Posted on 06/07/2007 3:21:34 PM PDT by LibWhacker
He has gone from accused minor criminal to community symbol. Let there be no mistake. As was confirmed after Tuesday’s court hearing, this is not just another harassment case. Charles Schmidl stands as a crusader for a cause.
The cause is the right of an adult to defend himself — and his 5-year-old son — against the alleged abuse of an out-ofcontrol 10-year-old. It is a line in the sand against lax parenting and the obnoxious offspring that it produces. It is a voice for the rights of those wronged by every spoiled brat spawned by absent or permissive parents.
In an era when discipline seems to have gone out of style and responsibility hides under a rock, this thing is bigger than Charles Schmidl. Or any one of us.
Schmidl is 38, trim and tanned, with an athlete’s stride. He did not imagine becoming the face of Enraged Adults Everywhere when he took his son for a mid-April skate at the Amherst Pepsi Center. A 10-year-old with a hockey stick, according to Schmidl, taunted him, shot pucks at him and his boy and dared him to do something about it.
Schmidl said he searched for 40 minutes in vain for security or staff at the center, then took matters into his own hands. He grabbed the kid and dragged him off the ice. The boy’s mother appeared and had Schmidl arrested.
Amherst cops say witness accounts largely confirm Schmidl’s story. The boy has had previous trouble at the rink, and his family is “familiar” to Amherst police.
In the court of law, Schmidl faces charges of harassment and endangering the welfare of a child. In the court of public opinion, Schmidl is a hero. I got dozens of e-mails after previously writing about the case, mostly defending his actions.
Schmidl emerged unrepentant from Tuesday’s court hearing.
“The [court] will hopefully provide the [justification] for what I believe,” Schmidl said. “[Protecting] my son is the most important thing for me.”
Schmidl’s attorney did most of the talking, but the message was clear: The case is less about the law than it is about principles.
I do not condone putting hands on somebody else’s kid. As a matter of law, I think Schmidl loses. As a matter of common sense, he’s an action hero: Justifiable Avenger of the League of Authority.
Schmidl merely did what the boys’ parents ought to have done long ago: ladle out a generous helping of discipline.
No kid is perfect. No adult is perfect. But when a 10-year-old uses an adult for target practice, it says to me that the parents have not been minding the store. It takes a lot of parental coddling, excusemaking and myopia to produce a minimonster of this magnitude.
Instead of turning the other cheek, Schmidl stood his ground. Instead of meekly walking away, Schmidl refused to be abused. I am not saying that it was the smart thing to do. But given the situation, I can understand and even sympathize with it.
Maybe the full story will be told only in court. But if what we heard reflects what happened, Schmidl stands for the parent of every kid who has been victimized. He is the symbol of every adult who puts up with somebody else’s parenting mistake.
“My client intervened because he had to,” said attorney James Hartt. “I believe the people of Buffalo understand what [Schmidl] did. . . . He did what he had to do to have the kid held accountable.”
Odds are that it will not play in court. But in the court of public opinion, Schmidl is a crusader for a cause.
If bad parenting were a crime, Schmidl stands as society’s superhero. The court may punish him. The rest of us want to pat him on the back.
It’s cool, that needs to be said more than once.
He loses in a court of law? Not with me on the jury. I got two words for ya: “JURY NULLIFICATION”
I would be on that jury and vote “not guilty” all day long.
A judge CAN overturn it, but it’s rare.
A cop CAN arrest you without seeing what you are alleged with having done. Besides this guy probably ADMITTED what he did, he was righteously pissed off.
I have to disagree, not with what he did, but how he did it.
Any menace by the 10 year old is based on three things: his hockey stick and pucks, his fists, or his skates. By this account, he was using his hockey stick and pucks only.
This means if the man had taken away his hockey stick, either it would have ended the situation, or the boy would have used other weapons.
However, the man grabbed the boy, not his stick, which is a whole different kettle of fish.
Though it might be emotionally gratifying, you don’t want adults going around, grabbing or disciplining other people’s children. That can very rapidly turn into adult on adult aggravated assault or even homicide. A lot of people would go into a blind rage if a stranger grabbed their child. It is almost an instinctual reaction.
There are times when it is generally okay, such as breaking up a fight, or if the child is attempting to do something that could cause imminent harm. But again, the adult should be trying to stop what they are doing, not the child itself.
Well maybe he’ll be able to get the same sheriff parole as Paris “stupid spoiled whore” Hilton
Thank you.
“For a cop to arrest you without a warrant requires the cop to witness you committing what the cop believes is a crime.”
Uh, nope.
I agree with the take away the stick approach. When the ignorant mother shows up to scream about it, break it in half and give it to her
The older I get, the more I beleive in jury nullification
No jury composed of sane adults will convict. It’s amazing the DA went forward with this.
I'm not a lawyer (and I give thanks every day for that fact) but there once was a standard of "reasonable" behavior implicit in the law. What this man did was reasonable. He didn't hurt the child and there's no allegation that he did.
He corralled him and went to look for a supervisor.
"Grabbing" a child does not necessarily equate to violence or sexual behavior as modern laws seem hysterically designed to punish. I hope we've got a reasonable judge up in Amherst who will dismiss this entire thing. And boy do I wish "loser pays" applied in this case.
What happened to “It takes a village”?
I don’t see the problem. The kid committed attempted assault and the father held him until police arrived.
Charles Schmidl has my support. I work and live in the vicinity where all this happened. The government, its employees and the school system especially are the most PC liberal worthless pieces of human refuse that there are. They push an attitude where parental authority is stifled and children have no authority to answer to. When my oldest daughter was in third grade she was beat up every week or two as she walked home from school by three sixth grade boys. We went to the school and asked for help in the matter. The school refused to get involved. We called the parents of each boy and got nothing but stonewalled since their kids were all angels. Nothing could or would be done, so we enrolled our daughter in a local self-defense school so that she could learn how to protect herself. Two months went by and the three bullies decided that she needed beating up. When they attacked she grabbed the index finger of the first assailant and broke it. She then kicked the second in the face breaking his nose. The third she hit with her lunch box breaking the thermos bottle and knocking out 4 teeth. Now the school decided to get involved. We had to defend our decision to allow her to learn self defense. This community provides facilities for the children through high taxes, but then go on the cheap by not providing supervision for the facilities. The police at least decided that since no adults were involved, that she was merely defending herself. Thank got her mother and I did not try and stop these juvenile delinquents, we’d have been charged with touching or some other such nonsense.
smack to kid again, too.
When the policeman came to our home, he said if he didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. And further the school should have called them, BUT then he would only mediate between the parties.
After the perp’s suspension was over, the perp sent word to my son that he’ll get him in HS.
Now our next choice is to hire an attorney and threaten to sue the school. BTW, I wrote the principle of the police response to inform him not to send kids home to call the police. That the staff should call the police. His response was to call the district’s lawyer and confirm that he didn’t have to call the police. He assured me he thought bringing the police in was appropriate in this matter.
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