Never let the absence of facts get in the way of your conclusion

Bloggers are often criticized, with cause, for failing to follow the basic practices of journalism. It's more disappointing when writers for major publications fail to do the same.
Recently, Christopher Carr told a story, in America's Most Wanted, about how Massachusetts state police shut down his stepson's green-tea stand.  "In what world is it acceptable for police officers to go around breaking up kids's drink stands?", Carr rhetorically asks, "What are we teaching our children?"
The story is thin on identifying details which is understandable since we're talking about what happen to a 12-year-old. The problems arise when we try, as Carr's blog intends, to elicit general principles from specific cases. If we are missing crucial details about the case, then our induction is will head off to unintended places. (The bizarre comment streams lead into fetid swamps.)
It gets worse, as I'll show in a moment, when a E. D. Kain, a writer for Forbes, picks up the story and brings it to the national level.

• It was Carr's idea to set up the stand. Carr chose the location.This wasn't a kid's project. It was an educational activity arranged by an adult.
• Carr's story doesn't get to the detail of what police officers said what to his stepson or why they said it. He declares that the local police wished the boy well and that the Massachusetts state police ("someone in brown") shut down the stand.
  On-duty Massachusetts state troopers wear blue uniforms. Commenters indicated that it may have been rangers, who generally wear brown uniforms, from the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR).
• The location of the green-tea stand is never identified. As several commenters noted, if the stand was on public property, then DCR officers can ask that the stand be removed. 
• There was no contact between the police or an adult involved in this incident. We have the word of a 12-year-old that someone who looked like a cop said something. While we can believe that the boy is telling the truth, the story that he told isn't sufficient for us to draw any conclusions about police or society.
• Police, let alone state police or state agencies, rarely get involved in local code enforcement. The local health department is responsible for enforcement of codes regarding food safety and sale. Police typically get involved only after other avenues have been used and rarely on their own initiative.

A blogger overreaches. Fine. It happens often. I've done it on several occasions, even to the point of taking down blog posts when I've realized that I was off-base.
When the aforementioned E. D. Kain includes the green-tea stand story in a blog post about the war against kids, it gets really weird.

Lemonade stand shutdowns may not be the same violation of liberty that no-knock botched SWAT raids or the incarceration of innocent people are, but they reflect the same mentality. It’s the mentality that needs reforming. No simple task.

via Twelve-Year-Old's Green Tea Stand Shut Down in Massachusetts - Forbes

Kain updates his article three times with new information which, as he admits, "So a lot of confusion obviously exists around the events described in Christopher’s blog post. This is understandable, but I don’t think it means we’re any closer to any conclusive answers."
This lack of conclusive answers hasn't stopped either writer from backing off from the conclusions that police all over the country are engaged in a war on childhood by shutting down lemonade stands and related entrepreneurial ventures.
At several points, Kain notes that police aren't acting on their own, that they're just enforcing local laws and policies. 

I think it’s also important to note that someone in the government shut down a twelve-year-old kid’s green-tea stand. Whether this was state police, rangers, or the mayor doesn’t really matter. The state is cracking down on kids selling drinks for fun.

It does matter which police department was involved because they were responding to an adult's decision, not a kid's idea.
It also matters because, without a reasonably complete set of facts, you can't reason your way to general principles. Adults need to know that if they're going to be good teachers. Journalists need to know that because that's their job.

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Full disclosure: my son is a member of the Massachusetts state police. It was the mention of the state police that drew my attention to these stories.
My comments do not necessarily his views or those of the Massachusetts state police. I did not contact him or the state police regarding this post.