sort of dragnet.
This goes far beyond just mere victimless crimes to non-crimes.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.