transhetwarrior (he/him)

The police that I personally know, visit the caller and talk to them first to understand the complaint and often (but I agree not always) educate the caller that teenagers are just doing what the caller(s) did at their age… usually, there are no more calls and all groups move on with their lives.

do you happen to be white

They can’t do the same things teenagers did before because the world has been growing more and more hostile to teenagers. More places have banned kids. We have these mosquito things making noises to drive teenagers away. It’s become more difficult to get around without a car. Parents have become more helicoptery, not letting their kids out of the house. And “sorts itself out”? Here’s what happens. Some asshole calls the cops on teenagers just hanging out. The cops, with nothing better to do than harass innocent people, show up and chase them away. Now those teenagers don’t feel safe going back there, because they don’t wanna get cops coming after them. Or maybe the cops don’t stop at chasing the kids off! Maybe they get arrested for “loitering” or some nonsense. Maybe they get accused of dealing drugs because teenagers hanging around is strange and suspicious, and the cops love to frame innocent people. Cops getting called isn’t some silly and frivilous thing.

So where exactly are kids supposed to go? People will go on about “they should just go outside” but kids have literally had the cops called on them for the crime of walking around their own neighborhood “unsupervised”. I’ve seen calls to ban kids from all sorts of places - planes, theme parks, restaurants, libraries. I’ve seen these “mosquito” things put up to drive kids away from public places. Kids are spending all their time on social media because they have nowhere else to go.