351–360 of 763 posts
In 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.
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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.
Every parent within my hometown would be getting arrested. And god forbid when these people learn that we were riding the public bus service to and from school at 10 years old...
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CPS investigated and cleared them and then dropped the case. It's the cops and DA who kept going.
...and really, CPS does need to investigate. Yes, most often it's just a nosey neighbour, but every now and then those nosey neighbours are on to something, and while unpleasant for the families, missing that one case is the horror story they want to avoid.
Why does CPS need to restrict parental rights while investigating a report which even if confirmed as true (as it was in this case) does not violate family law and warrant further action.
This would be like saying that, had the law which addressed the family law aspects also (as it should have) made the same changes to criminal law, the police should still have arrested her, even when their information was only of an act that would be a non-crime if true.
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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.)
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There will always be people who overreact and call the police for inappropriate reasons. That isn't the problem. 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 environment.
> 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…
There's one reason: that overreaction is retrospective, and that if you can't cure cop overreaction (when you have complete control over training and livelihood), and you can't cure the entire system's overreaction when they have all the time in the world to think about what they're doing, you have no business dictating to individuals whether they're overreacting or not.
Blaming CPS overreactions on nosy neighbors is just like blaming SWATting on SWATters: an excuse for law enforcement failure, and in that an encouragement to law enforcement to continue to fail in exactly the same way.
Coming from a european perspective this is just completely balls to the walls nuts. Reminds me if that Danish mother who was arrested in N.Y. For leaving her kids sleeping in a tram outside a cafe window (with her on the other side) You guys (as a general completely unfounded generalization) live and breathe fear.
As an American I can also say this is completely balls to the walls nuts.
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> Child services had the family agree to a safety plan, which meant Wallace and her husband could not be alone with their kids for even a second. Their mothers—the children's grandmothers—had to visit and trade-off overnight stays in order to guarantee the parents were constantly supervised. After two weeks, child services closed Wallace's case, finding the complaint was unfounded. This is the fault of the nosey neig…
> This is the fault of the nosey neighbor Only in the most unproductive way. You're not going to fix the problem by exterminating all nosy neighbors. If your new roof leaks when it rains, it's not the rain's fault, blame it on the person who builds roofs ignoring the unavoidable fact that rain will eventually fall.
Planning for nature and planning for failure aren’t exactly the same. And too much planning for failure when there are missed opportunities to plan for success, well, it leads to failure.
If you drove it off the lot, an unrelated point is made.
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> more rural Texas regions tend to ha√e more independent kids Genuinely curious. How did you manage to type '√' rather than 'v'? It this a keyboard or locale issue?
Not OP, speculating. On a Mac option + v types a √, which is a fairly easy typo.
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Play the same game. "I was concerned this woman was talking to my son, I couldn't hear her but the conversation seemed to be something about how she wanted him to come over to her house and how handsome he is, and then when I came into her eyeline she suddenly started ranting about helmets and CPS. I'm really confused about the whole thing officer, I assume she is just elderly but can you ask her to not talk to my so…
I'm sorry, are we honestly entertaining this idea? I try to write measured, patient replies on this site, but holy crap, it's hard sometimes. Think about what you're proposing. You want me to drag my son, a kid who was little enough back then to still ride a bike with training wheels, into a tense argument between a weird lady, some scary-looking adults, and his parents who suddenly decided to lie through their teeth…
The #1 priority should not be the kid.
The #1 priority should be the benefit of all kids.
In this example risk is introduced to the custodial relationship of the immediate child for the hopeful benefit of all children. It's possible this could be a rational risk. Whether it would be effective I have my doubts.
If we use some arbitrary numbers perhaps it would be just to risk 1/1000 chance your own kid gets tossed in foster care by CPS if it means 10 unknown kids end up with 10% longer lifespan because they built healthy habits by being able to play alone outside because a threatening old lady got put in her place.