Name: Anonymous 2009-09-12 19:02
A Cape Coral 13-year-old is charged with burglarizing a neighbor's home and stealing 419 Pokemon cards. A Charlotte County firefighter is accused of shooting at a neighbor in a fight over their children's cards. A Polk County seventh-grader gets expelled for attacking a teacher who took away his cards.
All in the past week.
Pokemon's immense popularity is bringing out the worst in some people, as evidenced by a growing number of crimes in Florida and around the country.
But parents who support their children's Pokemon habit say the card-collecting mania can be channeled in constructive ways: as an incentive to do chores, as socialization for shy youngsters, even as a teaching tool for reading and math.
"There's a bad side to everything when there's any kind of value attached to it," Walter Tresselt said Tuesday at a Pokemon trading night at a Burger King in St. Petersburg.
"It helps teach them how to read, how to put a value on something," said Tresselt, whose 8-year-old son, Joseph, is an avid Pokemon collector and trader. "But we don't let him take any to school. It's a home thing."
A fad imported from Japan, Pokemon is short for "pocket monsters" -- animated creatures with special powers. In the card game, players collect the creatures and send them into battle against their opponents' creatures.
Trading Pokemon cards is a passion among the preteen set. Several schools around the Tampa Bay area have banned them.
"Oh God, oh God. It's like a pest," said Marcia Austin, assistant principal at Hernando County's Parrott Middle School.
The obsession can carry over into crime.
A Cape Coral boy was charged Sunday with going into a neighbor's home through an unlocked door and taking a binder full of Pokemon cards.
The cards belonged to another 13-year-old. His mother, Helen Fernandes, said they were worth nearly $4,000.
"The kids are absolutely crazy over this Pokemon," Fernandes told the News-Press of Fort Myers. "I hear about all of these stories where kids are stealing the cards, but I never thought it would actually happen to us."
Two Los Angeles eighth-graders are charged with similar thefts. In Quebec, a clash over a $45 box of cards ended with a 14-year-old boy suffering a knife wound to the shoulder. In New York, a 9-year-old grabbed a carving knife and stabbed a 13-year-old in the leg.
None of that made sense to parents who took their children to Pokemon trading night Tuesday at Burger King, 3800 Fourth St. N in St. Petersburg.
To them, Pokemon crime is merely a collection of unrelated incidents, not a trend.
Around the restaurant, children with binders full of carefully arranged cards negotiated trades with the intensity of Wall Street brokers or Vegas card sharks.
Jean Lamb watched her son bargain with another young boy.
Pokemon, she says, has given her a way to bargain with her 12-year-old son, Robert:
He'll mop, vacuum and even do laundry to earn money for cards.
"It's very positive," Lamb said. "He's quiet and shy, but he's met a lot of friends this way."
http://www.sptimes.com/News/112499/TampaBay/Pokemon_craze_has_dar.shtml
All in the past week.
Pokemon's immense popularity is bringing out the worst in some people, as evidenced by a growing number of crimes in Florida and around the country.
But parents who support their children's Pokemon habit say the card-collecting mania can be channeled in constructive ways: as an incentive to do chores, as socialization for shy youngsters, even as a teaching tool for reading and math.
"There's a bad side to everything when there's any kind of value attached to it," Walter Tresselt said Tuesday at a Pokemon trading night at a Burger King in St. Petersburg.
"It helps teach them how to read, how to put a value on something," said Tresselt, whose 8-year-old son, Joseph, is an avid Pokemon collector and trader. "But we don't let him take any to school. It's a home thing."
A fad imported from Japan, Pokemon is short for "pocket monsters" -- animated creatures with special powers. In the card game, players collect the creatures and send them into battle against their opponents' creatures.
Trading Pokemon cards is a passion among the preteen set. Several schools around the Tampa Bay area have banned them.
"Oh God, oh God. It's like a pest," said Marcia Austin, assistant principal at Hernando County's Parrott Middle School.
The obsession can carry over into crime.
A Cape Coral boy was charged Sunday with going into a neighbor's home through an unlocked door and taking a binder full of Pokemon cards.
The cards belonged to another 13-year-old. His mother, Helen Fernandes, said they were worth nearly $4,000.
"The kids are absolutely crazy over this Pokemon," Fernandes told the News-Press of Fort Myers. "I hear about all of these stories where kids are stealing the cards, but I never thought it would actually happen to us."
Two Los Angeles eighth-graders are charged with similar thefts. In Quebec, a clash over a $45 box of cards ended with a 14-year-old boy suffering a knife wound to the shoulder. In New York, a 9-year-old grabbed a carving knife and stabbed a 13-year-old in the leg.
None of that made sense to parents who took their children to Pokemon trading night Tuesday at Burger King, 3800 Fourth St. N in St. Petersburg.
To them, Pokemon crime is merely a collection of unrelated incidents, not a trend.
Around the restaurant, children with binders full of carefully arranged cards negotiated trades with the intensity of Wall Street brokers or Vegas card sharks.
Jean Lamb watched her son bargain with another young boy.
Pokemon, she says, has given her a way to bargain with her 12-year-old son, Robert:
He'll mop, vacuum and even do laundry to earn money for cards.
"It's very positive," Lamb said. "He's quiet and shy, but he's met a lot of friends this way."
http://www.sptimes.com/News/112499/TampaBay/Pokemon_craze_has_dar.shtml