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Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

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Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

#161

Post by petsfed »

giantg2 wrote: post #60
CodeMage wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There will always be people who overreact and call the police for inappropriate reasons. That isn't the problem. It's not the problem, but it is a problem. There's no reason we shouldn't try to work on both. > The problem is that the police, and then the DA, chose to make this a criminal matter. Either of them could and should have dismissed the issue after verifying that the child was not being put into a harmful…

The check and balance part isn't working. Any decent judge should see this lacks probable cause. But judges are not impartial and instead side with the DA/police by default.

DAs more than judges, since DAs need successful convictions on crimes important to their constituency to get re-elected, and they need police cooperation to get successful convictions.

A judge may well throw this out on its merits, but the case has to progress far enough that a judge has the chance to consider it on its merits. A DA offering a plea deal "so you avoid risking jail time" is basically circumventing that, as the judge doesn't have the resources or authority to investigate every plea deal that comes their way.

Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

#162

Post by odshoifsdhfs »

CodeMage wrote: post #32
kurisufag wrote: post #3

>A woman one block away had called the cops to report a boy walking outside alone. That lady had actually asked Aiden where he lived, verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless. The cops picked up Aiden on his own block. this is the real problem here. who in their right mind calls the cops on a kid walking around his own neighborhood?

Reminds me of the time my son finally gathered the confidence to take the training wheels off his bike and learn to ride it without them. My wife and I were walking, and he was on his bike, and he was so happy and pumped about his achievement, that he asked to ride farther away, out of our sight. Now, this is a peaceful suburban neighborhood we're talking about, and we're on a stretch between his school and a park ne…

"I will call 911 right now as a stranger is trying to abduct my son" should be the correct response.

Not a jab at you, but so tired of random people thinking they know what is best for my son from a 3 second interaction. We really need to bring back some shaming as I truly believe that is how you get a community to work together again instead of against each other.

Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

#163

Post by public_defender »

trynewideas wrote: post #71
helen___keller wrote: post #22

Interesting, isn’t Texas a state with laws to protect “free range parenting”? https://www.treehugger.com/children-protected-reasonable-ind...

It's in the story, which is written by a co-founder of one of the NPOs that supported the Texas law: > "Wallace believes this could be due to the Reasonable Childhood Independence law that Texas passed in 2021 with the help of Let Grow, the non-profit I co-founded. It's part of HB567, a larger child welfare reform bill, and clarifies that parents are allowed to let their kids engage in independent activities as long…

CPS still put this woman--and inexplicably her husband--on a "safety plan" requiring supervision of other family members for two weeks. I am actually amazed that the author thought this would be a good time to plug her legislative work.

Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

#165

Post by leephillips »

infecto wrote: post #145
nh23423fefe wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im sure you read only the best facebook chain memes [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31742595 Penises are shrinking because of pollution (2021) (euronews.com) 5 points by jonahbenton 5 months ago | past | 1 comment

Just amazing the OP wants to flag this post but shares with us penises shrinking.

But what if it’s true? I would want to know.

Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

#166

Post by psychlops »

kurisufag wrote: post #3

>A woman one block away had called the cops to report a boy walking outside alone. That lady had actually asked Aiden where he lived, verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless. The cops picked up Aiden on his own block. this is the real problem here. who in their right mind calls the cops on a kid walking around his own neighborhood?

Interesting that her child actually told a stranger where he lived. No real street smarts in Waco children cause it's too safe, I guess.

Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

#167

Post by bnralt »

gpanders wrote: post #94
nearmuse wrote: post #62

Because of all of these news of arrests, cops shooting someone unarmed, or people getting easily labelled as felons or sex offenders, US has become synonymous with "trigger-happy" (literally & figuratively) for me. Are people (and specifically cops) in the US really that quick to judge? Does it depend on the state? Or do these cases make the news exactly because of how outrageous and rare they are?

>Are people (and specifically cops) in US really that quick to judge? Or do these cases make the news exactly because of how outrageous and rare they are? (With the obvious caveat that I do not claim to represent the entire American population) I think it is the latter. This kind of thing is newsworthy precisely because it gets people riled up (as it should). It is pretty shocking to me as someone who has lived in th…

Kind of. I don't think this kind of thing is typical. However, when it does happen, it's astonishing how many people in the system are just fine with it and go along with it. One neighbor acting badly, or one police officer crossing his boundaries, wouldn't be an issue if the rest of the system (other officers, DA, CPS, representatives in government, etc.) worked and said "this is clearly ridiculous, stop bothering the woman." The crazy thing is to see how, once initiated, the entire system is happy to go along with the farce and the persecution of the hapless individual.

One case I always think about is when a 17 year old sent a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. Then the police went after him for child-pornography (his own penis), and demanded he either give them a picture of his erect penis or they'd inject him with something to force an erection and take it themselves[1]:

> Virginia police have obtained a search warrant to photograph the erect penis of a 17-year-old facing felony child-pornography charges for sexting an explicit video to his 15-year-old girlfriend, the boy's lawyer says.

> If he doesn't cooperate, the Manassas City Police Department has threatened to take him to a hospital and medically induce an erection with an injection, attorney Jessica Harbeson Foster toldThe Washington Post.

> Police already photographed the teen's genitals against his will when he was arrested in late January, she said.

Oh, and one of the main officers involved later killed himself after he was outed as a pedophile[2].

The authorities _eventually_ backed off after the media picked it up and there was general outrage. But it's insane that that's what needed to get people in these systems to stop clearly inappropriate behavior. The fact that the whole system is happy to go along with injustices unless there's a massive public outcry shows how broken things have become.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/virgin... [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/cop-who-wanted-t...

Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

#168

Post by Someone1234 »

fitblipper wrote: post #87

The problem is CPS/DCS. They are a lawless organization that can take your child at based solely on their feelings at the moment and not from "probable cause", "reasonable suspicion" or any of the other standards that police are generally held to. In practice that means any neighbor can report anything they don't like about your parenting and it will be acted on just because a child is involved. This leads to the par…

Please read the article before responding. The article says, quite clearly, that CPS dropped the case within weeks and that Texas family law was updated, so CPS cannot even bring cases like this against parents.

The problem is that Texas's criminal law was not updated, and the cops/prosecutors made the parent pick between a crime that had a 2-year minimum prison term OR taking a plea for 64 hours of community service (and other things, like writing an apology letter, etc).

This wasn't a CPS problem. It was a cop abusing their authority and a prosecutor who didn't drop the charges. Plus a hugely abusive plea system in US criminal cases (which is a whole huge discussion in its own right).

Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

#169

Post by lufte »

Offtopic: I'm seeing a trend of titles that, as a non native English speaker, always confuse me and take me a good couple of seconds to finally understand. This is one of them. It's like they use a comma where I would expect an "and" to be. I wish I had more examples to show, but I have seen a lot here in HN. Is this some new editorial style or was this always used?

Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

#170

Post by klipt »

nineplay wrote: post #38

> As they stood on her porch, the officers told Wallace that her son could have been kidnapped and sex trafficked. "'You don't see much sex trafficking where you are, but where I patrol in downtown Waco, we do,'" said one of the cops, according to Wallace > "I still didn't know it was illegal and I said, 'I don't know,'" says Wallace. "That's when the cop replied, 'Okay, I'm going to have to arrest you.'" Let's quick…

Fundamentally it's the fault of the politicians who passed the law and the people who voted for them.

If you don't want to be arrested for breaking a stupid law, vote for someone who will repeal it.

Sure the police could in theory neglect to do their job which is enforcing the law but then they'd probably just get fired and replaced by police who did do their job.

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