Verified by 
Law and Crime
When Kids Are The Heroes
Help is sometimes under 5 feet tall...
Posted November 3, 2013
Not long ago, a 7-year old boy named Carlos placed a 911 call following an intruder's attack into their home. Threatening to kill his parents, little Carlos takes his 6-year old sister into the bathroom and calls for help while three men make their harmful intentions known. The men eventually break into the bathroom only to see that the boy has called the police. As cowards often do, the men flee out of fear of getting caught.
According to the FCC, an estimated 240 million calls are made to 911 centers in the U.S. each year. Many of these calls are made by young children. In fact, dispatchers will often tell you that children are the most calm, cool, and collected of the emergency callers.
In a recent event in my hometown, three teens helped mall security apprehend a jewel thief/gang-banger running out of a department store. These brave young people identified a plea for help and ran into the war zone without prejudice or calculating their best interests. American gangs are responsible for an average of 48% of violent crime in most jurisdictions. There were 2.11 million juvenile arrests last year--16% from violent crimes and 26% from property crimes. The FBI's Uniform Crime Report stated that most of those arrests involved drug activity. In 2012, an estimated 1,214,462 violent crimes occurred nationwide, an increase of 0.7 percent from the 2011 estimate.
In these events (and there are many more), it's the kids who are paving the way for the rest of us--adults and children alike. It's the kids who are holding the lantern and saying "Follow me!" In one part of the country, a boy shelters his sister while calling for help and, in another, they subdue a thief who punched a security guard in the face.
The identification of predator behavior and their cowardice flight in response to danger and fear of being caught is important in realizing the rich symbolism we assign to heroes and villains. German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said that man is, at bottom, a wild animal and that we know this wild animal only in the tamed state called civilization. We are shocked by outbreaks of man's true nature but if and when the bolt and bars of the civilization fall apart and anarchy supervenes, people will reveal themselves for who they are. And such is the case for children who are capable of removing their eyeglasses, hat, and business suit just as much as (or faster than) we adults.
Child heroes, without the full development and power of human control, lend us a helping hand that is nothing but power. While us sheep live in a world of perceived security afforded to us by a locked gate, a cozy loft, and the communion of other sheep, our shepherds are kiddos whose extraordinary tales of selflessness bring a sense of security and justice from the swells of evil that permeate our social fabric.
Copyright © by Brian A. Kinnaird
Brian A. Kinnaird, Ph.D. is a former law enforcement officer and current criminal justice professor. He is active as an author, trainer, speaker, and consultant and can be contacted at brian.kinnaird@gmail.com.
References and Suggested Reading:
National Gang Intelligence Center, (2011). "National Gang Threat Assessment, Emerging Trends."
U.S. National Gang Intelligence Center, p. 9.
Hollingdale, R.J. (1970). Arthur Schopenhauer: Essays and Aphorisms (trans.). PenguinBooks:
London.
