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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?
disturbed by the "anti-social behavoir" remarks? Or is it just me?
So in the UK they put kids into the same holding areas as adults and can gather DNA from them without some sort of court order or parental consent? And the criminal records of children can actually be queried by schools?
Not flamebait, not an attack on the UK, but serious questions.
Feeling as I do that this power relationship brings out the uglier sides of human nature, I'm always sure to let them be the alpha male (or female) so I don't trigger any "I must prove that I'm a badass" reactions. 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."
Because civil rights things like this get people more worked up and generate a helluva lot more page hits then "news for nerds". BUT, it also falls into the "stuff that matters" category. (just to show that I am not completely cynical, although it's hard not to be around here.
Thank you, Tony Blair. Having created a crime-free paradise (by American standards), the British government has proceeded to outlaw merely unpleasant behaviour.
Know your rights and when to exercise them.
Cops are human beings, and unless you're living in an area that disables them from being a human being, you needn't be an ass all the time. Imagine being spit on, insulted, and assualted every day, all hours of the day, by drunks, drugheads, and assholes who try to make trouble. Eventually, you stop blinking, and stop being nice.
Sure, some places have corrupt cops and a corrupt justice system that does not work. I'll agree that our justice system is infact broken, all the way around, and that that the entire government is illegal at a fundemental level and I'v got books and documents that proove as much. But not every area requires the same amount of crap to be taken nor given.
I had a cop approach me today, said someone called 911 from my home. I know this is BS; nobody's home at all, cept for me and I'm heading out. She asked me to check; I checked, and explained where everyone was and that everyone was accounted for. She asked to take a quick look inside; I allowed her to, and she was in and out within a few seconds and I watched her every second. I was polite, curtious, and overbearingly nice and I made her feel like crap afterwards and even said "have a nice day, hope you find who called". The point? I COULD have said "Mam, I do not consent to any searches of my property" and we could've gone from there depending on what she would've wanted to do. But when the cops are nice, and courteous, and trying to do their job, if you're nice to them, they will be nice to you.
And I'm sure she could've been an ass about it too, but her business there was to check the 911 call.
I had a cop come to me with a complaint from some neighbors over a car in my driveway that was newspapered and being painted; I was waiting for a cool, dry day to do the painting on. The realestate agent down the block didn't like it, and filed a complaint stating the car was a junk car and was undrivable. I was as nice as I could be to that cop, and know what he did for me? Told me exactly how to comply with the law and gave me a week before he stickered it; IE, make sure it was lisenced plated, stickered, and was drivable. So all I had to do was rip off the paper, put the plate on, and drive it to a different spot in the driveway and he said "ok, you're good". All the car had on it was primer, and all of the trim had tape on it so it didn't look great. He didn't sticker it at all, said it was in compliance, and went back to the station. He wasn't exactly 100% nice about it and was I'll admit, somewhat condescending, but he was civil and gave me the benefit of the doubt.
And I'm sure the real-estate agent is still quite pissed.
Otherwise, you exercise your rights when you need to. If the cop gives you attitude and talks of using excessive force, know your rights, how to state them, and be civil about it. If a cop decides he doesn't want to trust you as a human being, or treat you as one, by all means exercise every right you have. "I do not consent to any searches sir", and "Sir, can we keep this civil?" or my favorite, "Are you detaining me or can I go about my business" and if they answer yes, you ask "on what grounds?". Later, this can be used in court to put the sucker behind bars or de-badge them. Some cops flambast you with a shit-hose like you wouldn't believe and they do it to intimidate; don't be intimdated. Others will cuff you, put you on the ground, and tell you to sit there, and unless you're living in an area where the judicial system is corrupt to the core, you're good to go to get that cop put into jail for assualt.
And if you're going to do something risky, be nice and make sure your ass is covered. Going to smoke pot? Have a way to cover the smell and dispose of the evidence quickly and smoke it in such a fashon nobody will know. Going to modify a gun to make it full auto? Keep the gun stashed in a spot where it'd take considerable time and effort to find them. I'v even had cops say "wow, that's illegal. You going to get rid of it for me so I don't have to report it?" because I was nice.
You raise an interesting point: are the police responding this strongly -- too strongly -- because no one else will?
Today I was riding my bike home from work when I passed a car stopped by the side of a busy road, next to a small park with a bike path. The passenger's side door was open, and a girl about age 10 was standing by it crying. I stopped to watch, surprised. The girl was talking to someone in the car, and she would half get in the car, then step back, then repeat, crying all the time.
What do you think was going on? Doesn't look good, does it? Doesn't that make it remarkable that, as I approached on my bike, and while I was stopped, about three or four other people walked, jogged or rode on bikes past, and of course about two dozen cars drove by -- and no one else stopped? It was also in clear view of some new condos across the street that sell for upwards of $500,000 -- but no one came out of them.
I went up to the girl, and, staying well back (to help the girl feel safe), I looked more closely. In the car was a woman with another child. I asked the child her name, whether the woman was her mother, and whether she wanted to get in the car. She told me her name, said it was her mother, and that she did want to get in the car. The woman said it was her child, and that the girl wanted to get in the car, but wasn't being allowed to because she was in a "time out." I assume the woman was driving when she stopped and put the child out of the car at the side of the road as some kind of punishment. The girl would then be crying because she feared she was about to be abandoned.
After thinking it all through for a bit, I believed the woman. The girl and the woman and the other child in the car looked alike (all blonde wavy hair, similar face, and so on), and when I talked to the little girl she drew away from me and closer to the woman -- that is, she seemed instinctively to trust the woman more than me. The woman's story seemed unlikely for an abductor -- silly, unrehearsed, unlikely to soothe suspicion. So I didn't call the cops. (I did suggest to the woman that, as one parent to another, my advice would be to avoid disciplining her 10-year-old by pretending to abandon her on the side of the road. I said this rather less forcefully than I would have if her children had not been in earshot. For example, I did not call her a fscking idiot who should have been sterilized at menarche.)
I'm still bothered by whether I did the right thing, although the girl climbed in the car after I talked to her seemingly willingly enough, and the car drove off not in any obvious hurry. I hope I wasn't too trusting.
But my point is that it was very noticeable to me that no one else wanted to get involved. Dozens of other adults passed close by and saw what I did -- no one else stopped to take a closer look, make sure the girl was OK.
Perhaps we have come to delegate some of what used to be our normal social responsibility to our fellow man to the police. Small wonder that these things happen, then, although I wish they wouldn't.
Imagine the worst thing you will see in your entire life... Police deal with that and probably worse many times every single day of their working lives. I do not believe that it is possible to remain "the same" as those of us that are spared from dealing with that crap. The "thin blue line" or "The Job" [as in work not as in "Bible book of"] mentality is pretty much a coping mechanism, much like surgeons or trauma ward professionals. One becomes detached and can lose the "reflex" towards civility/normality that most of the rest of us take for granted.
Other posters have made the point, start civil and know your actual rights (not your TV rights). It will make the interaction more likely go very smoothly. As for the problematic police, the sooner they are found out by their overreaction to civil and respectful citizens the better the force becomes.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Police in the UK in the last few years have had pressure to crack down on young 'hooligans' roaming the streets at night causing damage. I don't think that these kids were doing anything wrong, but there were plenty of 12 year olds I saw in my time in the UK that should have definately been reprimanded for their actions, if not locked up.
Some examples.. My mother came over to visit me and on the first evening she was in London she had an (uneaten) apple thrown at her while walking from the station to my house, hitting her in the chest. This was delibrately thrown from across the street from one of a group of around 15 10-15 year olds.
When cycling home one day, a couple of kids on a scooter travelling in the opposite direction suddenly stopped. The kid on the back threw an egg, which hit me in the shoulder. I was going around 17-18mph at the time and it didn't tickle. My friend had the same thing happen a few years earlier, except it was thrown from a moving car in north london. It hit him in the eye and he has lost partial sight in one eye.
I couldn't park a car on the street for more than a couple of weeks, or it would get broken in to. I'm fairly sure it was kids, since the car was never driven away, just the window smashed or the lock broken.
When walking home through a small park, another one of my friends was 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". My friend just walked away.
One or two 12 year olds are nothing to worry about. But 10-15 little bastards, some with kitchen knives or metal pipes or whatever have the capability to kill 2-3 adults. And get away with it! because they know nothing will happen to them because they are kids. They know all their rights and none of their responsabilities.
It's situations like this that ABSO's were created, which is why I'm all for them.
A friend of mine recently resigned from the police for this reason. Apparently he had arrest quotas to be met, leading to him being effectively forced to arrest some people who he thought would be better served with a warning. Everyone nicked in this way had their DNA put on record, even though in a lot of cases there was no intent to prosecute. In the end he couldn't stomach the cynicism beheind this policy and resigned on principle, for which I salute him.
"Are you being weird, or sarcastic?" said Emma. I said I didn't know because I get the two feelings mixed up.