What to do? Kid's ear buds stolen from his volleyball game

[Jeff Higgins]

The "social contract" between lawmakers / law enforcement and law abiding citizens has been broken. We, the law abiding citizenry, agreed to let them take this over and we would no longer take it upon ourselves. They have failed miserably. They have broken the contract. How much longer do we allow this to continue before we just say "never mind"?

[epbrown]

Originally Posted by look 171

high school senior.

Tell him this is a good lesson for college. If you ever doubt that poverty leads to crime, college students will prove it. Church-going middle class kids will steal everything that isn’t nailed down, go shoplift a hammer and come back for the rest.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

The "social contract" between lawmakers / law enforcement and law abiding citizens has been broken. We, the law abiding citizenry, agreed to let them take this over and we would no longer take it upon ourselves. They have failed miserably. They have broken the contract. How much longer do we allow this to continue before we just say "never mind"?

We facing lawyers that represent the other guy are the ones that agreed to let police handle laws broken.

[911 Rod]

High school kids have been stealing from each other forever.
Lesson learned.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by 911 Rod

High school kids have been stealing from each other forever.
Lesson learned.

I was ripped off in 6th grade. Left my hand colored maps in my desk and this beotch took them and cut out around the borders, pasted them on black paper in sheet protectors and turned them in to the teacher. I had to redo it all and was late so dropped a grade.

Same beotch stole half my 45 RPM records at a party when I was 18. LMAO when she died. I got the records back.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by 911 Rod

High school kids have been stealing from each other forever.
Lesson learned.

It’s the other kid that needs the lesson and it hasn’t been given to them yet.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by Zeke

I was ripped off in 6th grade. Left my hand colored maps in my desk and this beotch took them and cut out around the borders, pasted them on black paper in sheet protectors and turned them in to the teacher. I had to redo it all and was late so dropped a grade.

Same beotch stole half my 45 RPM records at a party when I was 18. LMAO when she died. I got the records back.

That happened to me twice in 7th grade art class. In watercolors, I did a reproduction of the pair of hands in the Who's Tommy album, came out better than I could have ever hoped for and then a wood carving of a mexican burro with packs out of a chunk of 2x4. Wish I had both of those now.

[look 171]

Originally Posted by DavidI

Look, if this happened to me I would do several things. Do as much research as possible regarding the date, time, and location where the earbuds went missing and document it. Use the location tracking on the earbuds to identify their location and print out the information. You may be able to determine who lives in the house with Google.

Call the appropriate law enforcement agency where the earbuds were last known to be. You can determine what agency covers the area with this website: https://ravs.dcfs.lacounty.gov/

You may get lucky and find an energetic cop who will do a door knock for you. Because the value is low, it is a misdemeanor. Cops will not be able to write a search warrant, so they will need to make a voluntary contact with the people at the residence.

If this does not work for you, go to the school where the game was played and demand to speak to the principal, vice principal, and/or coach of the respective team. Lay out the facts and present the info during the meeting, specifically providing the address of the potential subject (most likely a high school age juvenile). The school has a database with the listed students and will be able to identify the person. Of course, they will not share the information with you, but you can ask if they can contact the subject and move forward with any administrative actions from the school's toolbox.

This is not a perfect resolution, but it will give you and your son a little satisfaction in your attempt to hold the person responsible without putting either of you in danger.

Let me know if you need any further assistance.

Rock on, David

Thank you David.

BTW, I think you are LAPD. You must know Ray W. He's the firearms instructor for sometime at the academy and seems to know everyone. He and my wife went to school together. I got to know him a bit because he hangs out with a couple of gun enthusiast friends of mine. I didn't want to pester him with such small issue for advice. Thanks again, I will have to get my kid to get off his video game addition and go do something about it. Lesson learned for sure.

[look 171]

This was a club volley ball game. He seems to think it was the spectator sitting near by that took their stuff.

E LA isn't as tough a neighborhood as it once was but still, you never know who you will run into. Lots of those guys that grew up in places are willing to fight with a drop of a hat and do not like to be told or accuse of anything even if they did the crime.

For 200 bucks, its not worth going to get our asses kicks or shot at. we can see exactly which house the ear buds are located. I my dream, I like to do a stake out and watch the kid go off without any of his back ups from the house along with the ear buds and approach him about them. Just for his satisfaction, I am pushing him to call the cops and report and see if it get anywhere just for the experience. Hell, if its been in someone's ear, I certainly wouldn't want it back even if I dip it in lacquer thinner.

[look 171]

Originally Posted by epbrown

Tell him this is a good lesson for college. If you ever doubt that poverty leads to crime, college students will prove it. Church-going middle class kids will steal everything that isn’t nailed down, go shoplift a hammer and come back for the rest.

Oh, I agree with you 100% that poverty leads to crime. I have seen it first hand since I grew up in a working class neighborhood. Some of the kids that were old enough would go out and steal car radios, hacksaw the chain off at the mall to rip off someone's expensive BMX bike. Oh yeah. Its worst in some of the poorer neighborhood like South Central. Yep, anything that isn't nailed down, doors shout and locked, its gone and don't turn your back on 'em.

[DavidI]

Happy to help my Pelican brothers and sisters! Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families!

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by look 171

Oh, I agree with you 100% that poverty leads to crime. I have seen it first hand since I grew up in a working class neighborhood. Some of the kids that were old enough would go out and steal car radios, hacksaw the chain off at the mall to rip off someone's expensive BMX bike. Oh yeah. Its worst in some of the poorer neighborhood like South Central. Yep, anything that isn't nailed down, doors shout and locked, its gone and don't turn your back on 'em.

Or could it be that the same sorts of people that are prone criminal activity are prone to poverty?

My own father grew up first in a Kansas farm house with a dirt floor, then a similar farm house in Eastern Washington. My mother in law did the same in Minnesota and, being the oldest kid in a family in which their mother abandoned them, wound up raising her younger siblings on a farm her father did not own. My father in law grew up on a pig farm that the family subsequently lost (it wasn't theirs anyway, they were "share cropping"). Literally "dirt poor", every one of them.

Not a single one of these people ever stole a goddamned thing in their lives.

[porsche930dude]

My brother found a phone in the car wash where he works it was smashed he took it home and not long after a cop showed up looking for it. He said im never touching another phone! Anyway It sounds like a job for a cop if they will listen. The kid will learn his lesson the cop will give him an ear full

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Why is society disintegrating. The normalization of fatherlessness is the biproduct of a multi-generational crash in men's self-esteem due to both capitalism and racism.

[look 171]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

Or could it be that the same sorts of people that are prone criminal activity are prone to poverty?

My own father grew up first in a Kansas farm house with a dirt floor, then a similar farm house in Eastern Washington. My mother in law did the same in Minnesota and, being the oldest kid in a family in which their mother abandoned them, wound up raising her younger siblings on a farm her father did not own. My father in law grew up on a pig farm that the family subsequently lost (it wasn't theirs anyway, they were "share cropping"). Literally "dirt poor", every one of them.

Not a single one of these people ever stole a goddamned thing in their lives.

I know, I know, but its not all just black and white. I grew up in a working class family. Dad didn't make any money but was able to buy a home, a roof over our heads. I never stole anything but a candy or two. I use to eat those small pieces of chocolate from the bins at the market when no one was looking. My sister and I were candy deprived. Go and live in Compton / So central and come back and tell me if that will change your mind. Leave your laptop in your car and see what happens. Now on the other hand, in a middle or upper middle class neighborhood, leave your things in the car and I bet It will b e there the next morning. Sure, bad things happens no matter where in a large city.

[Heel n Toe]

Originally Posted by Shaun @ Tru6

Why is society disintegrating. The normalization of fatherlessness is the biproduct of a multi-generational crash in men's self-esteem due to both capitalism and racism.

Wrong. LBJ's nonsense is to blame. Sorry to PARF this up, but Democrat myopic thinking has brought this on.
___________________________________
LBJ's failed War on Poverty
Sept. 23, 2014

http://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/commentary/the-war-poverty-50-years-failure

This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson's launch of the War on Poverty. In January 1964, Johnson declared "unconditional war on poverty in America." Since then, the taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson's war. Adjusted for inflation, that's three times the cost of all military wars since the American Revolution.

Last year, government spent $943 billion dollars providing cash, food, housing and medical care to poor and low-income Americans. (That figure doesn't include Social Security or Medicare.) More than 100 million people, or one-third of Americans, received some type of welfare aid, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. If converted into cash, this spending was five times what was needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S.

The U.S. Census Bureau has just released its annual poverty report. The report claims that in 2013, 14.5 percent of Americans were poor. Remarkably, that's almost the same poverty rate as in 1967, three years after the War on Poverty started. How can that be? How can government spend $9,000 per recipient and have no effect on poverty? The answer is - it can't.

Census counts a family as poor if its "income" falls below certain thresholds. But in counting "income," Census ignores almost all of the $943 billion in annual welfare spending. This, of course, makes the Census poverty figures very misleading.

The actual living conditions of households labeled as poor by Census are surprising to most people. According to the government's own surveys, 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning; nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television; half have a personal computer; 40 percent have a wide-screen HDTV. Three-quarters own a car or truck; nearly a third has two or more vehicles.

Ninety-six percent of poor parents state that their children were never hungry at any time during the year because they could not afford food. Some 82 percent of poor adults reported that they were never hungry at any time in the prior year.

As a group, poor children are far from being chronically undernourished. The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children, and in most cases is well above recommended norms.

Less than 2 percent of the poor are homeless. Only 10 percent live in a mobile home.

The average poor American lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair and not over-crowded. In fact, the average poor American has more living space than the typical non-poor individual living in Sweden, France, Germany or the United Kingdom.

Do these living conditions mean the War on Poverty was a success? Not really. When President Johnson launched the War on Poverty, he wanted to give the poor a "hand up, not a hand out." He stated that his war would shrink welfare rolls and turn the poor from "taxeaters" into "taxpayers." Johnson's aim was to make poor families self-sufficient - able to rise above poverty through their own earnings without dependence on welfare.

The exact opposite happened. For a decade and a half before the War on Poverty began, self-sufficiency in American improved dramatically. But for the last 45 years, there has been no improvement at all. Many groups are less capable of self-support today than when Johnson's war started.

The culprit is, in part, the welfare system itself, which discourages work and penalizes marriage. When the War on Poverty began, 7 percent of American children were born outside marriage. Today the number is 41 percent. The collapse of marriage is the main cause of child poverty today.

The welfare state is self-perpetuating. By undermining the social norms necessary for self-reliance, welfare creates a need for even greater assistance in the future. President Obama plans to spend $13 trillion over the next decade on welfare programs that will discourage work, penalize marriage and undermine self-sufficiency.

Rather than repeating the mistakes of the past we should return to Johnson's original goal. Johnson sought to help the poor help themselves. He aimed to free the poor from the need for government aid, rather than to increase their dependence. That's a vision worth recapturing.

- Robert Rector is a senior research fellow in the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.

[Zeke]

What now, do we have a new "FastPaste"? Strong political posts do not belong here.

And it's contradictory to boot.

Reported.

[MMARSH]

Originally Posted by look 171

I know, I know, but its not all just black and white. I grew up in a working class family. Dad didn't make any money but was able to buy a home, a roof over our heads. I never stole anything but a candy or two. I use to eat those small pieces of chocolate from the bins at the market when no one was looking. My sister and I were candy deprived. Go and live in Compton / So central and come back and tell me if that will change your mind. Leave your laptop in your car and see what happens. Now on the other hand, in a middle or upper middle class neighborhood, leave your things in the car and I bet It will b e there the next morning. Sure, bad things happens no matter where in a large city.

Funny, unlike I bet any of you here did, My Wife , My mother and I actually spent our Thanksgiving in Compton yesterday, like we have for the last 20 years or so. Same house that my mother and I stayed at in 1968 when my father went to Vietnam. Same house my sister and I used to stay at when we visited in the summer. Over the years, I've driven my Porsches, Corvettes, Teslas and Range Rovers to that neighborhood. I've parked in front of the house, down the street from the house and a block over from the house when I've gotten there late. It's funny in all these years, I've never had a thing stolen from my cars, in fact, never had a single bad experience. My dad used to visit with his 911 when he was stationed in Los Angeles same story. Would love to hear your real world experiences in Compton and not some **** you think you know....

When have I been the victim of crime. I had a motorcycle stolen when I lived in LaMirada, had a truck broken into and a radio stolen when I was in Studio City....is that middle class enough for ya....

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by 911 Rod

High school kids have been stealing from each other forever.
Lesson learned.

I was thinking I about the $20 yearbook stolen from my gym locker in 1972. What is $20 in 1972 worth today?

[javadog]

Originally Posted by scottmandue

I was thinking I about the $20 yearbook stolen from my gym locker in 1972. What is $20 in 1972 worth today?

Just shy of $150.

Pretty expensive yearbook…