Waco, Texas. Why does that city sound familiar? Oh, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege
Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
171–180 of 763 posts
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#172That's so insanely crazy.
In Switzerland it's normal for kids as young as 4 to walk few hundred meters alone to kindergarten (if the kid is courageous enough) even in the urban city center.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#173>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?
> who in their right mind calls the cops on a kid walking around his own neighborhood? I wish I knew. My children have had the cops called on them for playing in our front yard. I wish they could spend their afternoons climbing trees and playing in the grass like I did growing up, but there's a group of people who see children playing outside of direct parent supervision as a categorically dangerous activity. I'm alw…
Is there some type of penalty/law for intentionally using the police to harass people?
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#174Vaguely relevant, from Peter Grey's book "Free to Learn": > In our culture today, parents and other adults overprotect children from possible dangers in play. We seriously underestimate children’s ability to take care of themselves and make good judgments [...] Our underestimation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy—by depriving children of freedom, we deprive them of the opportunities they need to learn how to take c…
Nobody wants to be the one parent out of a thousand who has their kid scooped up off the street because they were letting their kid explore and be free. Edit: Not sure why I'm being downvoted, this comment isn't a judgment on anyone or promoting any type of child-rearing philosophy. It's just an obvious truth. Nobody wants to be that parent, and that obviously influences behavior.
> Nobody wants to be the one parent out of a thousand who has their kid scooped up off the street
I agreed with you ... because I misread your comment as being concerned that the cops would come pick up your kid (like happened here in TFA). My (semi-legitimate) fear is that I'll be harassed as a parent for letting my kids do normal things like walk around the neighborhood. That'd be the only reason I might not encourage it.
Your kid is much more likely to be picked up by the cops over handwringing like this than to be kidnapped.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#175Horrifying. I would like to see this brought to Governor Abbot's attention.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#176In my twice-the-size European city, kids walk twice that distance to school and back home again, alone. Every. Single. Day. If this place isn't safe enough for kids to walk by themselves, maybe the question should be raised whether the police and municipal government really is doing their job the way they're supposed to.
Every police interaction in the US bears the risk of death. Police will stop kids on the street with or without being called. Ergo, it is unsafe for children to walk to school in the US. Sure, that's all a bit circular, but good luck breaking the spiral with a "law and order" mentality.
This strikes me as crazy. Every interaction with any human or inanimate object bears the risk of death, it's just so low it's not worth thinking about it.
U.S. police kill about ~1000 people per year, and the vast majority of those aren't at all questionable. If there are 330,000,000 people in the U.S., that's 0.000303% of the population per year. Each person has, on average, maybe 10 contentious police interactions in a lifetime of 75 years? That's 0.134 interactions per year.
So, given on this Fermi estimate, you have about a 0.00226% chance of being killed per contentious police interaction if we spread it completely evenly, or 2.26 in 100,000. And spreading it evenly doesn't make any sense at all.
So, if you're young, black, male, and running around Chicago dealing drugs carrying an illegal gun--yeah, maybe worry about it. For everyone here on HN, it's a stupid thing to worry about. Worry about your sedentary lifestyle. Worry about driving safely if you drive a lot. Worry about diabetes. Worry about whether your relationships with friends and family are good. Worry about your diet. Worry about exercise. Worry about falling down the stairs. The cops aren't going to kill you.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#177Note she also has a GoFundMe to help cover her legal expenses to right this wrong. It's a pretty severe miscarriage of justice that has grievously altered this innocent woman's life going into a recession. Please consider donating what you can: https://www.gofundme.com/f/restore-money-lost-after-wrongful...
I’d even kick in a little to file a civil suit against the neighbour.
There could have been multiple calls.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> smile politely all the way to avoid escalating. That attitude, while perhaps more comfortable in some ways, just enables the sort of behaviour you encountered, and apparently disliked, from that woman. A blunt response like, "Fuck off. Don't talk to my son.", followed by walking away from her, may have been harsher and not particularly polite, but perhaps it'd cause a person like her to avoid such meddling in the f…
> A blunt response like, "Fuck off. Don't talk to my son.", followed by walking away from her, may have been harsher and not particularly polite, but perhaps it'd cause a person like her to avoid such meddling in the future.
Or it means she's definitely calling CPS next time.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#179>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?
> who in their right mind calls the cops on a kid walking around his own neighborhood? I wish I knew. My children have had the cops called on them for playing in our front yard. I wish they could spend their afternoons climbing trees and playing in the grass like I did growing up, but there's a group of people who see children playing outside of direct parent supervision as a categorically dangerous activity. I'm alw…
This is a serious worry of mine. I often let my elementary kids walk home from school by themselves because we live close enough and they have good sense around what little traffic there is. But I always worry that someone will throw a fit about it. I worry about that a LOT more than kidnappers.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#180Earlier 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.
Judges, DAs and by extension any public arm including police should remember that doctrine coming from Roman law "It is more important that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt be punished" (John Adams, 1770) or likewise "the law holds that it is better that 10 guilty persons escape, than that 1 innocent suffer" (William Blackstone, 1769) or "it is better to let the crime of a guilty person go unpunished than to condemn the innocent" (SCOTUS, 1895).