We an all take a lesson from this one. I’ll give you the moral of the story at the top: You call the cops as the last resort.

Here is the story of a guy who took his kids to Chuck E Cheese and wound up getting Tasered by the cops for “loading his plate” at the salad bar.

I have mixed feelings about the power of the State to dispatch armed forces into a kiddie pizza joint in the first place. We all know that we need protection from crime, and we’re not going to hire Mr. Rogers to provide it; we need our guard dogs to keep us safe. But dammit, you don’t send the Dobermans in amongst the children to protect your chopped iceberg, garbanzos and ranch. Just to protect the people, nothing less.

So I can’t see any angle on this story that justifies what the Cheesy manager did, or what the cops did. It just doesn’t rise to that level. I’ve been in a Chuck E Cheese; they’re raking in dough in every direction, faster than they can count it. Some guy hits the salad and doesn’t pay, you just shrug it off. It’s a drop in a bucket. But now they’ve got traumatized kids and a lawsuit and bad publicity spreading through the blogosphere.