Schoolgirls Had 8 Months to Recant

Re “Jail Not Likely for 3 Girls,” Feb. 11: It’s no surprise to see the whining about the arrest and handcuffing at school of the three 12-year-old Garden Grove girls whose carefully planned lies put an innocent man in jail for eight months. These callous little creatures had eight months to correct what one of their lawyers calls “an adolescent tale gone awry.” Their calculated and persistent lie put an innocent man in the horror of jail for eight months. They should serve eight months in a juvenile detention center. Send a lesson. Let the punishment fit the crime.

Dave Sullivan

Huntington Beach

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We continue our descent into a culture ruled by fear and intimidation -- by our police. The handcuffing of 12-year-old children by the Garden Grove Police, or the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department handcuffing a popular entertainer who flew on his private plane to voluntarily present himself, is simply astonishing. In neither case was there a credible threat of physical resistance or imminent flight.

Instead, these acts were designed to promote public humiliation and scorn (the “perp” walk). It is not a legitimate police function to “teach lessons” or steer pretrial public perceptions by physically restraining and publicly parading cooperative suspects.

John Brock

Redondo Beach

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I think my 9-year-old daughter summed up it best: “Those girls were wrong and deserve to be punished for what they did, and their mommy is wrong for thinking that saying sorry makes everything OK.”

Now a homeless man has need for a lawyer, the girls are scared, a mom is mad at the police department for doing its job, and the Garden Grove Police Department is making a whole lot of excuses. My summation is that there are a whole bunch of losers.

Jeannie Kench

Orange