Amen caveman...yet there will still be folks who say this is the cops' faults

-Kyo

And I state again :
But, what I really think must've happened is an unwitting stranger had no clue about the two being sisters and thought it was playground bully stuff and called the police because he/she didn't know the girls parents or any vital information and called in because they feared the child being killed by a bully(which, in case you haven't noticed is a growing problem).
This is something that could have been serious if one was not siblings. Not that siblings don't kill one another, it has happened also.
I would like someone to notify the police if they saw my child, esp. my daughters being pummeled, siblings or not. You have no idea how young people think, they don't have a concience in the sense we adults have.

[edit on 11-6-2009 by ldyserenity]

Yes, sibling rivalry is as old as time itself.

I too had been subject to sibling violence as a child (even though I was the eldest). I've had my front-teeth chiseled out with a screw-driver, a Rutger .357 shot at me, a splitting axe taken to my bedroom door and shoulder, my skull fractured and partially caved in with a baseball bat, an arm broken from being twisted behind my back, and a long line of other injuries at the hands of my younger sister. (And usually for silly reasons like I wouldn't lend an album to her, or I got a better Report Card than she, or so forth.)

Do you know what happened every time one of these extreme incidents would happen?

I, the victim, would be the one arrested by the Police and taken to Juvenile Detention!!!

Besides being resentful that the Police would arrest the wrong sibling, I was always grateful, in retrospect, that a concerned neighbor would call the Police and that they would intervene (Darwinism can only be on your side for so long before your luck runs out, after all!).

I lived through it all and turned out okay. Even though I haven't (understandably) seen or spoken to my sister for 23 years, I hear she turned out okay after I moved out of my parent's house at age 15.

Some sibling violence is far more extreme than others. Some siblings are fine with pulling hair and spitting, or giving wedgies, and using a myriad of other techniques to humiliate rather than physically injure. However, there are some siblings that take the violence up a couple of notches to the point that the Police *SHOULD* intervene.

It is a very thin line where mild violence escalates to life-threatening when siblings fight, to where the whole matter becomes shades of grey rather than a simple black and white scenario.

IMHO neither the concerned witnesses in the park who reported the incident, nor the Police did the wrong thing. I also don't blame the parents either as most parents aren't aware of these kinds of hostilities going on behind their backs when they aren't looking. However, I would be genuinely disappointed and incensed if the Judge ordered a sentence other than Family Counseling for *BOTH* siblings.

Originally posted by Oatmeal
She shouldn't have been formally arrested. Calling her Mom should be enough...
Why give a 10 year old little girl a police record? I am becoming increasingly disgusted with some of the things that now go on in this country.

I would assume they need parental consent to arrest a child. If not assuming it was in the US I was always told it is illegal without the parental consent.

Now in the past some of my family's kids did have the cops called on them to make a point to the child and worked really well. Of course they weren't arrested but made enough of an impression to stop the behaviors. So I'm guessing maybe this was an ongoing thing (the fighting) and the parents approved of the arrest to make a point.

For crying out loud STOP

We can't allow children to fight...

If they do fight they will be far, far less traumatized and mentally anguished and damaged for life when they turn 18 and we draft them, strap them to parachutes with automatic weapons and drop them out of airplanes into hostile territory where the kids have been training with guns since age 8 to try and murder them...

Then what happens the survivors come back from these wars... able to hold jobs? Capable of functioning again?

A few things come to mind...if anyone were to be charged (notice I did not say arrested) it would be be the mother, father, guardian, etc. who has the responsibility for the children.

I agree that certain things regarding violence among children should be investigated to make sure that there are not other issues involved, such as a history of violent outbursts at school, child abuse at home, etc., to determine if the child might need counseling or some other course of intervention to break what can sometimes lead to a lifetime of increasingly dangerous behavior. It has been proven that many serial killers had a history of something as simple as abusing animals when they were young for example.

I admit that that last statement was pretty over the top but it does kind of explain why certain authorities take the stance that they do when dealing with reports such as this. We hear about kids falling through the cracks all the time so you never know when something as simple as sibling rivalry may signal that other factors are involved. But actually arresting the child seems a bit heavy handed.

As far as who filed the complaint, I feel there are a few "well meaning" individuals out there who feel it is their place to intervene in a situation that they have no business getting involved in. There are many, many cases of a family being falsely accused of child abuse because some good samaritan turned them in because the mom gave their child a simple, single spank on the rear because they were throwing a fit at the grocery store. Once accused you can never take it back and it can blemish what is a normal, happy family for life while the accuser gets away scot free.

Sorry, starting to ramble.