Re: [Marxism] 6-Year-Olds Under Arrest By BOB HERBERT

[Bonnie Weinstein <giobon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I forgot to relay this story to all of you:

When my youngest son and his best friend was 10 and 9 years old,
respectively, and my nephew was five-years-old, they were playing outside my
house in the Baview/Hunters Point district of San Francisco in the summer of
1989. I got a call from my neighbor, the grandmother of my son's best
friend. She said the kids were picked up by the police. I ran outside of the
house and up toward her house. The squad car was outside in the street with
the three kids inside. Grandma was outraged and the police let the kids out
of the car and into her custody as I approached. (She had claimed they were
all three her grandchildren.)

The police claimed that the kids were vandalizing a car. The car in question
was an abandoned car, broken into, smashed and left on our block for
weeks--probably stolen. Our children were busy looking into the open trunk
and through broken glass and, as it turned out when I looked, with
hypodermic needles and razor blades discarded inside in addition.

Instead of viewing the abandoned car as a hazard to curious children and
removing it from the neighborhood, the police, in their kind wisdom, decided
to try to nail our 5, 9, and 10-year-old boys.

When I asked them what the hell they were doing with our kids in the squad
car terrifying them, the police said they were thinking of charging the kids
with vandalism! 

I was outraged and made a formal complaint with the police department a few
days later. I was led into a tiny closet of a room with one police officer
with a tape recorder. I made my complaint basically stating that the car
should have been towed weeks ago as it had been already smashed and
vandalized at the time it showed up on our block and was a hazard and
nuisance to everyone on the block as there was broken glass all around it
and inside it.

I never heard anything more from the police even though I checked on the
progress of my report for months. The police simply said it was under
advisement.

This has always been routine police action in the Black and poor communities
but schools were supposed to be different. When children acted up in
school--especially kindergarten children--the parents were called in to pick
their child up in the most serious circumstances. Otherwise, a note was sent
home for the parents to sign. Or, perhaps a conference with the parents was
called by the school principal.

Capitalism is spinning out of control and that's how a six-year-old little
girl gets a felony arrest for throwing a tantrum--something kids do all the
time. 

Perhaps in addition to juvenile hall there should be baby hall. All those
screaming infants keeping neighbors awake all hours of the night could be
arrested for disturbing the peace!

Comradely,

Bonnie




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