Posted on 07/09/2002 12:48:48 AM PDT by Alan Chapman
Trever Palmer, 17, says he felt nervous and slightly heroic the night he picked up the phone, dialed 911 and informed the King County Sheriff's Office that his father was growing marijuana.
Minutes later, when Aaron Palmer, a Covington computer programmer, returned home from an evening of swimming laps at the local pool, deputies arrested him. They later found more than a dozen marijuana plants growing in a hidden room in the garage and booked the single father of three into the King County Jail on drug charges.
Two months later, as Trever Palmer prepares for his last year of high school, the 140-pound wrestler is still grappling with the consequences of his actions and talked about them in an interview yesterday.
Although police lauded him for doing the right thing, he says half his relatives are mad at him. He's "found out who my friends really are" while trying to avoid Kentwood High School classmates who scorned him, calling him "a weasel" and names much worse than that.
Palmer made the 911 call largely because of a lesson he learned in a Junior ROTC ethics course: "Stand up for what you believe in, don't follow the crowd and be your own person."
He still thinks he did the right thing.
"I felt like I was saving my sister and brother from this guy," he said. "You can only put up with so much."
But his family is torn apart, and his 15-year-old sister may not see the 911 call as such a brave act.
The night her father was taken away, "she really didn't speak much to me," Palmer said. "She was crying and trying to get her stuff together."
Today, she "just kind of avoids me," he said.
Palmer said his 7-year-old brother didn't know what was going on.
Palmer, who is spending part of the summer with his grandparents in Pennsylvania, plans to live with his best friend's family until he graduates and joins the Air Force. His sister and brother are staying with a cousin. Their mother, who is divorced from their father, is unemployed and "doesn't have room for them in her apartment," Palmer said.
Palmer's sister could not be reached last night, and Palmer's father did not return phone calls. Aaron Palmer, 38, was released on $5,000 bail shortly after his arrest and pleaded not guilty last week to a felony charge of drug manufacturing, the South County Journal reported. He faces up to five years in prison.
The boy said many of his relatives can't comprehend his motives for calling police.
"It sucks," Palmer said last night. "I was really hoping that they would understand. It's kind of like that hole in (me) that needs to be filled."
He has tried to explain himself to his father's parents, who "kind of understand, but they are upset."
When he called police, he said, he wasn't considering what would happen to his family. "I kind of figured that would fall into place."
What went through his mind?
"I thought: no guts, no glory," he said.
He thought marijuana growing was taking over his father's life. Instead of spending time doing things with the family, his father tended to his plants -- moving the pots around and watering. He said that on two occasions, people visited the house on account of the marijuana.
Living around drugs is "the part that no kid should have to go through, and I didn't want (my younger brother) to go through it."
There were other conflicts. He thought his father paid attention to his sister's accomplishments, while ignoring his own. And he thought his ROTC courses, which were based on Marine Corps leadership training, put him at odds with his ex-Army father "on different military perspectives."
The "stand-up" message from his ROTC course echoed in his head.
"That set it straight, why I should do it," Palmer said. "For one thing, it's illegal."
He said another factor was the emotions stirred by reading "The Red Badge of Courage" for an English class. He said he was impressed by how a character in the book, a soldier named Nick, discovered his own bravery.
"He stood up for what he believed in," Palmer said.
pubmom, thanks for catching this, I didn't.
trussel, you were wrong, you owe me an apology retraction.
What you call bitching and moaning is working within our representative government. It is trying to convince fellow citizens to put ballot pressure on the representatives to change it. Think about it.
Meth, molestation, yeah, but POT??? C'mon, get real. Above it says, the kid said people visited the house on TWO different occasions because they wanted to toke up. TWO!!! OMIGAWD!!! THOSE POOR CHILDREN!!! This kid ain't worried about drugs or brother or any of that stuff, he's p!ssed at his old man for something or other (divorce?) and is getting back at him by stabbing him in the back.
If he did warn his father, fine and dandy. But I am responding to the facts in the article. If he sucker-punched his dad like this, he's a groveling, gutless, jealous, back-biting little Judas.
And tobacco, and beer, etc.
Be sure to tell your children right now that you are going to turn them over to the police and have them sent to prison for breaking any laws.
Not that you care what I think, but I find you to be despicable. Any parent who would turn his child in to the government is beyond help.
Your child will certainly thank you as they are gang raped by large evil men. You should be made to watch it happen.
The kid was a swine, period. Lenin and Hitler would have been proud of him.
WWJD?
Kinda like the slack you cut the father?
"I thought: no guts, no glory," he said.
Bold mine
There were other conflicts. He thought his father paid attention to his sister's accomplishments, while ignoring his own.
Bold mine
And he thought his ROTC courses, which were based on Marine Corps leadership training, put him at odds with his ex-Army father "on different military perspectives."
He said another factor was the emotions stirred by reading "The Red Badge of Courage" for an English class. He said he was impressed by how a character in the book, a soldier named Nick, discovered his own bravery.
It's fairly obvious that the kid did his own father in, for his own reasons. To all but you I guess.
No I don't, why not explain it specifically?
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