Teen Citizenship
This story of the Miami team who was tortured for turning in the local kids who tried to steal his bicycle is horrific and tragic: http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/Teen-Dowsed-Burned-Over-Bike-64047032.html
Hearing this brought back an old wound I did not know was still buried:
When I was 16 and in high school, I worked at a K-mart as my first job. I was a math/science/chess-club geek but hung out on the periphery of the so-called “cool kids” in school via my shared interest in pot. My next-door neighbor was in the cool crowd and was a kind of buffer-zone for me to this group. He was the person who first got me high. He also worked at K-mart but was not in any of my classes. Some of the cool crowd were bullies so being at a distance was for the best. One of the bad boys at school stole a canoe from the K-mart outdoor storage area and brought it to school to try to sell it. I saw the canoe and knew of the theft so easily put 2 and 2 together. However, I decided that it was not worth the trouble to report him because he was one of the bullies and I was always trying to stay out of his field of vision anyway. I was torn between being a good citizen and protecting myself from trouble. In spite of not reporting him, he was later arrested for the theft. When he was released and returned to school he was convinced that I had turned him in, so in spite of my denials he gave me a brief public beating and many, many “road rage” encounters for the rest of my high school days. Years later my so-called “cool crowd” friend admitted that he was the one that had reported the thief.
Now I feel a bit ashamed for not having the courage to report him, especially because I took the blame as the snitch anyway and my friend who I assumed was also a bad boy had more of a sense of citizenship than I did (either that or he may have just thought the guy was jerk).