Now comes 26-year-old Christopher S. Hendon, an Akron man who has been convicted of doing something many of us probably have wanted to do ourselves: Grab ill-raised, out-of-control children by the scruffs of their little necks and check them real hard. The only problem is, Hendon was a self-appointed vigilante, not a real resource officer as he told the kids he collared. Posing as a police officer — replete with a badge, gun, swat-team type uniform and handcuffs (all purchased off the Internet no doubt — he ran a fake “scared-straight” program of his own design.
But Hendon recently plead guilty to “seven counts of kidnapping, six counts of abduction, 15 counts of impersonating a police officer, and three counts of illegal conveyance of a weapon into a school,” Summit County prosecutors said. Between March 29, 2017 and April 6, 2017, at two Akron schools and the Summit County Juvenile Justice Center, Hendon handcuffed what he perceived to be unruly children and allegedly threatened to kick their little asses if they didn’t straighten up and fly right.
Now really, what’s not to like about this? I’m surprised that Hendon didn’t try to take the children home and bitch-slap their parents or caregivers for tolerating (or perhaps even encouraging) this kind of unacceptable behavior.
I can well imagine Hendon’s exasperation at the antisocial behavior he was witnessing, and if it was so evident to him, why wasn’t anyone doing anything about it? So he took matters into his own hands. But of course, vigilantes are prone to going off the deep end, going far too far with their behavior, and Hendon was no exception. On four different occasions he tried to deliver kids to the Summit County Juvenile Justice Center, a move that probably led to his undoing. It didn’t take long for officials there to become suspicious of this no doubt over-the-top character.
Summit County Common Pleas Court Judge Christine Croce is set to sentence Hendon on March 7, and while I know she has to follow the law as she imposes justice, I hope that she realizes that he probably needs mental health counseling more than he does prison. After all, what black man doesn’t want to be a super hero and save the children of our race?
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com