Readers: Boy makes tree house, neighbor calls cops (!), cops come and draw gun on 11-year-old. That’s according to the young man himself. If all this is as reported, God help us. Or maybe more civil liberties help us:
UPDATE: Readers, I have removed the video because it immediately starts playing any time you log onto Free-Range Kids and is loud and annoying. But here is the link:
http://bcove.me/yxhs1syj
35 Comments
Cops acting like bullies, using excessive force, and being generally abusive towards people? It must be a day that ends in a ‘y’.
I could go on and on about the causes of this, but The Economist did such a better job:
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-americas-police-have-become-too-militarised-cops-or-soldiers
My only hope is that as my generation (millennials) and young start to come into power, we will remember how badly law enforcement treated us and start to change things for the better.
The neighbor called 911 because the TREES were being hurt? How about charges against her for inappropriate use of the emergency system?
“And the reason for his wife’s call: “There were falling hazards, tripping hazards, all types of hazards, so No. 1 was concern for the children and concern for the environment,” Dillard said.”
The reason that the husband of the 911 caller gave for his wife calling 911 WTF!!!! They called 911 because there were a TRIPPING HAZARDS.
Oh, the quote is from an article about the incident from the same news station.
And if the kids had been playing with finger guns, would “zero tolerance” have allowed the officers to shoot?
Just waiting for all those people to start with the “there must be more to the story…”
A bunch of black kids playing in the woods, in a southern state. My guess is they are lucky SWAT wasn’t deployed.
Is there a URL for the follow-up from the idiots who called 911? I can’t believe that kids can’t build a fort in the trees anymore without interference from “well-meaning” adults.
I would like to hear how this turns out. It is ridiculous. If the boys were cutting trees they were not supposed to then go out there and tell them to stop. No need to call the cops and definitely no need for cops to draw guns and treat them as criminals. I wonder if racism is a factor?
Wouldn’t they rather they be playing outside instead of doing drugs?
I’m actually a bit disappointed to see such a large open space near those houses, yet so few suitable trees to climb and play in! A conifeer (English?) really isn’t a good climbtree.
I guess home owners are afraid the boogeyman might hide there, but some bushes and trees are so awesome to play in (yeah, I feel 10 again…).
@Donna Is drawing gun in that situation legal for cop/conforms to their rules? Don’t they need to have reason to use/point guns?
Normally, I am fairly skeptical of the media and their laziness and I would wonder if there was more to the story. Unfortunately, I have been seeing too many stories about police excess lately. I don’t know if this is a trend or maybe these incidents are just getting more attention. Regardless, these incidents are depressing. The neighborhood cop/public servant seems to be gradually getting phased out for a more confrontational, “whatever it takes to get home safely” sort.
Hopefully, something can be done to holds the police accountable, but with qualified immunity, I don’t know that much will happen.
As someone said in the comments to another thread on this blog, calling the police is the nuclear option.
Officer Friendly retired decades ago.
Only in the south!
Papilio: A lot of time is common for developers when making subdivisions they just clear cut the entire land and then build the houses and then re seed grass and plant a couple decorative trees. Almost ALL of the subdivisions that are built in the last 15 years around here are like that. It is cheaper to get rid of all the trees than build around them. I hate it, but that is how it is. Our subdivision is like that too which I was not a fan of but we did not want an older house and this was what we could afford, school zones we wanted etc.
Why would anyone call 911 over this anyway? How about walk out and ask the kids to quit doing it?? People are really going insane.
And yet I had a bad tenant who did $15,000 worth of damage and theft, yet the Los Angeles County sheriff dept. would not even take a stolen property report. (Not even after I located some of my stolen property at their grandparents’ house. Cops said if I wanted it back I should just go take it. WTF?)
Friend said he had exactly the same thing happen when his truck was stolen. (And not even after he located it either.)
I guess actual crimes are too tough for ’em, and solving actual crimes when the evidence is right there in front of ’em is WAY outta their reach, so they’re concentrating on preventing kids from doing normal kid things instead.
Not to knock good officers but you are on to something. I have found having had murders happen to people we know and other more serious crimes, officers don’t really want to try to do that stuff. Its too hard to solve. They stick to the stuff thats easy to deal with. Like it does not matter the type of case you close just that you close a case.
I realize this is not all officers but was with some of the ones I have dealt with.
The child is black. Anything else need to be said?
So the police department is going to “investigate”. Let me make a prediction: The “investigation” will find that the police officers acted totally within department policy and followed all procedures. If anything, they will be given commendations for bravery, heroically saving the town from the threat of treehouse-building children.
However, they will be reprimanded for not tasing, cuffing, and arresting the boys. We have to keep the school-to-prison pipeline full, after all.
@SOA
“I have found having had murders happen to people we know and other more serious crimes, officers don’t really want to try to do that stuff. Its too hard to solve. They stick to the stuff thats easy to deal with. Like it does not matter the type of case you close just that you close a case.”
Police are funded, promoted and paid by statistical measures like “number of arrests”. So none of this is surprising.
At least they didn’t pull up in their Iraq surplus mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored vehicle. Then you’d think they were serious.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/police-surplus-armored-trucks-iraq-article-1.1527650
What has happened to this country?
“@Donna Is drawing gun in that situation legal for cop/conforms to their rules? Don’t they need to have reason to use/point guns?”
Andy, I guess technically a cop pulling a gun on someone for no reason would be aggravated assault the same as if I pointed a gun at someone for no reason. Good luck ever getting the DA to bring charges against a cop for such and good luck finding a jury to convict if they did.
Yes, there is protocol for pulling a gun and this would not be within it. However, that is internal and not criminal. Police forces are either good and will actually get rid of/retrain an officer who does something like this or bad and will laugh about it. Where the police department falls depends on the leadership.
Before I went to Samoa, I worked with 4 different police departments all within one county. One was pretty honorable; functioned within the bounds of the law and got rid of cops who strayed too far outside the law. One was totally corrupt and lied, cheated and did anything they could to get convictions. One was decent when I started, albeit a little stupid at times(think Barney Fife in the Andy Griffith Show if you’ve ever seen it), but I noticed a definite decline in morality during my 5 years there. And the last was somehow both corrupt and stupid (though I’ve heard they cleaned house and have improved).
What will be done in this situation depends on where Henry County falls on the spectrum. I don’t know. Although in the same state, it is too far away for me to even guess.
I have a lineup of suspects behind who called the cops on those little treehouse-building deviants:
http://www.survivingcollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Stanford-Tree-Mascot-Monday.jpg
You know during the investigation the cops statement will be
We approached the scene where there was an unknown number of persons, concealed in the trees. We approached with caution, for our own safety.
And that will be that.
If it were late at night, or dark, and there was “activity in the bushes” and you had NO IDEA it was kids, or what they were doing, okay, yeah, maybe call the cops.
Broad daylight, you know they are kids, you are displeased with what they are doing and think it’s harming the trees, so you CALL THE COPS???
My guess is the cops knew it was kids, and decided to give them a “real scare,” a la “You’ll never harm property again if we show you what you’ll be dealing with if someone catches you.”
INSANE. Traumatizing children is not a way to build better communities.
The only reason I could imagine the person calling the cops instead of just telling the kids to stop or telling their parents to make them stop is that they have tried to talk to them in the past and it did no good. Then I could see maybe telling the cops, look the kids need to be told to stop and they don’t listen to me and neither do their parents. So have the cops tell them to stop, but still no need to pull guns on them and pat them down and all that.
Dear Lenore,
Is there any way you can keep this video from starting to play automatically every time I reload either this page (like after posting a comment!) or the homepage? The noise startles me every time… 🙁 Thanks.
*mutes laptop before pressing ‘Submit Comment’*
Papilio: technical term, “conifer,” conversationally, “evergreen.” Specific kinds look like pines (the kind with long, soft needles) and spruces (the kind with short, sharp, often bluish needles.)
@SOA “The only reason I could imagine the person calling the cops instead of just telling the kids to stop or telling their parents to make them stop is that they have tried to talk to them in the past and it did no good.”
I can think of more reasons. We know all the kids were black. We don’t know the race of the caller. Additionally, many people today will call 911 at the drop of a hat. Those idiotic “See Something Say Something” signs put up by our government aren’t helping either.
Do people understand that the fear that boy felt is an everyday fear that African-American boys and men have to face all the time. It is outrageous. I knew there was “Driving While Black.” Apparently, there is “building a tree house while black” too.
E Sims: I have been the neighbor that has had to call the cops before for minor issues because I tried talking to my neighbors civilly and they did not want to hear it and got hostile or rude and kept doing it. So then you have to call the non emergency number and come let the police sort it out. Because they won’t listen to me, but they will listen to the police.
@Reziac-Hahaha, I came home to find a window open and my heating registers pried off the walls. I assume they were looking for copper piping. I called the police and they told me the dog must have done it. WTH? My dog opened a window and a screen and pried off several registers? That is some dog! They wouldn’t even take a report. I had my two small children with me and they wouldn’t even check the house to ensure no one was still in there so my neighbor came over to check for me.
1. Please, enough with the “the kids were black and this is the South” stuff. This blog posts dozens of these types of stories. By insinuating that this one was race-related, you’re changing the subject, giving yourself an out and ignoring the real problem – the over-eagerness of adults to call the cops on kids doing kid things and the willingness of the cops to apply new and extra-legal standards for parenting.
(i.e. the reason for the existence of this blog in the first place)
2. As to why the guy called the cops: First, he’s dead wrong. But the whole adult-child relationship has been destroyed by the “stranger-danger” culture of suspicion and allegation. Thirty years ago, the average guy goes out and yells at the kids to clean up their damn mess. Today, the average guy is more cautious about being labeled “that strange guy” in the neighborhood. So he calls the cops. Wrong, but it’s more of a cultural problem than an individual aberration.
(i.e. the reason for the existence of this blog in the first place)
AB – A woman called the cops, not a guy.
“UPDATE: Readers, I have removed the video because it immediately starts playing any time you log onto Free-Range Kids and is loud and annoying.”
YES! Thank you!