More and more, it seems as though common-sense is taking a backseat to bureaucracy. Recently, an Ohio man, Tom Sturgis, was actually jailed for forgetting to pay for a case of soda at the grocery store. That's right; Sturgis was jailed over the simple mistake of leaving a $4 case of soda on the rack under one of his shopping carts. What makes this case so sad is that Sturgis offered to go back in the store and pay for the drinks (just as he had paid for every other item on his bill, totaling $157.20) after he realized that he had forgotten them at checkout. A police officer at the store noticed the item was unpaid for. Instead of recognizing simple human error, the officer handcuffed Sturgis and hauled him off to jail under petty theft charges. Sturgis was forced to stay in holding for over three hours. Unfortunately, this incident is all too microcosmic of bureaucracy as a whole. Where has simple common-sense gone? Have we become so detached as a society, that simple acts of thought are beyond us? I believe that personal choice is directly related to common-sense. Once people are given back the ability to choose for themselves, it will not be long before we see people making the right decisions, and not the ones they are told to make.
Click here to read the original article.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
The police tell us that we should not be afraid of them and that they are only here to help us... but it is stories like this that worry the average American. I am sure that during the many years of shopping at supermarkets that I may have taken an item by accident without purchasing it and it frightens me that I could have been arrested and charged with petty theft for an honest mistake.
The arresting police officer either did not receive the right training or is lacking any common sense. And the fact that nobody at the police station caught on to the fact that was a mistake concerns me even more.
Post a Comment