Question of the week!

[northernwalker]

You and your spouse are at home and have just collected the mail from your box. In it is a package addressed to your sixteen-year-old, who is out at band practice. It has hazmat stickers on it. You can think of no reason why your child should be receiving this, so you decide to open it and risk the ten years in prison for tampering with the mail. Inside is 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate which was purchased on Ebay. Warning bells go off in your head, and a quick google search tells you it's used in improvised explosive devices. Your child doesn't have any legitimate need for this. Do you:

A) Call the cops immediately?
B) Talk it over with your spouse?
C) Call the hospital and take the kid in to see a shrink?
D) Got to school, collect child and talk?
E) Make a panicked post to an LJ parenting community?

The broader question could be, at what point would you call the police and turn in a family member.

Comments

[northernwalker]

I brought this up to a collegue after an article last week about this scenario. He's into amateur rocketry, so it's not impossible to him that theoretical kid could have legitimate reasons for buying it. However, the details that came out made it pretty clear that he was planning to do in the school.

As to the broader question--I'd call the police on a family member if I had strong probable cause that they had done something very illegal. I'm not sure how I feel about involving the cops as a preventative measure except in extreme cases.

If I had good reason to believe that a family member had committed a violent crime (rape/murder/Ted Kaczynski) I'd call it in.

[zhukora1.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, was this the kid who posted a bunch of threats on the wikipedia page for his school, and claimed he wanted to go to heaven and kill jesus?