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This is a terrible response to public disorder. These youths are able to get away with this stuff precisely because of the attitude of resigned acceptance with which they’re treated by passersby.
Get away with what stuff?
I suspect that the kids were walking about acting disorderly, yelling at people and/or waving weapons around.
Yes, this is extremely typical of teenage troublemakers. The second the threat of consequences or being caught/embarrassed appears, their brash aggression is replaced by the performance of fear and vulnerability.
So it’s not a police matter, but also regular civilians are not supposed to intervene or even film? This is a recipe for utter chaos and disorder.
You will be surprised to learn that chaos did not reign in the years prior to widespread filming of public activities -- I guess if the guy wanted to take her toys away himself I'd be OK with that, but would recommend just ignoring her. Going to the cops is just weak -- do you record speeders with a dashcam and call them in?
Do you think the difference in the damage a 12 year old and an adult could potentially do with an axe is really so significant?That seems ludicrous to me. If I would call the police on anyone older than a toddler waving an axe and threatening people, I do it equally on a 12 year old, because they still have the strength to kill many members of society.
"Take her toys away himself". So it's not important enough for the police, but it's also somehow important enough to initiate a violent confrontation over? This doesn't make sense.
What she could do is one thing, what she's likely to do is another. A kid who's raided daddy's tool shed to look tough needs a stern talking-to from her parents or other authority figures, but frankly, as much because of the risk of injury to herself as anything else. It's not that much easier for a kid to kill or seriously injure someone with a hatchet of the type seen in the video relative to, say, an ordinary hammer. Would you call the cops on a young kid waving a hammer around a playground? I'd try to do something, if I felt civic-minded, and I might involve the police if I had to, but "record evidence in case this goes to court" would not by my first or even my third move. If it did get as far as A Police Matter™ I would feel I'd failed in my intervention; that I'd escalated the situation way beyond what should ideally happen.
While I appreciate that you make your point fairly reasonably, this still seems like a bit of a ludicrous reaction to me. I agree that in the majority of situations, a kid waving an axe or a hammer around is not very likely to murder someone. but as a stranger and not the responsible parent of this child, it is not my job to assess how serious they are about harming me with an axe and I think it is not a realistic proposition to expect any other sane adult stranger to waive their safety in the face of someone threatening them because it's not LIKELY to turn out with them murdered. I do not have the skills to categorically determine which type of axe waving person is in front of me.
From personal experience, while a normal kid might wave a hammer around, no kid that I associated with to my knowledge ever actively threatened someone with a tool like that once they were anywhere close to their teens. This is not 'normal' behaviour to be gently course corrected imo. I think it's kinda serious.
Pulling out a phone and recording is a bit of a weird move in most situations I agree, but I could see a situation where it might seem reasonable in the moment if they started threatening to accuse you of things and you thought you had a chance to "prove" otherwise in the heat of the moment.
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