381–390 of 763 posts
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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.
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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.
The oldest one takes the U-Bahn (Underground) to school and the bus to attend her hobbies. Often we send one of them to the nearby supermarket to buy last minute stuff.
I like to think that I'm helping them to be independent and aware of their city.
Most of my daughters' friends do the same.
> 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…
> 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…
>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?
My neighbor (not old) threatened to call the police on my 12 year old daughter because she didn't stop for him... to scold her. On the surface he's a reasonable, responsible adult but for some reason was/is triggered by neighborhood kids simply "having fun". People can be strange.
You usually only notice people when they do something weird-- maybe 999 days out of 1000 that neighbor is perfectly normal, but on that one day they were having an off day. That's the day you notice them.
An advantage of living further from people is that just fewer interactions with strangers and near-strangers so fewer opportunities to be the victim of someone's off-day.
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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.
Karen is now an accepted and understood term referring to a very real phenomenon. Anyone with half a brain knows it's not aimed at people named Karen.
There's a huge difference between being named Karen and being a Karen...
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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It isn't the neighbors job to be mentally functional. It is, however, the police's, DA, and CPS's job.
> It isn't the neighbors job to be mentally functional. I'm not sure I agree. One of the requirements for an adult citizen in a civil society is to be reasonable in your dealings with neighbors. > It is, however, the police's, DA, and CPS's job. "Mentally functional" does not necessarily mean "giving citizens a break". The criminal law that the mom was charged with is a law, it's on the books, and law enforcement is…
Don't get me wrong, I would love it if people everywhere acted rationally and only stuck their nose into other people's business when it is actually necessary and useful to do at. But it's not realistic to expect that we can "fix" everyone, so we should focus on the things we can fix instead.
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> has a GoFundMe to help cover her legal expenses to right this wrong To be clear, Wallace "is in debt after losing her job and paying for the lawyer and the diversion program" and "hopes to hire a lawyer to get her record expunged so that she can work with kids again." The GoFundMe is to pay for those costs. It won't do anything to undo the original miscarriage.
Part of the problem is that she pled guilty, thereby endorsing the position of the police and creating a larger problem in the future. I don't know what the correct response is when looking down the barrel of a 2 year sentence for nonsense, but think this publicity battle should have been before the plea.
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We do get some information from the other side. The giant delta between the possible prison sentence and the consequences in the plea deal is a signal that the prosecution thought they would do poorly at trial.
I'm baffled as to why her attorney advised she take the plea deal.
The choice is to avoid prison time entirely, or be willing to spend at least 2 years in prison if the jury gets this one wrong.
The woman has already been failed by the police who arrested her and the prosecutor who declined to drop the charges. Who's to say whether she'll be failed by the jury as well?