Tree climbing is now a crime?

[Dreamstalker]

Kids arrested for playing in tree
This is totally insane. So tree-climbing is now a crime?

[BlakeMP]

Seems like the concern is destruction of public property.

Still overkill, but it should be seen in context.

[XCashier]

I think a verbal warning from the police would have been better than traumatizing the children with jail time.

[Dreamstalker]

It appears that all they were doing was taking dead branches, which IMO can't be considered destruction of property exactly (as they were actually helping by clearing old material).

Yeah, the police completely overreacted...actually, it sounds like something the cops in my hometown would do.

[air914]

That is absolutely ridiculous. I mean DNA swabs??? For what?? Were the police going to "fingerprint" a tree????? Or were they going to give the tree a "rape kit?" Is that even possible to fingerprint a tree? I mean, if it was private property and some kids were in it and really tearing it up, I could understand someone being upset - but I'd yell at the kids to get out of my tree before calling the police to do something about it. But a tree on public property and a few kids climbing & removing dead branches??? Get over yourselves people! It was prob. some old cranky person who didn't live the kind of life they wanted and has a ton of regrets and nothing better to do than to ruin other people's lives by calling the police on them for climbing a tree..... what hooligans...... I mean come on... I understand their whole "prevent big crime by being serious w/ little crimes" - but it's not like the kids skipped school or were loitering around stores & shoplifting or anything - they were climbing a freakin' tree for pete's sake! With all the other problems w/ kids (getting into gangs, getting pregnant, doing drugs, etc) climbing a tree should NOT be our biggest concern - and what are we stopping them from doing in the future??? Climbing a bigger tree??? ooooh..... glad we stopped that "crime" from happening.....

[Dreamstalker]

But ya see, 20-foot cherry trees are "gateway trees" doncha know. They could lead to elms, oaks, or *gasp* redwoods!

"giving the tree a rape kit"

The only way the original property destruction charge would stick is if the tree had in fact been completely destroyed. It was on public land, so...that's what I thought public meant, anyone can use it. WTF is the deal with the DNA samples, anyway?!

20 feet for a tree really isn't that tall; you can never get to the very top branches as they would not hold a person's weight. The kids could have been anywhere from 0 to 10 feet up.

*watches as another fun part of childhood dies, thinks about going to climb a tree but then realizes it's way too hot outside*