I worked with juevenile delinquents in college who suffered from mental health issues. They come in all colors. You keep trying to introduce race into this discussion. I simply see no evidence that race was a factor... unless you can show that if a white boy grabbed the man's bike, he would have behaved differently.

Can you provide any evidence of that?

You presume the man put his full weight on the boy, where did you come up with that fact. All I read in the original news report is he restainedd the boy by safely keeping him pinned to the ground. Restraint by definition requires the application of adequate force.

The issue is not the age of the boy, but whether the man had any reason to believe the boy might have been stealing his son's bike. So far, you have provided no evidence of that.

All subsequent discovery makes it clear, the boy was not intending to steal the bike, but that discover occurred after the incident.

Likewise, referring to the man as a "criminal" when I am unaware that he has even been charged, highlights your bias. I have never said the man was innocent or guilty of any crime and again unless you know something not reported in the news, you don't either.

You can't bluster your way to "truth", truth lies in the discovery process that occurs during the investigation... of which very little is known.

I was mugged by a gang of black children when I was young on the way home from school during the 1967 race riots. Punched, beaten, my books scattered everywhere. Clothes torn, body injured, but nothing permanent.

Two of the children that mugged me later became my friends on the football team several years later and one I continue to correspond with on rare occasion. We lived near each other and walked home together or shared a ride from one of our parents after practice.

We walked home for more than a year saying nothing about the incident, when one day out of the blue, the one kid apologized for the "mugging" and the other piped his agreement.

Was I permanently affected by the mugging... in a way yes, I am more alert than I once was when in dangerous social settings, but as evidenced by my subsequent friendship with two of my "muggers", the ability to "move on" is something that distinquishes our characters.

That additude and the ability to see people's character through their skin color explains why my wife is not white and five of my seven grandchildren are African American. We see people as people. But you keep coming back to race and I think that is something you need to work on.

There are racists out there, but presuming racism makes you as racist as they are. Not once in all our exchanges have I condoned racism and I never will. Again, if it can be shown the man acted out of racism, then fire his ass and charge him with a "hate crime". But if he acted out of fear his son's bike was being stolen, I expect he won't be charged at all.