Book advises, warns youths

In a high-rise law office off Peachtree Road, two brothers talk about the difference between kid stuff and the stuff that can land you in jail.

Listening, you can’t help but remember Genarlow Wilson, the Georgia teenager sentenced to prison after consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old.

The good news is the Georgia Supreme Court finally set Wilson free in 2007. The bad news is too many teens end up in the criminal justice system either because they don’t know the law or don’t fully appreciate the consequences of their actions.

Either way, those are the people attorneys Trinity and Travis Townsend want to reach with their new book, “When the Cops Come Knockin’: An Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law,” and when they speak to youth across Atlanta.

The brothers, College Park residents, decided to write the book years ago when it dawned on them how lucky they were to have escaped a criminal justice system that had ensnared so many of their friends.

Growing up in high-crime, low-income Muskegon Heights, Mich., they seemed to be always testing the boundaries. It wasn’t unusual, for instance, for them to go into a neighbor’s shed and borrow tools or invade a garage without the owners’ permission. They called it mischief. The law calls it breaking and entering.

Had it not been for their own good fortune and parents forever pulling them back from the edge, they might have gone to jail, too.

But after high school, Trinity, now 35, graduated from college and began a teaching career. Travis, now 30, attended the University of Michigan.

He was working on his law degree there when it occurred to him that many of their “youthful indiscretions” were actually crimes.

Now practicing at two of Atlanta’s top firms, they spend their spare time telling kids what they almost found out the hard way.

The brothers recently spoke at the Boys and Girls Club of Atlanta, and Travis Townsend is scheduled to speak April 24 at the “Call to Man” lock-in sponsored by the Community Teen Coalition Inc. in Atlanta.

“This is personal,” he said.

“When the Cops come Knockin’, ” available in bookstores and online at www.copscomeknockin.com, is written in comic book, “keeping it real” straight talk. Because it can be a little rough around the edges, there are two versions, but each has the same goal: helping kids stay out of jail.

“This isn’t about skirting the law,” said Trinity Townsend.

It’s about reaching kids before the cops come knocking.

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