What do you think about DC Police Chief Robert Contee's views on parents' role in preventing crime?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whatever punishment the kids get, the parents should get double.

I don't think charging Karon Blake's mother with stealing cars will help. But it might help to charge the parents of the other two. What we're doing now isn't working.

[Anonymous]

I was at a trafficking in persons seminar in Denver, and all of these NGOs were complaining about lack of resources. The federal law enforcement task force leader said it costs zero money to care about your kids. This is bc trafficking victims in the US are frequently girls who run away from or have a terrible home life, at best neglectful and at worst abusive. This makes them vulnerable to predators who can pick up on their low self esteem. Law enforcement and teachers are not supposed to parent your kids. You have to do that. Have the tough conversations, invade their privacy. You are not their buddy. I hope everyone is talking to their kids today about fentanyl laced pills. I hope parents of younger kids are realizing that their kids do not need a smart phone and need to stay off social media. I completely agree with the police chief. Parent your kids and give them the tools to deal with all the crap that is happening in this world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:27 again.

Anyway, all this is smoke and mirrors. The REAL issue is gun control. This is what differentiates the US from all other wealthy and educated nations. They all have issues with their mentally ill, their disrespectful teens, their drugs and gangs. But no guns on the street is what makes the difference in mortality.

If there was no immediate legislation for gun control after Sandy Hook, Uvalde then just stop with your broken record of Gun Control. There is not going to be gun control legislation prohibiting purchasing or ownership of guns. So it only makes sense that, YOU, the parent are responsible for absolutely everything your child does as long as they live under your roof and you need to watch them like hawks and finally assume and exercise your responsibility.

NP. There was legislation passed after Uvalde. And there will be more, most likely. Both gun control and parenting are needed.

I lost track of the mass shootings in Jan. 2023. California's much stricter laws were useless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think he's right. It starts at home. And it's not about poverty. The only thing money gets you is the ability to buy yourself out of punishment for your crimes.
We have now 2 generations of people being raised to be entirely self absorbed and that the rules don't apply to them. Just take a look at the other threads in this form a good chunk are about how to get my kid out of xyz, my kid shouldn't have to do this because xyz. Unending selfishness

My unpopular opinion is that the current trend for society to condone - not just accept, but actively condone - individual's decisions on how they live their lives is resulting in a lack of social norms. Without some semblance of community, the individual feels free to do whatever they want without concern of judgement or punishment. Sometimes that fear is what keeps people doing the right thing.

And I'm not talking about LGTQ+ rights, before people start yelling at me. I'm talking about the fact that social media feeds this mentality that anything mainstream is to be rejected, but we know that some of those mainstream ideas work for a healthy society, like two parent households, jobs for income, respect for teachers/school, respect for community leaders, etc. At some point, what's good for the individual has to be secondary to what's good for the majority and that's okay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was at a trafficking in persons seminar in Denver, and all of these NGOs were complaining about lack of resources. The federal law enforcement task force leader said it costs zero money to care about your kids. This is bc trafficking victims in the US are frequently girls who run away from or have a terrible home life, at best neglectful and at worst abusive. This makes them vulnerable to predators who can pick up on their low self esteem. Law enforcement and teachers are not supposed to parent your kids. You have to do that. Have the tough conversations, invade their privacy. You are not their buddy. I hope everyone is talking to their kids today about fentanyl laced pills. I hope parents of younger kids are realizing that their kids do not need a smart phone and need to stay off social media. I completely agree with the police chief. Parent your kids and give them the tools to deal with all the crap that is happening in this world.

People aren’t poor on purpose, people don’t have dysfunctional lives on purpose. They don’t know how to live a different way. There need to be resources to help. You can’t take some kid from a trailer in WVA with two unemployed meth addicted parents and expect them how to live a normal life. Same goes for any kid growing up in poverty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think parents have enormous influence on their kids, but Contee's remarks ignore that fact that so much of the poor parenting we see in the world is the result of generational trauma, and that's a hard cycle to break. I am a cycle breaker in my own family, and it's lonely and difficult. It's worth it, but there are things that can be done to support families in making better choices with their own kids than their parents made with them.

One thing I'd like to see considered is Robert White's proposal to provide free tuition to people willing to get a Masters in Social Work from UDC (there is more to his proposal, but I know this is a part of it). The goal is to create more resources for mental health support in the city. I'd also like to see programs developed explicitly to help adult survivors of childhood abuse and trauma in order to help break the cycles of generational trauma that continue to hurt kids today.

It is not enough to say "parents, do better." Most parents who are struggling know they need to do better. But I know from experience that they may not know where to begin. I think the city could do more to help them down that path.

Also, making people more aware of generational trauma and the impacts on children at a young age could help. I waiting until I was much older to have kids in part because I was aware of the damage of my own history and the risks of repeating those cycles. Perhaps if more young people were aware that the abuse and trauma they experienced could make it harder for them to parent, more of them would seek help before having kids of their own. I know for me, that has been essential to breaking the cycle. Knowledge is power.

Totally agree. More resources should be spent teaching parents how to parent and providing support. Again and again we hear parents on this page who are at their breaking point and these are generally people who don’t have trauma and have stable jobs and home environments - now try parenting with your own unresolved trauma and unstable income. I’m not excusing poor parenting but we can’t just expect to yell at people to parent better and have them be better. We need to treat the disease not just the symptoms. Most of us parent a lot like we were parented for good or for bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think he's right. It starts at home. And it's not about poverty. The only thing money gets you is the ability to buy yourself out of punishment for your crimes.
We have now 2 generations of people being raised to be entirely self absorbed and that the rules don't apply to them. Just take a look at the other threads in this form a good chunk are about how to get my kid out of xyz, my kid shouldn't have to do this because xyz. Unending selfishness

My unpopular opinion is that the current trend for society to condone - not just accept, but actively condone - individual's decisions on how they live their lives is resulting in a lack of social norms. Without some semblance of community, the individual feels free to do whatever they want without concern of judgement or punishment. Sometimes that fear is what keeps people doing the right thing.

And I'm not talking about LGTQ+ rights, before people start yelling at me. I'm talking about the fact that social media feeds this mentality that anything mainstream is to be rejected, but we know that some of those mainstream ideas work for a healthy society, like two parent households, jobs for income, respect for teachers/school, respect for community leaders, etc. At some point, what's good for the individual has to be secondary to what's good for the majority and that's okay.

Agree that the pendulum has swung too far. It's not just hurting society it's hurting kids.

Maybe parenting classes need to happen in school as part of a life skills curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was at a trafficking in persons seminar in Denver, and all of these NGOs were complaining about lack of resources. The federal law enforcement task force leader said it costs zero money to care about your kids. This is bc trafficking victims in the US are frequently girls who run away from or have a terrible home life, at best neglectful and at worst abusive. This makes them vulnerable to predators who can pick up on their low self esteem. Law enforcement and teachers are not supposed to parent your kids. You have to do that. Have the tough conversations, invade their privacy. You are not their buddy. I hope everyone is talking to their kids today about fentanyl laced pills. I hope parents of younger kids are realizing that their kids do not need a smart phone and need to stay off social media. I completely agree with the police chief. Parent your kids and give them the tools to deal with all the crap that is happening in this world.

People aren’t poor on purpose, people don’t have dysfunctional lives on purpose. They don’t know how to live a different way. There need to be resources to help. You can’t take some kid from a trailer in WVA with two unemployed meth addicted parents and expect them how to live a normal life. Same goes for any kid growing up in poverty.

Absolutely agree with this. Poverty isn't a crime. Poverty is something done to poor people, not something they choose. Unless that is addressed no amount of punishment is going to cure poor people of poverty and all the disfunction that comes from it.

[Anonymous]

Chief Contee is the only person in the DMV who consistently says common sense things when interviewed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I saw the video from the father of 13 year old Karon, it was like an arrow from the boy's family to his fate.

Armed carjackings by minors is skyrocketing. This is a new phenomenon and it's destroying our city and our children, our future.

Can you link to the video? I can’t find it and I’d like to see it.

[Anonymous]

There isn't one cause. Blame parents. Blame guns. Blame mental health care. Blame poverty. Blame entitlement culture. Blame the legacy of racism. Blame the lack of support for families in our society.

There's a lot of blame to go around. We have to fix it all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you think we have white collar criminals who cost our nation $300 billion a year because they had bad parents?

You’re being obtuse. We’re talking about violent criminals at shockingly young ages.

Of course it starts at home but that’s not PC to say. When babies with no direction, have babies, the cycle continues

[Anonymous]

I think there's has to be some discussion about what parents have and do not have the ability to do. There are parents who just can't be present for their kids due to having to work multiple jobs, etc. Perhaps they are lovely parents but they just cannot be present. Then there parents who are just bad at being parents, and that can be regardless of resource level. There can be societal interventions for the parents that want help, but what happens when there are parents whose children are exhibiting behaviors that are violent or criminal, and who don't even attempt to intervene to alter/help the kids?

[Anonymous]

I recall President Obama, early in his first term, criticizing absentee fathers in the Black community.

I also recall the massive wave of criticism he received, such that he rarely repeated his earlier criticism.

Are President Obama and Chief Conte wrong?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there's has to be some discussion about what parents have and do not have the ability to do. There are parents who just can't be present for their kids due to having to work multiple jobs, etc. Perhaps they are lovely parents but they just cannot be present. Then there parents who are just bad at being parents, and that can be regardless of resource level. There can be societal interventions for the parents that want help, but what happens when there are parents whose children are exhibiting behaviors that are violent or criminal, and who don't even attempt to intervene to alter/help the kids?

I am reminded of the parent (grandparent?) who, a few years ago, moved her DC out of DC away from the crime and unsavory friends. When he returned to DC to testify against one, he was shot and killed at a metro station. She tried to save him from crime but couldn't.

So depressing.