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http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/04/09/girl.handcuffed.ap/index.html

Stuff like this makes me wonder about the criminal justice system in the US!

Why not get the people who have been arrested 10 times for driving drunk and are still on the road, or people like the soldier (just one example; I am not singling out soldiers) who molested/raped several times but kept getting off because the army protected him and didn't charge him or turn him in, or indict the priests who molest young boys and are protected by the church.
That is all outrageous!

Wierd.

The standards for hiring police officers have been lowered. A neighbor of mine is a decorated retired homicide detective who worked in New York City. He confirms that the men and women hired today are not the same caliber of men and women hired two decades ago. But look at the positive side of this, I bet the incidence of 9 year olds arrested for bunny napping will be greatly reduced after this incident is widely reported. Will the child be prosecuted as an adult?

VEFF wrote:people like the soldier (just one example; I am not singling out soldiers) who molested/raped several times but kept getting off because the army protected him

I'm running into that problem right now. Remember that guy that screwed 60 people out of a total of $5100 on eBay? Anywhere else, it would be a felony, but the Navy really didn't want to deal with it. Fortunately, the NCIS doesn't take things like this quite as lightly.

Ian wrote:

VEFF wrote:people like the soldier (just one example; I am not singling out soldiers) who molested/raped several times but kept getting off because the army protected him

I'm running into that problem right now. Remember that guy that screwed 60 people out of a total of $5100 on eBay? Anywhere else, it would be a felony, but the Navy really didn't want to deal with it. Fortunately, the NCIS doesn't take things like this quite as lightly.

Well, good luck Ian!
Keep us posted. If nobody fights for their rights, people will continue to take advantage of others.

To post a very mild rebuttal:

I read the article. Apparently this is not the 9 year-old's first "incident", at least from what I read on CNN's version of it. The police didn't abuse or hurt her. Knowing how I'd have been disciplined as a kid for stealing another child's property, is it so bad to use a mild scare tactic intended to teach a child not to do it again?

I think that most versions of this were overdramatized in a way that makes the police look either foolish, or overbearing. I doubt very much that it went down that way.

P.S. VEFF, in response to your original post, double standards can sometimes happen mainly because one police department in one municipality/county/etc. isn't the same as one five states away. No, it isn't necessarily right or fair, but I think the law has gotten too complex in some ways, too much for each police officer to know every single reg. That, along with a wide variance in how judges see their role in law enforement (literal interpretation vs. social agenda) and this is just too complex a problem to address in one post.