When Kids were Kids and Cops were Friendly

How many of us built forts as kids? Heck, how many of us would still build forts if we could? It used to be that you could always find me out any place where there was a potential for fort building.  As a little girl in the suburbs, most times it was a string between two crab apple trees and a blanket for a tent fort. Once we moved to the country, on the Niagara Escarpment, it was a fort builder’s paradise!  I spent all summer finding cool places and building forts that lasted through long winters.

It used to be when I was a kid, that if you needed help for anything, you could ask a ‘police man’.  Our local police man happened to be the dad of one of my friends, so we were lucky to have a place to go if we felt scared or needed help.  We had neighbors back then too who would, if they saw us kids doing something we shouldn’t, tell our moms who would come and give us either a lecture or drag us home, or dress us down in front of our friends… and drag us home.

There are still a lot of caring cops out there, and still a lot of them who remember how it is to be a kid. Apparently, unfortunately for one potential architect and his friends, this wasn’t one of them.

It’s good to see kids still doing kid stuff instead of being in front of a TV screen or video game. But unfortunately for 11-year old Omari Grant and his friends, they most likely won’t be able to forget how playing in a wooded area behind his home and building a fort turned into a scary and traumatic experience.

A neighbor in the next subdivision called police to complain about what the boys were doing, but no one anticipated what Omari and his mother say happened next.

Read the rest here….  http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/11-year-old-building-tree-fort-says-officer-pulled/nfQKK/?ref=cbTopWidget