Rating: 
Summary: A Crackpot Rant With No Contributions to Human Knowledge
Review: A reviewer in last August 13th's Cincinnati Enquirer wrote:"Mr. Surgenor couldn't find anyone to publish his book, No Fear: A Police Officer's Perspective. So he took out a second mortgage on his house to publish it... Berea Police Chief Harry Bernhardt said the department does not take an official position on the book. Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Peter Sikora disagrees with Mr. Surgenor's juvenile crime statistics. He said the number of crimes committed by children is dropping nationally and locally - evidenced by a 20 percent drop in suburban juvenile crime and a 17 percent drop in Cleveland from 1998 to 1999. (Source: http://enquirer.com/editions/2000/08/13/loc_police_detectives.html) As one begins to read Surgenor's self-published vanity volume, it is easy to see why no publisher took a chance with this rambling, crackpot manuscript. Despite its claim of being a 'police officer's perspective,' much of the book consists of arguments in favor of severe corporal punishment of children based on quotations from the Bible and personal anecdotes. Surgenor treats the spanking issue as a litmus test distinguishing true Christians, such as himself, from "atheistic" imposters. Into this latter category, he places an interfaith church group guilty of placing billboards in Surgenor's Cleveland-area neighborhood urging parents not to hit their children. Another alleged non-Christian is Ohio's Bexley United Methodist Church Senior Pastor, Rev. Thomas E. Sagendorf, who betrayed his supposed atheistic leanings to the author by sending Surgenor an email deploring Surgenor's use of the Bible to rationalize physically harsh treatment of young children (p.114). Surgenor informs his readers that those who vocally disagree with his views on physical punishment of children belong to a "tight-knit" conspiracy of his own imagining which he calls the "NSA" (short for "non-spank advocates"). He warns that this sinister cabal's machinations were foretold in the Holy Bible (II Tim. 3:2). The NSA is controlled by Satan, and strives to breed legions of unspanked footsoldiers in service to the AntiChrist for the final battle between Good and Evil prophesied in the Book of Revelations: "Without God in their upbringing and without the fear of authority that is instilled in a child with the use of corporal punishment, millions of people will gather in the last day in the valley of Megiddo in the final battle of Armageddon... The NSA is mounting an attack against parental authority. I believe Satan is using this group to accomplish his objective to eliminate the fear of authority from the coming generations." (p.128). Whenever Surgenor speaks of his own childhood, he speaks of fear. References to his Evangelist father's belt, and to "fear" or being "afraid" recur regularly throughout the book, often in italics. Surgenor's life mission is to force every other child to suffer the same ordeal he did as a boy - the pain, the blows to the head (p.12), the guilt, the terror, the belt-whippings. This man makes little pretense of liking children all that much. He deems children violent, hateful and evil by nature. Only "fear" can keep their innate depravity in check. Other punishments besides spanking don't work, we are told, because they fail to inspire sufficiently intense levels of fear. He believes children need physical punishment and fear so badly that they will "hate" their parents for not providing it, and he claims, with his usual lack of supporting evidence, that members of gangs such as the Crips and Bloods all come from nonspanking homes (p.90). Wannabe Crips and Bloods, Surgenor explains, seek gang membership at least in part because they crave the harsh physically abusive initiation rituals inflicted on new members. This is their attempt to compensate for a spanking-deprived homelife. Surgenor's praise of extremely harsh punishment defies parody: "Consider the results if every person who was caught shoplifting was immediately taken outside and executed on the spot. It would take just a few executions before all shoplifters would consider another line of work." (p.21) Nowhere in the book does the author evince any awareness that most of his fellow creatures, including most teenagers, refrain from committing major crimes not because they are afraid of punishment, but because they have *consciences*. One's conscience won't permit one to criminally inflict grave suffering to others due to *empathy* for the feelings of others, not because of fear of punishment. Most people would not commit murder even if it were legal, because they know they would feel awful about it afterwards. Most parents' goal is a self-disciplined child with a self-motivated *internal* sense of right and wrong, rather than a child who merely outwardly conforms due to fear of punishments from *external* sources. But Surgenor doesn't speak of instilling compassion or empathy in children so that they will grow up as law abiding citizens. Instead, Surgenor emphasizes and re-emphasizes the parental role of instilling fear in a child, claiming that his own personal "research" as a police officer proves that the likely alternative is a child with "no fear" who is likely headed for a life of crime. He urges parents to use pain implements such as belts and wooden spoons rather than the hand, (which is less painful and therefore not as effective in creating fear). He endorses boxing children's ears, (a practice long associated with permanent hearing damage), and he doesn't see how face slapping ever did a child any harm either (pp.12-13). On his dedication page he praises his belt-wielding father for teaching him honesty. Ironically, his statistical arguments throughout the book are riddled with misleading half-truths and outright falsehoods. He claims we are in the midst of a US juvenile crime wave and that national figures prove this. (He made this claim as recently as Feb. 25, 2001 in his review of another prospanking book on amazon.com.) They don't. Both juvenile arrest rates and complaints of juvenile offenses by victims have actually been trending steadily downward for years to historically low levels (http://www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/nationalreport99/chapter3.pdf). A recent Associated Press article reported that the juvenile homicide rate in the USA is currently at its lowest level in 33 years (http://cjonline.com/stories/121500/new_murderrate.shtml). Media coverage of high profile juvenile crimes such as school shootings has created a false public impression of a rising wave of juvenile violence where none exists. Surgenor also alleges that juvenile arrests are increasing as a percentage of all arrests. The opposite is true. Anyone with web access who bothers to check the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports web page (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr.htm) will quickly discover that juveniles have accounted for a smaller percentage of total crimes every year since 1996, and that twenty years ago the percentages were higher still. (Don't take my word for it, check UCR Section IV, "Arrests, Distribution By Age" for each year). He claims juvenile arrest rates are higher now than 20 years ago. The opposite is true. On a per capita basis today's juveniles commit half the crimes their counterparts committed two decades ago. He claims his local Cuyahoga County jurisdiction is experiencing a youth crime wave, but a check of Cuyahoga county statistics on the web tells the completely opposite story (http://msass11635.sass.cwru.edu/cd_cuy.htm), and as noted above, neither the local police chief or the local juvenile court judge will endorse Surgenor's unverifiable claims about an alleged rise in local juvenile crime. There is much more nonsense where all this came from, far too much to debunk in the limited space of an amazon.com review. So for the convenience of would-be purchaser's of this book, below is the url to webpage full of links to original sources of US crime statistics juxtaposed against quotations from Surgenor's book. In this way, interested skeptics can easily check Surgenor's "facts" for themselves with just a click of the mouse. http://www.geocities.com/cddugan/NoFear1.htm This book, despite its threadbare pretense to the contrary, contains no "research" and makes no original contribution to human knowledge. The "Because I Said So" approach must have worked well for Surgenor with his children when they were still little enough for the belt since now he attempts a similar approach with adults, lashing his readers with dubious statistics he obviously hopes they won't bother to look up for themselves. So, who should buy this book? The answer is simple: those who want to help Surgenor pay off that second mortgage he took out to pay for publication after every single publisher rejected his manuscript. If one checks at the top of this page for the book's amazon.com sales rank, one learns that this obscure volume is flying off the shelves at a somewhat slower pace than the latest Harry Potter. Officer R
Rating: 
Summary: My Opinion, by Ptl. David Swaffield (retired)
Review: After reading Det. Surgenor's book, I was very, very impressed. I, too, am a Christian police officer (retired, 27.5 yrs. service) like Surgenor. I have seen FAR more than I ever wanted to see, and I find Det. Surgenor's research to be very well researched. It is apparent that reviewer Mr. Dugan is unfamilier with the gathering of juvenile statistical data. All police officers are aware of the shortcomings of the Uniform Crime Reports and know from firsthand experience that Surgenor's claim that juvenile crime is skyrocketing is accurate. Mr. Dugan's attempts to destroy Surgenor's statistics are born of ignorance of the system (ignorance is bliss...?) As a retired police officer, I have researched Surgenor's figures and have found them to be right on the button. Thank you for the oppurtunity to rebute Dugan's 'expert' opinion.
Rating:
Summary: My Opinion, by Ptl. David Swaffield (retired)
Review: After reading Det. Surgenor's book, I was very, very impressed. I, too, am a Christian police officer (retired, 27.5 yrs. service) like Surgenor. I have seen FAR more than I ever wanted to see, and I find Det. Surgenor's research to be very well researched. It is apparent that reviewer Mr. Dugan is unfamilier with the gathering of juvenile statistical data. All police officers are aware of the shortcomings of the Uniform Crime Reports and know from firsthand experience that Surgenor's claim that juvenile crime is skyrocketing is accurate. Mr. Dugan's attempts to destroy Surgenor's statistics are born of ignorance of the system (ignorance is bliss...?) As a retired police officer, I have researched Surgenor's figures and have found them to be right on the button. Thank you for the oppurtunity to rebute Dugan's 'expert' opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Telling the truth
Review: As a parent, I know that my child behaved before she reached the age of reason in part because she knew that IF she stepped over the line, she WOULD receive that spanking! Her knowledge that I wasn't afraid to use it was enough to make it a rare occasion. That knowledge may have saved her from a terrible fall one day when I was forced to scream at her while bolting up the stairs so she didn't catapult herself over the balcony while bouncing on a chair she had pulled over to the railing without my knowledge. She froze at my screams, and it didn't take but a tap on the bottom when I reached her to make sure she didn't do it again. The spanking and noise so impressed her, I didn't need to do it again for several years. It was FEAR of spanking that controlled her behavior when I said "No!" As a child abuse defense attorney living in New Hampshire, I also have to fight the effects of radical anti-spanking professor Murray Straus and other "experts" the state Division of Children, Youth, and Families call in to testify that spanking is harmful. Eli Newberger, of Boston Children's hospital, testified in one of my cases that he believed in parental spanking. In HIS book, "The Men They Will Become," he states that he believes the US should ban it, as have Sweden and other countries (p. 81). Bob Surgenor balances the shoddy research of the anti-spankers like Murray Straus and Eli Newberger with sound facts, and correctly points out that above all, spanking works. I highly recommend this book, especially for parents that are having problems early on. Getting your child's attention early saves a lot of problems down the road!
Rating:
Summary: Well researched, and useful
Review: As a parent, I know that my child behaved before she reached the age of reason in part because she knew that IF she stepped over the line, she WOULD receive that spanking! Her knowledge that I wasn't afraid to use it was enough to make it a rare occasion. That knowledge may have saved her from a terrible fall one day when I was forced to scream at her while bolting up the stairs so she didn't catapult herself over the balcony while bouncing on a chair she had pulled over to the railing without my knowledge. She froze at my screams, and it didn't take but a tap on the bottom when I reached her to make sure she didn't do it again. The spanking and noise so impressed her, I didn't need to do it again for several years. It was FEAR of spanking that controlled her behavior when I said "No!" As a child abuse defense attorney living in New Hampshire, I also have to fight the effects of radical anti-spanking professor Murray Straus and other "experts" the state Division of Children, Youth, and Families call in to testify that spanking is harmful. Eli Newberger, of Boston Children's hospital, testified in one of my cases that he believed in parental spanking. In HIS book, "The Men They Will Become," he states that he believes the US should ban it, as have Sweden and other countries (p. 81). Bob Surgenor balances the shoddy research of the anti-spankers like Murray Straus and Eli Newberger with sound facts, and correctly points out that above all, spanking works. I highly recommend this book, especially for parents that are having problems early on. Getting your child's attention early saves a lot of problems down the road!
Rating:
Summary: An Important Book!
Review: Finally, an author who knows the solution to the problems we have with today's youth! Mr. Surgenor gives parents the answers they need on how to discipline - all through a biblical basis. The book clearly points out how society and parents lack of proper discipline has caused us to be in such turmoil. He takes us back to the days when parents ruled the household and spanking was used. Readers can see that there is a direct correlation between undisciplined students and crime. Thank you Mr. Surgenor for sharing your wisdom!
Rating:
Summary: The Solution!
Review: Finally, an author who knows the solution to the problems we have with today's youth! Mr. Surgenor gives parents the answers they need on how to discipline - all through a biblical basis. The book clearly points out how society and parents lack of proper discipline has caused us to be in such turmoil. He takes us back to the days when parents ruled the household and spanking was used. Readers can see that there is a direct correlation between undisciplined students and crime. Thank you Mr. Surgenor for sharing your wisdom!
Rating: 
Summary: Why I wrote "No Fear."
Review: I never expected this book to be published. The information contained in this book was originally intended for the large number of parents with whom I deal with on a daily basis. These parents, like millions of other parents in this country, are confused about why their child is out of control. Sitting in my office, some wringing their hands, some crying, these parents pour out their souls to me. Why doesn¹t my son listen to me? Why did my daughter get mixed up with that bum? Why did my child burglarize that house? Why is my child so violent?I felt a great deal of compassion for those mothers and fathers who loved their children, but had failed them miserably in the areas of structure and discipline. I got used to hearing the parents say ³I was told that I couldn¹t discipline my kid in that manner,² or ³I didn¹t want to go to jail for correcting my child!² I became aware that the modern philosophical ideas introduced into child rearing was taking it¹s toll.I began compiled laws, statistics, and personal information on my trusty computer. I began giving parents copies of the information I had so diligently gathered. Suddenly, everything began coming together into a well organized document, loaded with the type of specifics that parents were thirsting for. The single page of state laws and crime statistics that I passed out to parents of out-of-control children turned into a complete book, including suggestions on how to control your child, and the child abuse laws from all fifty states.My intent in publishing this book is the same as it was when I was distributing those single pages to parents sitting in my office. I believe we need to educate parents as to their authority, responsibility, and liability. We need more advocates of parent¹s rights. We need parents to understand that when they are right, law enforcement and the courts are always on their side. I hope this book empowers those parents who are afraid to control their children.
Rating:
Summary: Another Police Officer's Perspective
Review: It is a shame that a book like this had to be written. Author Surgenor probes the reasons behind today's rising tide of juvenile crime. And it is rising. The book includes figures from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports that show the direction the problem is going. American society is breeding a new generation of adult criminals right now. Unlike the social apologists who can do nothing but wring their hands, Surgenor offers solutions. It is all there by someone who knows what he is about.
Rating:
Summary: Another Police Officer's Perspective
Review: It is a shame that a book like this had to be written. Author Surgenor probes the reasons behind today's rising tide of juvenile crime. And it is rising. The book includes figures from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports that show the direction the problem is going. American society is breeding a new generation of adult criminals right now. Unlike the social apologists who can do nothing but wring their hands, Surgenor offers solutions. It is all there by someone who knows what he is about.
| 
