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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

#451

Post by matai_kolila »

jawns wrote: post #390
matai_kolila wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm baffled as to why her attorney advised she take the plea deal.

You are? 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?

Yes, I am.

Nothing is gained without risk, and this woman likely now regrets accepting that plea deal. Her attorney should have explained to her what the outcome would have been for taking this deal, and clearly had she known she would not have, since she is now attempting to have the verdict expunged from her record.

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

#453

Post by warner25 »

lacker wrote: post #130

I don't know... the story as written does sound really bad. My similarly-aged kids walk about half a mile to school by themselves, as do dozens of other children that live in my neighborhood, and it would be crazy to arrest parents for this. But we're only hearing the mother's side of the story. The neighbor who called the cops, the actions of the police, it's possible they saw something that wasn't reported here. An…

I like the way you think. It's a thin article, written by someone with an agenda (albeit one that I generally applaud). Whenever people tell me stories like this, I too start asking questions that can only be answered by someone on the other side. Your point about the police response time is interesting.

My own neighbors (who I like, but they make a good example here) had an incident recently. Their elementary school-aged kids play outside from dawn to dusk if they're not in school, which is cool. One day they built a fire in the woods behind their house, which backs up to 10,000+ acres of public woodlands and grasslands, in the middle of wildfire season in California. An hour after the kids "put it out," it was unattended and still producing large amounts of smoke. Someone walking by finally called the fire department, and the police also arrived to give the parents a citation. Anyway, to hear the mom tell the story it sounds outrageous that someone made the call and that emergency responders showed up, but everyone else who saw the situation unfold was pretty concerned about the fire.

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

#454

Post by nearbuy »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #406
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not?

Well, I personally believe that the logical outcome of libertarian thought as it regards kids is that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder…

Good luck finding a libertarian that believes parents shouldn't have to feed their children. I think you've made a straw man argument.

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

#455

Post by dekhn »

sschueller wrote: post #247
beardyw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US has much greater freedoms than Europe Does it? I can't see this happening in Europe. What freedoms stand out?

Like drinking in public with an open container of alcohol.

I feel compelled to comment on this because it comes up occasionally.

We normally describe America as being prude and cite anti-nudity policies of broadcast TV. However, America pioneered modern video pornography, going far beyond any country for decades.

Similarly, while in some places you need to put your beer in a paper bag but we also have open-air drug markets and streets filled with people openly taking hardcore drugs.

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

#456

Post by pdonis »

bengy5959 wrote: post #368
pdonis wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Should someone get a ticket for going 66 mph in a 65 zone? I don't really think officer discretion is avoidable to a certain degree. Laws can never be written perfectly. There are always going to be ridiculous edge cases like this where a reasonable person would know the law shouldn't be applied. This is why so much legal precedent is based on what a reasonable person would do or what a reasonable person would assume…

> Should someone get a ticket for going 66 mph in a 65 zone?

Speed limit laws should not even exist in the first place. They are a paradigmatic example of laws that are unreasonable and should not exist. The fact that it is impossible to enforce them as written, or even with light-years of as written, is one reason for that.

> I don't really think officer discretion is avoidable to a certain degree.

To a certain degree, yes. But it should be limited. In the system we have now, it's not; the scope of laws on the books is huge, to the point that all of us are probably technically violating multiple laws every day, and we are all relying on a huge amount of discretion on the part of law enforcement to allow us to go about our business without continually being interrupted. That's not good.

> there are always going to be Karens that call the cops for no reason and the system has to be able to deal with that.

Yes, and the way to deal with it is to have the law be reasonable. It is not to have lots of unreasonable laws on the books and then hope that law enforcement exercises discretion in practically all cases, only actually prosecuting the "really serious" ones. It's to not have unreasonable laws on the books at all, so when a Karen calls the cops for no reason, the cops can just say "Ma'am, that's not against the law, nothing for us to do."

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

#457

Post by woodruffw »

ch4s3 wrote: post #449
woodruffw wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true in my part of Brooklyn as well, and it's how I was raised in Manhattan. These problems are not unique to suburbia, but they're definitely amplified.

I grew up on a farm and was out roaming around alone from probably the age of 5 or 6. Kids are pretty capable if you raise them to be a little self reliant and resilient.

Absolutely. I'm singling out suburbia (specifically, suburban car-dependent monoculture) here as the least ideal of the three "spheres."

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

#458

Post by pdpi »

babypuncher wrote: post #350
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

If you adapted it for software, it's almost the same as saying "don't focus too much on the happy path, make sure you limit the blast radius for the failures cases", which just sounds like sensible advice.

You really have to take the adversarial mindset when thinking about large scale systems like this, to make sense of how they can break.

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

#459

Post by Ptchd »

rlkf wrote: post #25

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.

In most areas it is probably safe enough... but they like to keep the population scared as they are easier to control that way... and the police budgets keep increasing.

On average, the cops are nuts in the US... It just take one hot head in a group to make them all act badly...

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

#460

Post by csours »

Stevvo wrote: post #428
csours wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 yard penalty, review logical fallacies, other team gets the ball. https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy Children spend waaaay more time around parents and relatives. Same reason why you are more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than a stranger. (This is not monocausal, and I do not mean to imply that simply spending time wi…

Do they really though? In a lot of families kids are at school, then driven off to soccer/dance/whatever in a lot of other time.

It really depends on the exact framing of the question.

Are children safer ALONE with a random stranger or with a family member? Why is the child alone with a random stranger?

There are some broad daylight kidnappings, but they are relatively rare. They are relatively rare because it's much easier for a kidnapper to abscond with someone who trusts them.

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