Several people sent me reports on a stolen car being re-stolen while the first set of thieves was preparing to rob a business… I think I got that right.
That’s all funny and such, but this isn’t:
The suspects in custody are teenagers aged 14 and 15, according to a spokesperson for the department. Police retrieved a shotgun and a handgun from them, both of which were loaded.
14 and 15 years old?
WTF happened to baseball trading cards, smuggled Playboy magazines, fishing in some farmer’s river without permission, riding their bicycles at breakneck speed through the neighborhood, trying to peek up girls’ skirts, sneaking into a movie house without paying, and all the other naughty stuff boys of that age used to do?
They’ve gone from infancy to adulthood* without bothering with adolescence, FFS.
Anyway, the only charges they’ll likely face is car theft and underage weapons carry because it doesn’t seem that they ever got round to robbing the store.
Ordinarily, I’d say just give them a good spanking and send them home to Momma, but these little shits would probably end up firebombing the judge’s house in revenge.
I dunno. Back in the eighteenth century a kid (of any age) would get hanged for stealing a sheep or a horse, but even I think that’s a little harsh.
Unless the eighteenth-century kid was carrying a knife and stabbed the shepherd to death first — in which case I’d be the one applauding while the feral little shit was dancing his mid-air jig.
And that’s kind of how I feel about this modern scenario. If kids are seemingly prepared to dish out death to get what they want — and yes, the guns were loaded — it seems quite fitting for society to nip these little murderers’ careers in the bud, with extreme prejudice.
No doubt someone is going to have a problem with this argument.
Adolescence: the period between infancy and adultery.
Ok, first of all those ages aren’t particularly surprising. 14-15 year olds from the urban poor population have always been criminal and violent in a significant percentage. The notion of childhood extending to 18 years is relatively recent. There used to be a category between childhood and adulthood that was expected to take on increasingly adult responsibilities while not yet being a full adult. And it was recognized that such ‘youths’ were ripe for trouble.
You want 14-15 year olds to act like Riverdale (Archie) teens? Throw the incompetent, ignorant ninnies who currently run the public schools out on their ears and make staying in school to get an education a viable plan for street kids.
I’ve spent a lot of years working with children and adolescents, primarily foster care and some juvenile justice. It is scary to meet some kids who are missing their humanity and wonder how many people are they going to hurt before they are finally put down. Our juvenile system is predicated on the premise that these youth have problems that can be remediated, it has no provision for those that are permanently broke.
” kids who are missing their humanity”
Some while back there was an excellent SF piece that postulated that there was only a finite number of human souls; as the population grew, increasings numbers were born whos simply lacked souls, and who behaved accordingly. Some while back. Fiction.
.
The fact that you had to specify that the story is fiction is a sad commentary on the current state of the country.
They’ll get a slap on the wrist at most. Momma don’t care as long as she has her EBT, fancy nails and an escalade
JQ
I shared this here recently; seems apropos in this context.
My dad was a small town cop once upon a time. He found himself working the desk during a graveyard shift when the teenage son (& notoriously punk ass bitch) of one of the town’s wealthier residents boosted a car, took it for a joyride & crashed it thru the front entrance of a hardware store. As the kid was sleeping it off in his cell, his daddy arrived. Pops put a $50 bill on the desk & invited my dad & the arresting officer to have a meal on him, and could he have the keys to Junior’s cell please.
Pops was advised Junior would not be released. Daddy replied he had no problem with that; he just wanted a few moments alone with his son. My dad & his partner agreed. Pops beat the living shit out of the kid, locked the cell back up, returned the keys & invited my dad & his partner to have a nice night. The kid had no more run ins with Johnny Law (at least not in that jurisdiction) after that. Funny how that works.
All due respect to KDT, one doesn’t reach back to the 18th century for a time when actions had consequences. But he’s quite right to acknowledge the present cultural rot, which arguably began with the flower child generation my dad was policing back in the day.
They are feral humans.
There parents didn’t care about them, why should we?
They need to be treated like any other feral animal. Since they are human, and have some sort of sentience, when their buddies swing from the gibbet, they should witness it. Maybe one or two get religion.
Having had some group of feral, anti-social expletives try unsuccessfully to jack my car Monday night, from my driveway, and completely destroy the key part of the ignition (and possibly damage the steering column), I’m all for turning victims loose on them with baseball bats.
Apparently, Hyundais aren’t that east to jump with just a screwdriver. Or this one(s?) was/were totally incompetent. I’m going with the latter since they also took a truck with a trailer and $10K of work equipment. The truck was abandoned a few blocks away. God knows where the trailer is.
The housemate suggests adopting Sharia for punishing theft, though he suggests removing both hands.
I hear you, Kim. While 14 & 15 y.o. urban poor kids have been criminal & even violent, it’s not until the latter years of the 20th Century, and our twenty-some years in this one that those kids have been toting loaded guns. Hell, we’ve even had the six year old who got mommy’s gun and shot her teacher, FFS.
There’s so much to unpack here; society getting softer on crime, levels of intolerance increasing over everything, kids without fathers, and absent mother,s etc.. He’ll when I was that age I knew where the spare keys to dad’s gun case was. Did I think about grabbing a gun and committing a crime, or shooting up my school? Hell no! Never entered my mind!
The answers are multiple, there isn’t one, nice feel-good answer (like more gun control). I just don’t think we have enough serious people out there to tackle issues like this without going for the easy feel-good solutions, though. sigh.
Oh, and that “first set of thieves”, there were three of them. The driver forgot his job was to stay with the running get-away car, and went in to help with the robbery.
They got caught too.
Car-theft should be treated just as horse-theft was.
If car thieves were found hanging from lampposts at freeway on ramps, there would be a lot less car theft.
I’m trying to find fault with your suggestion, but I got nothing.