3/11/2010

     Mischief

     Good hell. We are living in a society that seems to be taking itself way too
seriously as of late! Take for example the twelve-year-old girl in New York City
who was recently arrested for doodling on her desk at school. Yes, that’s right.
She was
arrested for doing something that myself and bazillions of other people
have done for years in the classroom out of sheer boredom: doodling on a desk
in class while no doubt waiting for the bell to ring.
     She wasn’t writing anything threatening, nor was she marking gang territory
or anything edgy like that. There were no depictions of genitalia or threats of
shooting up the school. She simply wrote: "
I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex
was here 2/1/10 :)
" So why was she hauled away to Juvy in handcuffs? Because
her old-enough-to-know-better junior high school principal freaked out,
overreacted, and called the cops. We aren’t even talking about a troubled teen
here. According to reports, she is just a simple girl who liked to draw and dance.
For God’s sake, man!
She is twelve!
     The arrest didn’t happen discretely, either. It took place in front of her
classmates as she bawled her poor little eyes out. Charges have since been
dropped, and apologies have been more abundant than grains of sand in the
sea. Needless to say, her parents were unbelievably pissed off and are now in
the process of suing the NYPD and the school. I don’t blame them a bit. The
once purposeful  ‘Zero Tolerance’ mentality has dumbed our society down and
reduced it to a ‘Zero Common-Sense’ catastrophe.
     In another case, also in New York City, a nine-year-old boy was nearly
suspended for bringing a two-inch, plastic toy gun to school. The gun belonged
to one of his toy Lego policemen. We’re talking about a piece of plastic that is
smaller than a toothpick…and no cop in the world is going to shoot you down for
pointing something that tiny at him (except for maybe a member of the NYPD or
the principal's wife).
      The word ‘asinine’ doesn’t apply here because it isn’t a harsh enough word.
I don’t even know what word to use in the given situations. And why am I getting
my panties in a bunch over this stuff anyway? I’ll tell you why: because recently
a similar thing happened to one of my own children. I won’t tell you which one;
suffice it to say that it involved my fourteen-year-old son, Murphy.
     Murphy is a typical eighth-grader and has been known to get into equally
typical mischief here and there: but nothing so serious that he needed to be
charged with a crime or threatened with arrest. But get a rookie cop from the
local PD involved and suddenly he’s a hardened criminal. I’ll try to explain this
whole thing without pounding a hole through my keyboard. Forgive me if I swear
like a sailor under my breath as I type.
     One fine Friday afternoon, Murphy was walking home from school with his
best friend of ten years, a kid named Thomas. The two of them have been an
inseparable item since kindergarten. Thomas, by the way, is also a good kid and
just mildly more mischievous than Murphy is. Anyway, upon arriving at Thomas’s
house after school, the two of them went inside where they thought it would be
funny to yell things out of Thomas’s living room window at the little elementary
school kids who were walking home in front of the house. They were yelling
things like, “
help! I’ve been shot!” And “man down!” Whenever a kid would look
their direction to see where all of the commotion was coming from, the two
deviants would duck behind the couch and giggle like schoolgirls. I’m not saying
it was a smart thing to do, but it is typical of kids their age to be…well, to just be
dumb kids goofing around. However, society has forgotten what that is like
apparently. Send in the cavalry: order must be maintained at any cost.
     Everything was going fine until it all backfired on the boys. Two little third-
grade girls heard their “pleas for help,” rushed over to a nearby crossing guard
and borrowed her cell phone to call 911. Murphy and Thomas, realizing what
was happening, bolted out of the house and after the girls. They tried to explain
that it was all a joke and begged them not to call the police. But the little girls
had already dialed: and they weren’t about to hang up because that wasn’t what
they were taught to do in school (and so it should be). Soon an emergency
dispatcher came on the line, and the girls explained that somebody had been
shot and needed help. They gave Thomas’s address to the dispatcher, hung
up, handed the cell phone back to the crossing guard, and continued on their
merry way home.
     Before Murphy and Thomas had time to blink, the police department, fire
department, and paramedics were at the house with lights flashing and sirens
blaring. The confusion that followed seems to be pretty hazy by both boys’
accounts, probably because they were busy being chewed out by every
emergency responder at the scene. Poor Thomas’s mother, who was home at
the time but didn’t realize what the boys had been up to, was caught completely
off guard. And so was I when I was awakened from a very peaceful nap by the
sound of the phone ringing and a police officer explaining in my ear that he “has
my son, Murphy, in custody” and needed me to come and get him right away. He
wouldn’t give me any more details than that. I never got out of bed so fast in my
life.
     The drive from my townhome to Thomas’s house takes about five-to-eight
minutes, depending on traffic. I was there in two. By the time I got there, only
one police car remained and a uniformed officer was standing in Thomas’s
driveway with Murphy who was trying desperately not to bawl his eyes out.
Thomas was already in the house hiding under his blankets and crying. Neither
of them had been in that kind of trouble before and the shock of it all had sent
them plummeting emotionally from teenagers to kindergarteners within minutes.
To put it another way, they were scared silly.
     All kinds of scenarios raced through my mind as I climbed out of the car
observing the stern look on the officer’s face and seeing my usually happy-go-
lucky son weep like a newborn next to him. What had my boy done? Did he rob
someone? Did he spray paint somebody’s house? Did he get into a fight?
Maybe he was caught shoplifting or breaking into somebody’s home! Was he
involved in gang activity and I didn’t know it?
     As I approached the officer, I noted his lack of eye contact with me: and in
my world, that is always a sign of weakness and insecurity. He looked to be
about twenty-two and was busy writing on some sort of notepad as he asked me
if my name was Steven. I acknowledged that I was indeed the father of the
criminal in question. The officer then told Murphy, without looking up from his
notepad at me or my son, to tell me what he had done. Through sobs and tears,
Murphy told me what had happened. Without thinking, I blurted out, “
that’s it?!
That was when the cop looked up at me briefly and said sternly (which was very
hard to take seriously, considering how young and afraid to look me in the eye
he was), “
We take these things very seriously. I should take him with me right
now. But instead I’m turning him over to you.

     Take him away? Are you kidding me? For that? I held my tongue as the
officer, who was so young and youthfully inexperienced that he was probably still
a fan of the
Hannah Montana show and High School Musical, tore a page off of
his pad and handed it to me. He tried to tell me that Murphy could be charged
with a felony (which I snickered at, which again brought the officer’s eyes to mine
briefly), but instead was being charged with a misdemeanor of Disorderly
Conduct. Again, I held my tongue knowing full-well that this rookie cop was ticket
happy and out to prove how awesome he actually was beneath his little boy
persona. I didn’t want a ticket of my own, so I just said ‘okay’ and walked back to
the car with Murphy where I acknowledged that what he had done was stupid,
but made it clear to him that I wasn’t angry; that I understood that it was merely a
prank that had gone wrong.
     I wish to make it known here that I am not anti-police. I am glad they are
around and, in fact, at one point in my life I almost became a cop before I
realized that I couldn't be a big enough asshole to fit the job description. But this
officer in particular had a lot to learn about kids and how best to handle them.
Murphy and Thomas had already learned their lessons. The lectures and tears,
the sirens and lights…all were enough to convince them that what they had
done was wrong. And I can guarantee you, knowing both boys as I do, that such
a thing will never happen again. They didn’t call 911 themselves as a prank, nor
did they yell for anyone to call 911. That part was completely out of their hands.
After reducing the boys to tears and scaring the hell out of them, the ensuing
charges were absolutely unnecessary. And so was the court date.
     A month later, Murphy, Thomas, Thomas’s mom and I, were sitting at the
juvenile district court talking as we waited to sit through an hour-long class
meant to educate juveniles regarding the law. The boys were dressed in suits
for the ‘appearance.’ Every other kid who walked in the door was dressed in
baggy jeans, t-shirts, and some were wearing baseball caps sideways. They not
only looked like they belonged there, they acted as if it was their second home.
     Thankfully, there was no judge, and no lawyers were involved. The ‘court
date,’ as the officer had called it, was simply an educational class, after which
each kid had to either admit or deny any wrongdoing. Then each was fined
according to his or her deeds. Every kid in the room admitted to their specific
crime/crimes. And every one of them, save Murphy and Thomas, had committed
the very serious offenses that had run through my mind as I climbed from my car
and approached the officer the day it all happened. Most of the kids were fined
upwards of two-hundred dollars. It seemed no mercy was shown as each of them
stepped up to a table and met with a probation officer.
     When Murphy and Thomas approached their probation officer, he read over
the police report and all but laughed. With a big smile on his face, he asked
them if they had learned their lesson and both agreed that they indeed had. The
officer then knocked their one-hundred dollar fines down to fifty bucks and gave
us a smile as we walked away. I never did punish Murphy... other than making
him work off the fine after I paid it.
     I did things as a kid that I was too smart to get caught doing: I once lit a
gravel pit and field on fire; I put flasher barricades in the road in the middle of
the night and turned out their lights, which caused a car accident; I was truant; I
broke curfew; I shoplifted. In later years, I busted shoplifters for a grocery store
chain and most of the offenders were teenagers who were completely out of
control and on drugs or in gangs.
     So Thomas and Murphy yelled something out the window and everybody but
the SWAT team showed up (that was probably next). There are better ways to
spend tax-payer (my) money. And going overboard by arresting a girl for
doodling, suspending a kid for bringing a tiny toy gun to school, or charging two
boys with a crime that was best handled though clever adult fear-mongering is
ridiculous. Kids are mischievous; and it’s about time our society pulled its head
out of its self-righteous, politically-correct-zero-tolerance ass and started
focusing its attention on keeping that child molester behind bars; or giving the
chair to the guy who slaughters his own family, then goes to a strip club to
celebrate.
      Sure, hardened criminals start out small. They shoplift, smoke pot, and
maybe steal from their parents before escalating into more serious crimes.
Some of them go so far as to torture animals to death before moving onto actual
people.
      But I seriously doubt that Ted Bundy got his start by yelling ‘help’ out of his
buddy’s living room window for a laugh.      
   


                                                    --Steven     

                                   
(c) 2010 Steven Grames