A father trying to discipline his daughter has been acquitted of a misdemeanor charge. Police charged the man with theft after he took his daughter's cell phone.

A father trying to discipline his daughter has been acquitted of a misdemeanor charge. Police charged the man with theft after he took his daughter's cell phone.

After a knock on the door at 2:00 am, Ronald Jackson found himself in handcuffs heading to jail.

"I couldn't believe they could go to this extent for a cell phone. It didn't seem right," he said.

Jackson says in 2013 when his daughter was 12, he discovered a text on her phone he found "rude" regarding another woman, so he took it away.

"I was being a parent. You know, a child does something wrong, you teach them what's right. You tell them what they did wrong and you give them a punishment to show them they shouldn't being doing that," he said.

But when Jackson's ex-wife found out - whose spouse is a Grand Prairie, Texas police officer, the cops were called to get it back. His ex-wife said she owned the phone and reported the confiscation as theft. Jackson refused to return it.

"I didn't want to police department telling me how to parent my child. It made no sense to me for them to show up and make a big deal out of something that was a small thing," said Jackson.

Jackson was given a citation and plenty of opportunity to hand over the phone, according to police. He refused to pay.

A year and a half later, a warrant was issued and Jackson was charged with misdemeanor theft.

"Why would you need to go arrest somebody for something like that? Don't you have better things to do as a police officer? Aren't there bigger crimes in the city to go take care of?" Jackson wondered.