One thing that I've never really understood is how, a 17 year old kid in highschool can get away with stuff that would get an adult thrown into prison. Lets see what happens when you're forced to be harrassed and assaulted for years.
Innominate, its worse than you think... at least in Florida. Here is a true story of an incident I was involved in as a police supervisor.
One night, about 4am, husband and wife were in bed sleeping. There was a noise in the room. The hubby woke up to find two men standing near the bed, one was taking his wive's jewelry and the other was going through his pants pocket. He yelled, and chased the startled burglars out the house and down the street.
We had a police manhunt in the area using dogs, a helicopter and 10 - 15 officers. The two burglars ( black male 17 year old juvies) were quickly captured, still in possession of property taken from the home.
Because they were juveniles, they were transported to the Juvenile Intake Facility (JIF), a jail for juveniles. JIF refused to take custody of these two burglars because they had not been armed and did not commit a "violent" act. The JIF facility is so overcrowed, they won't take arrested juvies unless they are arrested for a crime of violence.
I went round and round with them, but it did no good. They insisted that we turn these two over to their parents. Guess what? Neither one knew where their fathers were. One lived with an Aunt, who couldn't come and pick him up. The other was staying with a cousin. Long story short, we wound up turning them over to their homies who were over 18 years of age (responsible adults
) I could hardly face the man and wife who were the victims in this case, and tell them that we had to release these two 17 year olds.
I still find it incredulous that you can wake up at night to somebody tip-toeing around in your bedroom, and the cops can't lock him up. At least in Florida, if the bad guy is under 18 yoa...
