Don't Call the Cops

I have a neighbor who's dog tends to bark a lot. Sometimes they let him out at night and he barks for long periods of time. It hasn't bothered me too much, I can close the windows on the back side of the house in the summer which usually blocks out the noise. I suppose if I got sufficiently annoyed I would go over and knock on their door and tell them that their dog was barking too much and ask them if they could try to keep him in at night. So far it has not aggravated me enough to do much more than complain about it to my wife. Some people would call the police and complain but I don't like to do that. I don't believe in involving the authorities in my life unless it is really necessary.

I ran across this article linked on The Agitator. The story leaves out a lot of details but apparently this 13 year old girl was reported to have touched two male students inappropriately. As a result the police were called and the girl was arrested. We don't know what the exact nature of the touching was and it is difficult to judge the seriousness of the situation from the article. Still, I don't understand why the police were called in. As a parent, my first response would have been to talk to the school about what happened. If I were a school administrator I think I would want to talk to the girl and her parents to find out what was going on and how to put a stop to it. If the girls behavior could not be stopped then for the well being of the other students I would bar the girl from riding the bus and if necessary try to have her expelled from school. Also I think I would be talking with the girl's parents to try to determine if she needed some help and I would be generally concerned for her well being in addition to the well being of the boys involved. In this case, apparently the best option was to call the cops have her thrown in jail.

In my view, police are not here to handle every problem that can occur in our dealings with other people. In general, police can only provide police solutions (arresting people, writing citations, using deadly force against those who are endangering others) so you should not call them if you are not willing to accept a police solution. Police are necessary and do a job most of us are not willing to do. They spend their days dealing with people on the worst days of their lives getting grief for enforcing ridiculous laws we allow to get passed. They should not be called on to settle problems outside the normal scope of police work. If you call the police you should do so realizing that certain things like arrests are within the realm of possibility. If this is not something you are willing to accept, maybe you need to deal with the problem another way. If someone is breaking into your house, call the cops. If two kids get into a fight on the playground don't. That is a job for parents and teachers, not cops.

Most of the time, people can come up with better solutions than government on their own. Government has to treat all individuals and situations equally when they are not all equal. Government prevents the use of discretion. Government's solutions tend to say that problem x always requires solution y. Look at this case. A 10 year old girl brought a steak knife to school, the police were called and a police solution was the result. The girl was arrested. This is an extreme case and one wonders if the police could not have used some discretion but none the less, arresting people carrying "deadly weapons" is a potential police solution to a problem. School administrators should know this is a potential outcome and should question if this is a desirable outcome in this situation. Several years ago, one of my kids drew a picture of a gun at school. Thankfully his teacher had been teaching students since I was in kindergarten and new a little bit about what normal behavior is for little boys. A simple "do not do this again" was sufficient. If this had been the wrong sort of teacher, we might have been bailing him out of jail as a result of some zero tolerance policy nonsense.

And zero tolerance policies are nonsense. We should expect school administrators, principals and teachers to use discretion and good judgement on a case by case basis. It should be part of their job, what we pay them for. Anyone can read the rules and apply them exactly as written. A professional is paid to do more than that, they are expected to use their experience and training to make decisions.

The less we are willing to manage our own affairs and dealings with other people, the more government will be willing to step in and do so for us. Chances are we will not like the outcome or solutions provided any better than if we solved the problem on our own. The difference is, what government does is much harder to undo.