"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! ..... Captain, send the Emergency Response Team NOW!"

Shannon Benoit reads a book to daughter Hailey

Police sent to 5-year-old's home to collect overdue library books
By Howard Portnoy
Wednesday, January 4, 2012


The sleepy town of Charlton, in central Massachusetts, is your more-or-less typical New England hamlet. There is little to distinguish it from neighboring communities save for the presence of a local celebrity of sorts, John “Grizzly” Adams, who is buried in its Bay Path Cemetery. Another of Charlton’s claims to fame is the national notoriety its library attained in 1906, when it banned Mark Twain’s short story “Eve’s Diary.”

Now the Charlton Free Library is in the news again, this time for siccing the police on a scofflaw who failed to return a couple of books she borrowed in a timely fashion.

Upon seeing Police Sergeant Dan Dowd at the door of her home, the miscreant, Hailey Benoit, burst into tears. The principal reason for that reaction is Benoit’s age: She is five years old.

Hailey’s mom, Shannon, told CBS News Boston that sending the police to recover a library fine “was way overboard.” She compared the action to “pounding a ten penny nail with a sledge hammer.”

The police sergeant who was dispatched to the scene is inclined to agree:

Nobody wanted to, on this end, to get involved in it. But the library contacted us, and the chief delegated, and apparently I was one of the low men on the totem pole.

Nevertheless, he did the job he was sent to do. He retrieved the overdue books and returned them to the library. He also roughed up the little girl a bit to make sure she got the message, but other than that no disciplinary action was taken. Hailey’s fears that she was going to be arrested were totally baseless. This time.

In its defense, the library maintains that the law is on its side. Failure to return a library book by its due date is a misdemeanor. In their view, a “friendly reminder” in the form of uniformed member of law enforcement making a house call creates a more favorable impression than “a cold summons to court.”

Shannon Benoit insists that she never received warnings from the library. I would submit that she is mistaken, that she received a warning that neither she nor her daughter will soon forget. Mr. Bookman was unavailable for comment.