What angers us most about Sean Taylors death

[mheisig]

Originally Posted by Lady Brave

The only problem with your argument is that none of the defendants have shown a history of assault.

I've been waiting for this argument to come up. I've worked in the courts and law enforcement for 16 years. I've pretty much heard it all and can't really get worked up over it anymore. Bottom line, everything starts at home. Stop expecting the courts to raise your children for you.

Amen to that.

When I was a cop I routinely got calls where the parents expected me to solve their child's misbehavior. I got calls because a kid was misbehaving at the mall, because a teenager threw a cup at a wall in his room, and more often then not because the kid was mouthing off and being a little douchebag.

Early on I tried being nice, professional, compassionate and so on, only to realize it was an utter waste of time and logically impossible for me to have ANY impact on these kids in my 5-10 minute run in.

My last week on the job, I got a call where a mother was complaining that her 15 year old daughter wouldn't behave, wouldn't clean up her room and was "givin' me lip." I got on scene and the mother marched over and told me to go talk to her daughter and straighten her out, all the while shouting back to her daughter that I was "gonna fix things."

I walked up to the woman, looked her right in the eye, waited for her to stop shouting, and said "M'aam, I can't undue in 5 minutes what you've spent the last 15 years screwing up." I then turned around and left.

Long anecdote, but my point is, along with Lady Brave, this stuff starts at home, not in the courts, not on the streets, but in the living rooms and bedrooms of urban and suburban America.

The fault rests on the parents.