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.
Are you high? There's a difference between American police officers following the US constitution and state laws which we have made freely... and the Gestapo, whose activities and existance would be impossible under the US constitutioon and US state laws. There is a difference between the US and Nazi Germany. The kid didn't turn his dad in for not liking the national leader, nor for being Jewish. Jews weren't trying to get high, they were trying to avoid being exterminated. There is a huge difference between a government like that of Naxi Germany with laws that violate free speech and a government like ours which has laws banning the use and sale of certain drugs. Free speech is essential to political liberty- the use of drugs for pleasure is not essential for anything, not even for pleasure.
I know these distinctions don't seem so great right now, but once the drugs wear off they'll be blatantly obvious.
Our system is set up so that laws we see as unjust can be challenged- legally. Our system is set up so that we can toss people we see as inadequate or dangerous out of office. Our system was set up so that things we don't like can be protested - and the government has no right to stop you from advocating that drug laws be lifted, no right to stop you from public protests of US laws pertaining to drugs. The first ammendment is still there, and you can praise drugs all you like, and criticize the government to your little heart's content. You couldn't do that in nazi Germany. When our country gets to the point that you can't hold a pro-drug rally to ease drug laws, give me a call. I don't support the use of drugs but I do support your right to wax eloquent or to make a fool of yourself in public.
Nazi Germany was Nazi Germany because a lot of people decided that they could violate basic inalienable rights like life, the right to bear arms, free speech, and religious liberty. They decided that intimidation of other people with violence was acceptable. It wasn't Nazi Germany because people upheld the law- it was Nazi Germany because not enough people had respected the laws of the former German republic, and because they had no US constitution. Nazis thought it was OK to vandalize, even though it was against the law. They decided it was OK to break into Jewish business and OK to destroy things belonging to other people. The LAWLESSNESS preceeded the rise of the Nazis. Once they had used lawlessness to come to power, they turned around and used their own laws to stay in power. They could not have come to power but for the lawlessness of both the communists and themselves.
Where's the victim in a child molestation case? That's easy! The child is the victim.
Where's the victim in running a meth lab? The buyer? Unlikely, since the buyer of the meth is (or should be) fully aware of the consequences of the consumption of methamphetamines.
Molesting a child is (in latin) mala in se, or bad on it's face. Growing, selling, and using marijuana is mala prohibitum, which means it's bad because the state prohibits it.
I can't understand how this kid didn't see it coming. He's doomed his father to misery and poverty. He's opened his father's assets to seizure (theft) by the state. Of course his relatives hate him. If a relative of mine turned in her father for mere drug crimes, that person would be on the outside of the family, looking in with her nose pressed up against the glass!
I don't blame the drugs. I blame the criminal. To hell with "The Devil made me do it." It's a cop-out.
The Soviet Union made a saint of a little creep who turned in his parents for anti-Soviet activities. This little creep is just the same.
You don't know that, since the reporter didn't ask the obvious question, or if he did, chose not to print it. In all probability the kid did talk to his dad about the drugs, butr it wasn't the kid's responsibility to talk to dad about the pot- it was dad's responsibility not to grow pot in the home. It isn't the kid's responsibility to talk to an unethical father- it is the father's job to demonstrate good ethical behavior to his kids.
Ever tried to get through the thick skull of a drug user, whether the user uses pot or uses booze, or uses diet pills or uses some hard stuff? Ever tried to talk to an anorexic? they don't even use drugs and you can't get them through the denial stage. It's like talking to a wall. I've tried it for years. I've watched people destroy their lives and their kids' lives with something as seemingly light as pot. If someone wants to waste their own life because they can't live with themselves while they're not on drugs, that's one thing. But when they expect other people to go along with it and live with it too, that is when the drug user is wrong. Dad could wait until his kids have grown up and left home- after all, his kids couldn't legally leave home to get away from the drugs, and mom was probably like a lot of moms and not up to the task of facing off with dad about his problem. So Dad was forcing his crime onto his family's shoulders to bear, and that is always wrong.
Family is not family once the rights of the whole family has been subordinated to one man's pursuit of pleasure at the expense of others' integrity or safety. There is only ONE wrong person in the story and that is the FATHER. He is the ONE person who could have prevented this from ever becoming an issue. But his quest for a good time overrode his desire to be a good father. His desire for potted plants overrode his desire for a son.
Where's my can of worms....oh, here it is!
A fellow constitutionalist, eh? Try this idea on for size. His father does have a constitutional right to grow dope in his basement.
Think i've been smoking? Read:
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Basically, that translates to: just because we didn't list it as a right doesn't mean the people don't have the right.
Still not convinced? Try:
Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
That means that if the Constitution does not grant the power to the goverment to prohibit marijuana or other substances, then the power is implicitly denied.
Of course, the state's ability to prohibit are dependent on that state's constitution, but drug prohibition is largely a federal mandate anyway.
The answer is no. Why is the answer different when the drug in question is methamphetamine instead of alcohol? It's inconsistent, and it's the inconsistency which I find most abhorrent.
I agree totally. Or they should have the courage of their convictions that a "law" is wrong and should be changed by challenging it in court by blatantly breaking the law and daring the authorities to try you for it. Maybe you can become an advocate from prison ... think of your standing then.
You pays your money and you takes your chances.
Eaker
All in all, this kid is a product of a system that promotes self rightousness over honor, self over family, and the right to have gay kinky sex than the right of an adult to grow plants that the "government" has decided are "bad" for you.
Considering this kid's comment, "I thought: no guts, no glory," it also appears that this kid was seeking notoriety and thought that he'd score some points with "the government", thinking that will help him get a quick promotion if he were to join the Marines.
What a good little Nazi.
While the father's judgement may not have lapsed in allowing his kid to see that he was involved with growing marijuana, it's NOT as if he was running a meth lab, contrary to what many overzealous drug warriors might imply. Nor was he molesting his kids. In either of those two cases, the kid WOULD have done the right thing. Here however, it only appears that the kid wanted to get back at dad for favoring his sister. What a spoiled rotten selfish little twit.
"Stand up for what you believe in, don't follow the crowd and be your own person."
I guess that means have your dad tossed in prison subjecting him to daily anal probes by AIDS infected sickos, and having your little sister and brother tossed in foster homes. "If it feels good, do it"....
That much I agree with. As far as the constitutionality of drug laws, let me ask you this. Why did Congress need to pass a constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol, but found no such requirement in prohibiting another drug, marijuana (especially when such drug is simply a plant that has been grown for thousands of years for human use)?
Is using the "Commerce Clause" of the Constitution to outlaw such substances, the floodgates have been opened for all of the abuses that we see today, from gun control laws to everything under the sun. An argument could be made that if Congress wanted to, using the Commerce Clause they could mandate national driver licensing and prohibit spitting on sidewalks...
Is that what we want?
That should have said, "may have lapsed". I haven't yet had my morning DOSE of coffee.. :)
all the jack-asses here who laud him for following the law should consider that we have millions of laws and everyone breaks at least one of them. Every time you drive a car you see speeders. Only a fascist or a mind-numbed robot dork sees it differently.
Who cares if this kid lost his connections to his family by doing this, but now his two younger siblings are not really going to have any parent as they grow up.
If the government schools are going to teach kids to call 911, then the government should take the kids and raise them theirselves. We sure don't need kids who disrespect their parents like this.
I disagree. It is criminal behavior. If this guy wanted to grow his own he should have moved to a location where it is allowed. He broke the law. His son turned him in.
The kid did the right thing.
Addressing a previous poster on the illegal gun thing. According to the constitution there is no such thing as an illegal gun.
God Save America (Please
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