Definitely the guy snapped. But, then again look at the details. He's a school police officer. Which means he deals with kids day-in and day-out. He probably deals with kids that give him absolutely no repsect, try to fight him, and scoff at his way of life. He definitely has a history with kids and confrontation.

Now let's look at where he lives. South Philly. Where people live on top of each other like Tokyo. I used to live in an extremely child-dense area like that, and yes, kids sitting on your car, throwing things at your car, and being as loud as the boombox cars can really tick you off. And, the worst thing about this mess is the kids are probably outside from noon until midnight. This drove me batty, and was a reason I moved.

Now, obviously, the guy doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to whether or not he should have pulled a gun on those kids, but I can certainly sympathize with him. When kids are outside all the time, and do not go inside even when it's raining, it's like a pressure cooker. The judge probably looked at his ocupation, his residence and figured the situation out faster than it took for the 3-year old to run around this poor mug's car.

I grew up in South Philly, on a tiny street where half the neighbors were old, miserable people and the other half were younger, working-class families with kids.

As kids, we drove our neighbors batty. We'd get ice cream when the Jack and Jill truck drove around. We'd play handball, stickball and football all day during the summer. At night, we'd run around playing Jailbreak. If it was hot enough, water gun fights.

Our neighbors would scream at us, chase us to other streets (where a whole new batch of miserable old people would greet us with profanities), throw telephone books outside so we couldn't ride bikes and accuse us of stealing social security checks -- before any of us knew what the hell social security was.

Here's my problem, Gtown. Everything I just described -- the running, the playing, the pissed off neighbors -- it's normal.

It's life in the Big City, whether we're talking Philly or Brooklyn or Chicago or Baltimore. It's a pain in the ass for people who hate kids, and it's a pain in the ass for kids who have to get yelled out for doing normal, healthy stuff.

I don't care how stressed Mr. Bradley was from working with kids professionally (fyi -- he only works during the school year and was on summer vacation when this incident occurred), or even if those kids were playing outside his house all day long.

Nothing justifies choke-slamming a 3-year-old boy onto concrete -- and then, for kicks, shoving a gun in his face.

I grew up in a Northeast neighborhood with tons of kids on the block. No, I didn't grow up around twins, or single homes, these were row homes. They were on top of one another. We ran around alot, and gave our old miserable neighbors strokes from throwing foot balls on their windshields as well. Of course we all laughed at the older people, and wondered why the vein on their temples were always throbbing with such grudging angst. But as soon as they came out their houses, we were gone. And, if we came back, and the old boggart came out again, we learned it wasn't worth it to be yelled at consistantly by an old man.

Now that I'm older, I completely understand why the old boggarts gave us such a hard time. Kids hanging on my car, on my steps, and throwing trash on my lawn (which I have to clean daily) had delivered a wake-up call. Confronting them is futile, since they have no respect for adults. I completely agree that no three year old deserves to be choke-slammed and fed a Smith & Wesson. But, I can pretty much extrapolate from experience what happened that led up to this. Ever since school ended, the kids on the block have been playing around his car, twenty four-seven. What the news report didn't tell us, is that he musta' yelled at the kids ten times a day for a month before he went off the deep end. This is an assumption, but I bet dollars to donuts, it's what happened.

The deeper issue at hand, is that the kids absolutely don't listen to anyone. Adults cannot enforce authority any longer. If you try to take a kid home to their parent(s), the parent will yell at you instead of the kid. To make a long story short, when civility, and respect are lacking due to bad parenting, and a culture that enforces strict "hands off" policies/mistrust of others; These sad affairs are only symptoms of our own society.

Yeah, the guy should be locked up. He did threaten a three year old kid with a gun. There's no doubt about any of that, but one single water gun splash doesn't make a school police officer snap. This was the result of months of the equivalent of water torture.

And who were the grownups in all of these scenarios? Who bears the responsibility of being the ones in control?

Believe me, I have had my share of run-ins with kids who are beyond disrespectful to adults and there were times when nothing would have given me greater satisfaction than to give every one of them a good backhand.

But I never did. And I never would because I am the grownup. I'm the one in control, the one with the maturity and experience that says giving in to one's emotions is not a good plan.

I think it's absolutely true that Mr. Crazyman had his chain yanked repeatedly by kids doing stuff he didn't want them to do, but he's still the adult and so are the parents of these kids.

Mr. Crazyman had more than a few options open to him before getting violent and reaching for a gun and as much as I would bet this was an ongoing problem, I would also bet that Mr. Crazyman didn't do a single thing other than yell and get angrier when yelling didn't work.

If the other parents saw this guy getting more and more agitated, it would be their responsibility to corral their kids and redirect them to where they're causing less of a problem.

Lastly, as a grownup living in a row home in a crowded neighborhood there's a lot to be said for picking your battles wisely.