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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

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of "Child services had the family agree to a safety plan" makes you feel that CPS is blameless here? It seems like they wasted two weeks of this family's time and added a ton of unnecessary stress, before even figuring out if the complaint was warranted. That seems deeply dysfunctional, and violently at odds with "innocent until proven guilty"

That was only while they investigated (which I'm fine with). It's annoying but it's NOT a CPS horror story.

> That was only while they investigated (which I'm fine with).

I’m not; there should be some reasonable basis for this level of intrusion, which there was not (note that the facts of the report were true and confirmed and still did not violate family law that CPS enforces; this isn't a case where someone reported something which would have warranted CPS intervention if confirmed.)

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

#342
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It puts neighbors in a bad situation. Yesterday there was a kid, probably about eight years old, outside my house wandering around by himself, yelling at passing cars. There are lots of kids in my neighborhood and I'm accustomed to them being loud when they're out playing but this kid was alone, going out into the road, and just acting a bit weird. It wasn't a kid I knew so I couldn't call the parents but calling the…

Why didn’t you just ask the kid what it is doing and where it is living?

No post body was provided.

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

#343

> 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…

Quoted post unavailable.

The word Karen in your post is an ageist and racist dog whistle and it is also incredibly insulting to people who happen to be named Karen.

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... this is a case where the police should also say "it's ok, it's not that far mr/mrs neighbor, you don't have to call us for that". it's also a case if the police actually cuffed and brought the mom to jail, someone there should tell them they won't book them for something stupid. If a DA is involved, it's also a case where the DA should say that they won't prosecute such a stupid thing. This failure is not o…

This is what lack of diversity gets you. Nobody in the chain of events thought anything happening was unreasonable enough to say something. There were probably ~8 people involved from the call to the officers to the DA and the administrative people in the middle who would have had a chance to opine. It only would have taken one Ron Swanson type to be like "hey, this is insane and we're gonna wind up being a national…

I don't think you want a lot of "Ron Swanson types", by which I infer you mean libertarians, getting involved in child protective services.

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

#345

Japan has entered the chat... In Japan, children are encouraged from early age to be independent. They even take the subway and bus by themselves, albeit it's significantly safer there than in other parts of the world. Still though, I think people in America have gone off the deep end.

Japanese parents reading this story: "???"

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

#346
post #180
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unpuni…

Maybe we should remind everyone about this when they cry about cashless bail.

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

#347
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is everywhere. For that matter every interaction with someone with a little martial arts training (even what you can find on the internet, though you will also find bad training) can be potential deadly. Most people have the ability to kill another human, few attempt it.

Risk of death during interaction with the police is practically zero where I live. Whenever that happens, it’s on the media for months or years.

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all the fault of the nosy neighbor. The neighbor made a bad choice, but could plausibly have been motivated by good intentions. A young child walking alone may seem a cause for concern, and, perhaps all the neighbor wanted was to make sure the child was safe. I certainly see no evidence that the neighbor acted maliciously - some people are just legitimately unaware that the police are frequently comically…

> A young child walking alone may seem a cause for concern, and, perhaps all the neighbor wanted was to make sure the child was safe. They verified where the child lived, which was just down the block, and still proceeded to call the police instead of... escorting the kid home? > 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, verifi…

>They verified where the child lived, which was just down the block, and still proceeded to call the police instead of... escorting the kid home?

That would probably not be a safe thing for the neighbor to do in a place like Waco--he/she could be arrested as a pedophile.

But the whole thing sounds totally crazy to me. I walked a half mile to and from school alone from first grade to high school almost every day.

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

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I write software, I know that users will do dumb things and it is my responsibility to write my code in such a way that they can cause no damage. The legal system should have similar responsibilities. If citizens can report crimes, some citizens will incorrectly report non-crimes. If the legal system can't handle that, the that is entirely the fault of the legal system.

"Any proposal must be viewed as follows. Do not pay overly much attention to the benefits that might be delivered were the law in question to be properly enforced, rather one needs to consider the harm done by the improper enforcement of this particular piece of legislation, whatever it might be." -Lyndon B. Johnson

I think a lot of people take this to mean "laws bad" when in reality I think LBJ was saying to be careful in how you craft your laws so you can prevent this kind of abuse.
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