Syracuse police detained a 8-year-old and then took him home to his parents after he allegedly stole a bag of chips. There seems to be widespread opinion that the police acted wrongly because of a video showing the boy crying while the bystander taking the video yells at the police.
In my opinion, responses to the incident are insanely distorted by the current culture war. The focus is almost wholly on denigrating the reasonable response of the police, rather than on helping the child.
As the parent of children of similar age, I would worry about the following:
- Teaching my kid that stealing is wrong, has consequences, and that they must make amends when they do something wrong.
- Ensuring that my child doesn’t have or develop a disorder like kleptomania or some knock-on psychological effect from the arrest and my subsequent punishment.
- Containing the damage done from having their detainment widely published by public media.
The police response is exactly what I would want them to do to my son or daughter at that age, in those circumstances. I would be mortified that my child stole something when they are very much old enough to know better.
They would have to write and then deliver in-person apologies to the store owner and the arresting officers. Then they would have to watch me apologize to same, since I am ultimately responsible for their behavior, and they need to realize that the consequences fall on me as well as them.
They would have to pay back the store owner five times over ($15), and then donate another $15 to a police charity. It would take them about a two months to work off their debt (to society) before their "wages" (we don't do an allowance, they are paid for chores based on how well they do them) stopped being garnished.
From the video, it looks like the child was with his friends. My child would be permanently banned from ever seeing those friends again, including at school. They could not talk to them at recess, in the halls, or in class--except if required by their teacher. If these children were their best friends, AND they had nothing to do with the theft, AND they had never stolen anything, AND they did not encourage my child to steal the chips, I would entertain the possibility of my child petitioning to see them again, after his debt was paid off, and if he could convince me that they were not a bad influence.
Finally, my child would be grounded from going out without a parental escort for at least one year from the date of the theft.
I expect that the experience of being placed under arrest and driven home, in the back of a police car, would be sufficient to deter him from future thefts. However, I don't make a habit of relying on the police to do my parenting for me.
After handing down the consequences (and after calming TF down), I would reassure my child that everyone makes stupid mistakes in their life, and that they are not a bad person. I would closely observe their mental condition over the following days to determine if they need any further counseling. Based on their personalities, one of my children would probably forget the whole thing by the next morning (if I let them) and the other would obsess over it for the rest of their life (if I didn’t intervene).
THEN...
I would sue the living daylights out of the video-taker and everyone else involved, up to and including the parent company of the social media platform and all platforms that re-distribute it, for publishing a video of my minor child's arrest without permission. I'm not sure if I could win a civil suit, and I don’t care if the dude even has a dime to his name, because I would make that guy's life a living hell, and I would do what I could to punish all involved media platforms for profiting from exploiting my child for content. All the aggression that I would never take out on my child, I would target toward them, channeled through the legal system.
I would recognize that I just wanted to hurt someone due to my rage at my child's privacy being lost (yes, through their own dumb actions, but the consequence of that video being published are far worse than they deserve for a minor theft) as well as my own feelings of inadequacy and embarrassment due to my widely-publicized failings as a parent. Such recognition would not prevent me from inflicting that hurt, because I am a vengeful person, especially when it comes to my children.
In the likely event I couldn't run down and take offline all copies of the video, I would have to evaluate just how widespread (and obscure) it was and determine if we needed to release a response video highlighting my child's restitution to his victims and society (the charity donation) for taking up police resources.
Even if we could get out in front of the whole mess, and turn it “positive” somehow, my biggest regret for the entire incident would be the permanent loss of my child's anonymity and privacy, as well as the embarrassing permanent public "record" of their mistake.
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