Violence starts with parents

Yes, stemming

Thank you, retired police officer Joe Poniewaz (“Parents Need to Do Something About Shootings,” Sept. 16 letters) for telling it like it is. It is time that parents are held accountable for the behavior of their kids. Whether it is a shooting, robbery, vandalism or rioting (to name a few), not a day seems to go by without a breaking news story involving crime committed by teenagers (or even preteens). Unfortunately, this bad behavior is accelerated when they become adults, assuming they survive that long.

Parents are responsible for the actions of their kids. The kids are juveniles and usually incur not much more than what amounts to a slap on the wrist, and they are back into their world of crime. If there currently is no law on the books whereby parents (or, too frequently by default, guardians) can also be held accountable and pay some consequence for the crimes of their children, legislation needs to be initiated to so so.

The time has come to stop blaming the school system, the police, poverty and society in general for kids’ bad behavior. They skip school, disrupt the class if they do attend, carry guns when they are 11 and 12 (or even younger) and do not hesitate to murder someone merely on a whim. That is because they have not been raised to live as law-abiding citizens. Killing, robbing and fighting are the only way of life they have learned.

If parents were more responsible and attentive to what (and whom) their children were involved with, it might spare them the weeping and anguish when one of those kids is lying dead in the street, a victim of his or her own world of crime. The parents persist in demanding more police presence to control crime. No — it is up to the parents to prevent crime in the first place by instilling good values and respect in their kids so they will not make bad choices and instead will develop into productive citizens who will pass those values on to their own children. MARY BETH PARRIS

Green Tree City