<p>In New Jersey there is a process for the adjudication and dismissal of minor offenses by juveniles. The juvenile agrees to perform community service, write an essay, go to AA meetings, whatever the court's local committee proposes. Upon completion of these tasks, the charges are dismissed. Since the juvenile was never convicted of any crime, he/she may properly answer "no" if asked "Have you ever been convicted of a crime...?"</p>
<p>We did try to make things right. When my husband told him they did it, he offered to pay for the damages. He said there wasn't hardly any, and to bring the kids over and he would have them work it off. We brought the kids over the face him and apologize and he told them he wanted them off the property and that he would let the police and juvenile probation deal with them. We are willing for the kids to work it off as a really good life lesson, but since he said he wanted them off the property, we haven't approached them.</p>
<p>As your daughter now knows, egg can damage the finish on a car, especially if it is left on the car for any length of time, and especially if allowed to bake in the sun. Some folks are very very protective of their cars (and even trucks), spending many hours each week to detail them. I know people that think the death penalty is the appropriate penalty for egging a car.</p>
<p>In your D's case, fessing up to the crime argues for leniency. Certainly saved your neighbor a lot of investigative work.</p>
<p>what about the Son's future?why is it only the daughter who "messed up"?</p>
<p>sounds to me like something happened to change the neighbor's attitude between the time of the incident/first conversation and the face to face meeting.Perhaps he needs a cooling off period and lots of contriteness on the part of your kids and family.</p>
<p>"sounds to me like something happened to change the neighbor's attitude between the time of the incident/first conversation and the face to face meeting."</p>
<p>I agree. I'm wondering whether the neighbor learned that the kids had done other similar vandalisms elsewhere or if the neighbor somehow heard that he is considered to be a jerk or if he heard that the kids were bragging about getting off relatively easy.</p>
<p>I also agree -- what about S's future?</p>
<p>what a charming tradition, tping houses and egging cars, and becuase no one ever complains and just lets it happen, it goes on and on and on...and look, finally someone steps up and says, not MY house, and he is blamed for being a jerk?</p>
<p>If it was my D, i would be FURIOUS at her....vandalizing property is bad, no matter what the traditions are</p>
<p>She will probably be okay...and maybe the other kids who think that trashing people property is fun may think twice about it....</p>
<p>And why don't people say anything?</p>
<p>Me, a die-hard liberal, would call the cops, take pictures etc. I would be willing to make a deal, with no record, if those kids spent weekend cleaning up city parks, beaches, etc</p>
<p>And in a town that has teens making messes out of tradtion, why doesn't that school have day after clean up events for the school families, have those footbal players go out an pick up litter to to show that making a mess in their name is not funny, or clever, or cool</p>
<p>As a person who spends many weekend picking up garbage on local beaches, and in parks, I find teepeeing houses just pathetic</p>
<p>Agree with posters to hire a lawyer. When my college freshman son received a misdemeanor charge for car stereo noise ordinance, we hired a lawyer and patrolman ended up agreeing to drop charges. The agreement was (between son and us) that car stereo was sold and son paid lawyer fees. He learned a good lesson and it hurt him in his pocket book.</p>
<p>"When my husband told him they did it, he offered to pay for the damages. "</p>
<p>Why didn't you expect your kids to talk to the neighbor and to pay for the damages? They did the crime. They should have had to take the tough step of admitting responsibility and taking the consequences.</p>
<p>Twice we have had vandalism acts on our property. Both times were neighborhood kids. In both instances, we had the kids come clean up and also pay for any damage (lawn had to be repaired in one instance).</p>
<p>People can't believe he is pressing charges? </p>
<p>Picture this- take 100 rolls of toliet paper and dozens of eggs, and have those kids go to city hall, or the library, or the mall, or the hospital and litter everywhere with that paper- yeah, in the fountains, in the trees, in the phone lines, in front of a church, on the baseball field, would it be so cute then?</p>
<p>What about your office, what if someone came in and teepeed you place of work? Or the grocery store? Or outside a senior home? </p>
<p>In SF years and year ago, people had the "tradition" off tossing out calendar pages on new years eve day out the highrise windows downtown...sure it was fun, but what a mess, after a few years of the mess, a BIG announcement was made that it was too expensive, it was trashing the down town, getting into the drainage, system, etc, and they asked people to stop. And they did...That year, just a few calendar pages were thrown, and now it all get recylded...tradition does not mean its a good thing</p>
<p>why not after the game, those parents step up and say, no more teepeeing, if you do, we will catch you and you will spend the next month every saturday, picking up trash....</p>
<p>"Doesn't this alone make you think maybe a call to the police dept doesn't hurt? (By the way, our police dept would just come over and yell at the kids - if they were first offenders. So maybe my "press charges" is a little harsh.)"</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that the OP call the police dept. to complain that a police officer is charging her kids with a crime that they indeed committed?</p>
<p>I don't think that will cause the charges to be dropped. What the kids did is a crime after all. Although the OP seems to think that her community thinks that egging and tping are OK, I doubt that is true. After all, if those actions really were OK, they wouldn't be crimes, and the neighbor couldn't have pressed charges.</p>
<p>If the OP calls the police and complains, my guess is she'll just make things worse on her kids, who'll seem to be yet another case of spoiled kids whose parents try to get them out of having to take responsibility for their actions.</p>
<p>Wow you guys are harsh. If everyone whose house got TP'd pressed charges, my middle son would be in jail by now (and not at Cal). Not to mention the wrapping their friends cars in saran wrap and perhaps even egging a few times. Its not that I LIKE the practice but it is very common, immature teenage behavior.
BTW my neighbor across the street is also a highway patrol. One time my oldest (I think he was 18 at the time, way old enough to know better) and his friends were stupidly throwing water balloons from the tree house onto the street. Well, one hit our neighbors car as he was driving. He could have pressed charges but he didn't, he just talked to my son about the dangers etc and that was enough.</p>
<p>I think the quote meant that, if houses are repeatedly being TP'd and egged, as the OP said happened to her/his house twice, that a call to the police dept to put an end to that "tradition" was warranted. </p>
<p>Frankly, I agree. There isn't too large a leap between high school students vandalizing houses to "celebrate" a sporting event and college students setting cars on fire or overturning them to "celebrate" a sporting event. The latter happened in Boston several times to "celebrate" the Red Sox winning the playoffs and then the World Series, and the Patriots winning the Super Bowl. Thousands of dollars of damages occurred, police and fire department intervention was necessary, and at least two people died. What fun!</p>
<p>I say stop it now. Learning this lesson as a high school freshman (and whatever age her brother is) is a lot easier than learning it later. And if she doesn't get into Wellesley or some other top college - well, she's learned that actions have consequences, and sometimes the consequences can be severe.</p>
<p>"Wow you guys are harsh. If everyone whose house got TP'd pressed charges, my middle son would be in jail by now (and not at Cal). Not to mention the wrapping their friends cars in saran wrap and perhaps even egging a few times. Its not that I LIKE the practice but it is very common, immature teenage behavior."</p>
<p>It's not common behavior in my area. I think that such behavior is common only in areas where the adults aren't willing to hold teens responsible for vandalism. </p>
<p>I agree with Chedva and others who are "harsh."</p>
<p>Just because teens are young doesn't mean that they should be expected to vandalize property.</p>
<p>It does appear that something happened between the time my husband talked to him and the time we brought the kids over. We have no idea what, unless because it was so early in the morning, he didn't see the damage to the cars. My husband spoke to him around 7:15, and we brought the kids over around 8:30. My son is only 11, and I seriously doubt college are going to hold this incident against him because of his age at the time of occurence. I discovered the wrapping around 5:45 in the morning, and made my daughter get up and clean up all the toilet paper immediately. I had to be at work at 6, so I called my husband and he came home to deal with the kids. I asked him why he didn't take the kids with him to confess, and he said he thought it would be better if he handled it first.<br>
For the posters who think we feel he should not press charges let me clarify. We know he is within his rights to press charges. If the situation was reversed and it was his kids, we would have worked it out between the two families, but we're not really mad at him for pressing the issue. Disappointed yes, angry no. We are not the ones calling him the jerk, it is other people who know him and work with him using that word. It is my children who do not understand why he is, when others don't.</p>
<p>I would tell your neighbor, in person and in writing, you are deeply sorry and that you would like your kids to apologize and make restitution. I would also state that you understand if he prefers to deal with it in court and that your kids will admit guilt, plead no contest, and profusely apologize to the court. Chances are strong they will get deferred adjudication, which is NOT a conviction or finding of guilt. In Texas, records are sealed because your kids are minors, you don't have to state on a college or employment application you are convicted of anything, and the record is expungeable. And the cop will have to stand before a judge and explain why he is wasting everyone's time. (I found this out after a friend's 17 year old daughter was recently caught at a party that was busted for underage drinking. She rec'd deferred adjudication and community service.)</p>
<p>I don't agree with kids running around vandalizing property. We just had the granite entrances to our neighborhood egged and it is going to require a professional to polish the damage off the stone. But kids do STUPID stuff. Last year, a boy thought it would be cool to trench a few yards and drove his car across three lawns, physically removing a new 45 gallon water oak we had just had planted. Cops were called....it was quite a racket at 1 a.m. waking everyone in the vicinity. He (and his mother) stood on our driveway crying their eyes out afraid we were going to press charges. We had a professional landscaper make repairs to our beds and turf and he paid for the damage. And my husband gave him a good and long chewing out, which he took like a man (after he stopped crying). But we didn't press charges.</p>
<p>I'm no pushover, but everyone should try to remember high school years are the time when most people hit their stupidity peak. Paying a lifetime for something like egging a car is too much.</p>
<p>I found this link which is helpful ...explains deferred adjudication a bit...</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification and update.</p>
<p>'It is my children who do not understand why he is, when others don't.'</p>
<p>They don't understand because it still hasn't dawned on them that what they think is good fun is what others including the law and many adults and teens consider a crime. Your kids still don't know the difference between having fun and breaking the law.</p>
<p>Even if it were not a crime and didn't damage property, I don't see where the "fun" is of making a mess and leaving it for someone else to clean up. IMO, it's time for the kids to learn other ways of entertaining themselves.</p>
<p>I just remember, several years ago, our yard was trenched by a teen next door, who lived in some kind of group home. My husband and I didn't even realize that the damage had been deliberate.</p>
<p>The foster mom came over, apologized, and paid for and arranged for the damage to be fixed. Husband and I never considered pressing charges.</p>
<p>We may, however, have acted differently if we had had the kind of obvious malicious damage that the OP's kids caused, and we may have also been more concerned that the parents, not the kids, were apologizing and confessing.</p>
<p>Gee, I wonder if the kids who threw pumpkins off bridges onto passing cars, one of which rendered a driver a paraplegic, will plead stupidity? Maybe if someone had stopped them when they were just throwing water balloons? </p>
<p>And even if the OP's daughter is convicted, a misdemeanor conviction isn't "paying a lifetime". No guarantee that the kid would get into Wellesley anyway, and a misdemeanor conviction doesn't follow you around. If she only gets a deferred adjudication (which in Massachusetts would be called "continuance without a finding"), which is much more likely, there will be few, if any, lasting consequences. Except, one would hope, better judgment.</p>
<p>Well I don't "live in an area where parents aren't willing to hold kids responsible" nor am I one of those parents. And TP-ing is common among my sons friends (not common like every weekend, but every once in a while). And these are all kids heading to college...no doubt with the maturity that it takes by the time they get there.
My son may have wrapped saran wrap around his friends car as a prank but there is no way he would turn a car over or set one on fire.that is huge stretch.</p>
<p>And someone did stop my son when he was "just" throwing water baloons (which I agree can cause just as much damage as a pumkin. We stopped it, my neighbor stopped it, but charges did not have to be made in order to do that. My son is 21 now and believe me he has never done anything like that again!</p>