Missing the Gunpoint

[Updated to note that this comment appears to have been removed.]

Sheriff: Girl, 12, unlikely to be charged as adult after allegedly stealing gun, holding up store

Group W Bench helpfully obscured a Word You Can't Say on the Airwaves, but that's not the obscene part of the sentence.

I initially misread this comment and assumed he hoped the cops had roughed up the girl. Actually he's referring to the store employees. Slightly less horrible, still not good. First, beating the shit out of a child in the name of vigilante justice won't teach her ethics or respect for the rule of law. It will teach her that laws are enforced by the powerful for their own convenience, with violence if necessary. Second, does he want the girl punished for lawbreaking? Charging a 12-year-old as an adult is a perversion of the justice system. For stupidity? Last I checked, "doing something retarded" did not, in and of itself, merit a beating.