New faces of crime 8, 9, 10, 11-year-olds committing burglary and stealing cars

[WhiteFeather]

Here is a growing problem that is ONLY going to get worse and sooner or later they will upgrade to using firearms. Rather than elected people dealing with the little problems now, they will just blame guns as they do now.

Police officer final comments sums it up.

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/national/19421514.html

Ex-Philly cop struggles with new face of crime in Fla.
By TODD LEWAN

AP National Writer

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - When the police got a tip that Bonner Elementary was being hit for the second time in a week, they rushed three squad cars to the school. As they were cordoning off the grounds, the burglars emerged - dashing out a front door and across a field.
Norm Kenaiou, a veteran cop, caught one burglar struggling to hop a chain-link fence. The shock came when he spun his suspect around and saw two, doelike eyes blinking back at him: the eyes of a terrified 8-year-old girl.

Should he read the child her Miranda rights? Handcuff her? Kenaiou couldn't bring himself to do that. Instead, as he later described it, "I took her hand and, just as a father would lead a child, walked her back to my patrol car."

That another 8-year-old, a 9-year-old, two 12-year-olds and a 14-year-old were also arrested for the New Year's Day break-in was just as troubling. "It was a real gut punch," Kenaiou says.

In this working-class tourist mecca, a party town best known for motor racing and spring-break frivolity, crime has never been an outsider. Today, Daytona's crime rate is more than double Florida's and the nation's, having jumped 13 percent in 2006 alone, according to the most recent state figures available.

But what especially unsettles law enforcement here is that juveniles - some as young as 7 - are being arrested for a larger share of the city's felonies.

Mike Chitwood flagged the problem two years ago, soon after taking over as Daytona's police chief. To Chitwood, formerly a police lieutenant in Philadelphia, it wasn't just that poorer neighborhoods were being pounded by burglaries, or that cars were vanishing from dealership lots, or even that assaults and sex offenses were up.

The crimes were happening under the noon sun - and not far from the city's schools. Initially, Chitwood ordered truancy sweeps. Then, he had his officers fingerprint kids caught skipping school. After running the prints through the FBI's national database he saw his suspicions confirmed: Kids were behind the spike.

It didn't take long for the police to link rings of teens to burglaries, car thefts, carjackings and even armed robberies. "We even had kids taking stolen cars out of stolen-car lots," Chitwood says.

But more arrests do not a victory make, as the chief came to learn.

In a city such as Daytona - where poverty lives among the weeded lots and sagging houses off the palm-lined, neoned strip, behind the triple-bolted doors of tenements in the shadow of the Speedway - teen crime and even preteen crime have proven to be resilient adversaries.

Here and in other cities, chronically high juvenile-crime rates - those ranging above the national average of kids under 15 committing 5 percent of violent crimes, 7 percent of robberies and 9 percent of burglaries - fray the patience of judges and politicians and pop up on newspaper front pages. Each spike in offenses prompts a new round of questions, namely:

What will it take to keep our kids out of the juvenile justice system - for some, just a pipeline to the prison system? More aggressive policing? More social services? Harsher sentences? Or something else?

Would programs to modify the behavior of kids as young as 5 help? Or would taxpayers dismiss that as just more nanny government, especially at a time of economic slowdown, when local and state governments are desperate to cut spending?

Chitwood doesn't hesitate in answering.

"I've got 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-year-olds committing burglary and stealing cars now. What are they going to be doing when they're 21?" he says. "Hey, either you pay when they go to state or federal prison, or you're going to clean the crap up now. But somewhere along the line you are going to pay." *

I would like to commend the police officer for using proper judgment and restrain with treating the 8 year old in a proper manor for the situation.

[XD45]

sadly its not all that uncommon. My fav. is a cops episode where they nail some 12y/o kids with crack and a gun.

[dc dalton]

We saw this coming 20 years ago when they started with this "don't punish your child" CRAP and then all the nonsense about dropping your kids in child care just do you could keep up with the Joneses.

90% of people have decided the TV, video games and the dog are babysitters, they feel it is inconvenient to be REAL parents and couldn't be bothered and then they wonder why their kids are in trouble... well DUH asshole, how about being a parent for a few minutes.

When my son was little we would get together with the family and we were constantly getting yelled out by her family when we punished or even 'corrected him'. They would say "leave him alone, he's just being a kid". Well needless to say we told them to stick it and now we have a fine respectful young man (that has NEVER been in trouble) for a son while they have monsters that are making them crazy.

When people start acting like parents again this may come to an end, but as long as kids aren't taught respect and the fact that their are consequences for their actions this is going to get worse.

On another related note there is a great website, http://www.killology.com that also explains the psychology of these first person shooter games and the relationship between them and violence. They are not beating on the games, far from it, it is actually an amazing study of the psychology of killing and the need for a 'cool down period' after an episode. He explains this went all the way back to the native Indians, how the warriors would meditate and discuss the battle afterwards for days, allowing the warriors to release the stress from battle and adjust back into the tribe.

He also explains that the military and police started using human shaped targets years ago because they found soldiers that only fired at round targets tended to choke when confronted with real battle. By using human shaped (or realistic) targets they were able to desensitize the troops, making them more willing to kill in battle.

They explained this desensitizing also caused post traumatic stress disorders, the human emotions inside troops come rushing out after battle and they conflict with what they have done.... hence the stress.

But getting back to the point, these first person shooter games are really the ultimate in battle training but there is NO conscience or 'right or wrong' or consequences shown to these kids ...

Fascinating read if you get the chance

[Ten*K]

several years ago, when I was an LEO, I had to go to a trial for 2 inner city brothers, ages 8 and 9. sentenced to juvey till 18 (and 5 years probation after).

The charges?

Breaking and entering, burglary, vandalism (they defecated, then smeared their names on an office wall with it), and the "biggy" Arson. They broke into a paper supply warehouse, took money out of the office, did their vandalism, then set fire to crates of paper.

thankfully the sprinkler system worked and the building wasn't destroyed, but all the paper was lost... about $2 mill worth in total damages.

the parents/family called me "white devil" for putting cuffs on them (protocol), and even the kids size cuffs were too big

[sengie]

It all started when they got rid of the nuns.

[GunLawyer001]

I've seen the dingbat parenting mentality, that children should be allowed "to be children" and act without any responsibility. They can run through crowds, scream at the top of their lungs, interrupt adult conversations, destroy property, whatever. "He's just a little boy, he doesn't know any better, leave him alone."

Yes, kids don't know any better...until their parents inform them of what's expected. When they disrupt adult events, they need to be corrected. When they take what isn't theirs, they need to be punished. When their behavior is wrong, they need to be taught the correct path, and it needs to be enforced. Kids don't absorb adulthood through the air as they age, they need to have it taught to them at every opportunity.

You couldn't raise a dog the way most of these kids are raised. You can't train a pack of dogs through collective day care and indifference. Dogs and kids need direct, prompt discipline and reinforcement if you ever want them to act the way that they need to act. They don't learn to defecate only in one spot by having the pack yelled at 2 hours later when the mess is discovered, they learn when THEY are punished or rewarded for THEIR specific act.

It doesn't take a village, despite what that blond bitch also-ran believes; it takes an on-site adult who is willing to hold the kid accountable.

[Montanya]

I think part of the attitute that holding a crime suspect's hand and walking them back to the car like daddy, does more harm than good. Kids will do what they can get away with. Perhaps if that kid was dropped to the ground and cuffed then tossed in the back of the cruiser and taken down to a jail holding cell for an hour or so they might get the idea that what they are doing is wrong. We as a society need to quit coddling kids, whip some ass! I got my last beating at like 6, and my mother started the "lectures" where she would sit me down and talk to me about what I did, and why it was wrong. Most times I would have rather had the beating, but a beating by itself doesn't TEACH anything.

[bdevil73]

I knew better that to get out of line when I was growing up. My mom had no problem busting my ass is I misbehaved. When I got into high school, I was told that if I ever did anything to get arrested, "Don't bother calling me because your ass will sit in jail." I raise my kids how I was raised. They are 13, 9 and 3, and none of them have ever been in any trouble.

[Tootie]

I got my last beating at like 6

My son got his last beating just before the diapers came off, he no longer had that 2" padding on his butt so I stopped. Discipline does not always have to include a beating but it has to be part of it at some point in time. Correction at the time of the act is whats' most important and since most of these parents are never there that can not happen. These children are throw aways that are more of a nuisance to their parents then anything. I feel sorry for these kids to a point, but when you break the law you pay no matter how old you are.

[str8shooter]

A lot of you seem to point to the parents, plural, day care and lack of discipline. If you read the statistics, these children are generally living with a parent, singular, or a grandparent who's just too old and tired to raise another generation. And if they do need to be raising their grandchildren, they probably didn't do such a great job the first time around. These families aren't dropping their kids off at day care. The rich white folk who have to have two full time office jobs to pay for their Volvo SUV and BMW convertible have priced the kid of the working class out of day care years ago. The parents of these "kids at risk" as the pc have started calling them, have to leave the kids home alone to fend or themselves or have them walk to the nearest understaffed community center so they can hold down jobs. These kids probably never spent a day in a real daycare center because the well off suburbanites are willing to pay enough to ditch their kids for the day in the finest Montessori pre schools where the "tuition" is more than a hard working inner city single mom even makes. So what are the choices for some of these single parents (almost always the mom); stay home and collect whatever money the government gives them so they're around to discipline their kids when needed; show some pride and self respect by getting a job that requires leaving their elementary age kids alone for a few hours; or find another single mom with a brood of her own who'll let anyone drop their kid off for a couple bucks an hour while she and her boyfriend spend the day in the bedroom or watching Springer.

It's easy to sit back and say all that kid needs is a good smack on the ass and he'll straighten right up, but the sad fact is, there just isn't anyone around to give them that smack on the ass. It's the lawyers and lawmakers who decided disciplining someone else's child with anything harsher that a "timeout" is grounds for a law suit, so a teacher isn't going to touch them. Hell, now parents have child protective services showing up at the door because a mom grabbed their kid by the arm at the grocery store to get him to stop running around and another mom called 911 and reported a mother was beating her kid.

In some cultures disgracing the family name is enough of a deterrent to prevent crime. In a large part of our country, the only two effective deterrents to crime are physical pain, and financial loss. As a kid did you always behave simply to please your parents, or was it because dad could rip that belt out of his pant loops and swing it across your ass before you knew what was happening. Do you not speed because of the posted limits, or because the financial loss of a ticket and higher insurance rates are a deterrent. These preteen crooks have no family honor to think about, the judges have taken away any threat of a good spanking, and they've got nothing to lose monetarily. They're kids with nothing to do so they egg each other on to do more and more daring stunts which inevitabley leads toward criminal activities.

Maybe it does take a villiage to raise a child. Unfortunately those who can afford to will to pay whatever it takes so they don't have to associate with the children that need the villiage to show them the way because our traditional concept of a family just doesn't exist for them.