Three sides to every story.
http://coplife.net/wordpress/?p=32
It irks me that parents these days take such little responsibility in raising their children.
I get a call day before last of an assault. Mom is standing in the middle of the street, and refers to me as "baby" when I get out and ask what was going on. I reminded her that "officer" was a perfectly good and proper title.
Anyways she is upset that a store owner "put his hands on my boy". the 15 year old thuglet comes down the stairs and proceeds to tell me that mom sent him to the dollar store. On the way back, he and his cousin decide to "take my shortcut", which involves walking through the little mom and pop hardware store across the street.
I stop and ask him "how is that a shortcut?"
"I dunno, it just is" he says.
"Thats not a shortcut having to navigate through a store by opening two doors and making turns through the small aisles in there" I reply back. he shrugs.
"so then the owner yells at us and grabs me. I tell him mother**cker take your hands off of me" he explains.. and then the owner slapped him
I sum it up by saying how easily this could have been avoided if he had not bothered to walk through a store he had no plan of doing business in, and if he had not insulted the owner calling him a "mother**cker". I turn to mom and said "right?"
"well youre right but that dont give the store man the right to hit my son"
Again I think to myself it sounds just like what he had coming, but I agree with her in the interest of correctness. I told mom to stay out of the store (if they even want her back). I got the distinct impression my admonishment is about the only discipline that child will be getting.
So I go over to the hardware store- the owner was gone but a clerk who saw some of it said pretty much the same thing- they were in there screwing around, owner told them to leave, they get the attitude and the name calling going on and the kid got a smacking he deserved. Street justice.
Funny thing, mom forgot to mention that she and some other guy went in there and confronted the owner and broke a display in the store. Im sure that just slipped her mind.