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.
You're right, Dad's attorney will have a field day with this.
Sad story, everybody loses.
Hey, maybe the dad was the "dumbshit" for growing illegal drugs in the first place? Did the dad ever think that there might be ramifacations to his actions?
just a thought....
But that would be putting the responsibility on the parent. Can't have that. (Oh, boy, am I gonna get flamed!)
Sounds like the kind of E-mail spam I've been getting lately!
Obey the law? What a concept! ;-)
And the issue of a gun is NOT in any way comparable to the issue of drugs. We have a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. This right is a natural right and is essential for our survival. No such right exists for 'keeping drugs.' Drugs are not considered essential for use as weapons to protect one's family, state or country.
Under no circumstances should a father place the weight of his decisions to violate the law on his family, who are too young to decide for themselves to join him and bear equal responsibility. Should a family protect their father if they know he is a thief? Should they protect him by not revealing he is a smuggler? Into child pornography? A murderer? Copying software illegally? Poaching? Getting drunk and making life hell on the family or neglecting his role as father? Should parents protect a son they know is committing a crime, 'serious' or not? Why should a kid be expected to protect a father who should know better?
The father, if he wasn't high all of the time, should have known that if he was ever caught, it might cost him time in jail or a fine. He decided that his family wasn't that important, and that it was worth the risk to 'have fun.' He didn't care about what his family would do if he was caught. He didn't care about his family's right not to be part of his crime.
The perpetrator knows what he did is illegal- it is his responsibility and his alone to stand up and take the heat- it is not his family's responsibility to keep his secret for them or live with his crime. He has NO RIGHT to expect them to keep silent for his sake, and that is exactly what he was expecting of them. He was the head of the household and so, he couldn't be disciplined within the family as a parent could do to a son. He was the head of the household and the only place the family had to turn to was the law. A doped-up dad is no father.
Drug laws may seem silly but they are constitutional until found otherwise. There is no provision in the constitution that permits you to break a law just because you consider something to be a right. If you want it to be recognized as a right, fight for it in public by holding protests and working for legislation, not in the basement of your home.
Even assuming it were daffodils, the father had no right to bring his criminal activity into his home where others would be forced to choose between him and their own conscience. If you want to grow illegal 'daffodils,' buy a shed somewhere else and hide the goods there, but don't ever expect your family to play a role in your crime. They have rights too.
What he DIDN'T do, apparently, was to talk to his dad about his concerns about the pot-growing. He didn't say "Look, Dad.........I know this is your house, but it's gotta go or I'll have to do what I really don't want to do." Nope. He decided to skip the interim steps and send Dad directly to Jail; do not pass "Go", do not collect $200.
Family is family. Others here have said "well, yeah, but gee........if he was molesting a kid or running a meth lab or......"
He wasn't.
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