The latest in an on-going effort to indoctrinate young Americans at an earlier age into fearing police takes us to Freeport, Pennsylvania where apparently forgetting to turn in your library books warrants a knock on the door of your home by the police. Four-year-old criminal and professional thief Katelyn Jageman racked up a whopping fine of $81.60 after forgetting to turn in “Sleeping Beauty,” “Corduroy’s Halloween,” “Dora The Explorer: The Halloween Cat,” and “I See The Moon.”
After the library made several attempts to track down the culprits, it decided it was time to call in the cavalry.
Donna Michael, President of the Freeport Area Library Board, seemed distraught and frustrated that someone would not make turning in their library books a main priority in their lives: “I did turn the file over to the police department.”
In all fairness, the library receives no federal or state funding and, therefore, has to rely on harassing its patrons as a means to sustain their operation.
This has caused quite a stir in the blogosphere. Mary Berg on a CBS blog voiced her (and probably everyone else reading this’s) disgust over this flagrant overuse of city resources: “WHY, pray tell, didn’t the librarian get up off her/his arse & make a call to the kid’s home to retrieve the books? It’s NOT the job of a police officer to enforce the LIBRARY’S rules—-it’s the job of the library to do so.”
Another blogger, Frank Lee, voiced his concern at the obvious misuse of city officials: “”This is not about the parents. This is not about the stupidity of using vital police services for a ridiculously trivial matter. This is about the law and government intrusion…If you didn’t pay your credit card, if you didn’t pay your doctor bill, if you didn’t pay the local department store, they could not send the police to make a ‘courtesy’ call. There are civil remedies for debts. Why is the library given collection priveleges [sic] to use the power of the police when the same is not afforded to Blockbuster when you don’t return a movie?”
In January we posted a similar story in which another five-year-old criminal mastermind crossed the line by keeping her books over the time allotted. Haley Benoit was so frightened that she burst into tears after her mother spoke to police, asking her mother, “Is that policeman going to arrest me?”
After Katelyn’s mother returned the books, paid the fine, and apologized to the library, the case is now closed.
Maybe fellow Info-warriors can donate some books to the Freeport library since they’re apparently so short-handed that they have to hunt down 4 measly overdue books.
As long as we have people like Donna Michael making sure our books are turned in on time, people can rest assured that police are ready to pursue dangerous criminals such as these, and everyone will thankfully have copies of “Dora the Explorer: The Halloween Cat” available in their local libraries.
