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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

#571

Post by cbsmith »

kelnos wrote: post #364
fluidcruft wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When CPS is investigating abuse it seems completely reasonable for them to implement a safety plan to ensure ongoing abuse doesn't occur during the investigation. Far better than yanking the kids into protective custody.

That sort of thinking enables all sorts of abuse, though. Knowing this, a neighbor with a beef with parent-neighbors could cause them a lot of grief by manufacturing a false report to the police or CPS, in such a way that they won't get in trouble themselves. I get that sometimes pro-active measures are prudent, but "hey, police, I saw my neighbor's kid walking outside unattended" is not one of those times. And even…

> That sort of thinking enables all sorts of abuse, though. Knowing this, a neighbor with a beef with parent-neighbors could cause them a lot of grief by manufacturing a false report to the police or CPS, in such a way that they won't get in trouble themselves.

That's true, but the thinking you are describing also enables all sorts of abuse.

> the "safety plan" CPS came up with was still a huge unnecessary overreaction

Yeah, at least as described in the article, it seemed excessive and unnecessary. I could see where they don't have a smaller scale mitigation to put in place during an investigation. It's definitely not ideal.

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

#572

Post by autoexec »

kelnos wrote: post #364
fluidcruft wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When CPS is investigating abuse it seems completely reasonable for them to implement a safety plan to ensure ongoing abuse doesn't occur during the investigation. Far better than yanking the kids into protective custody.

That sort of thinking enables all sorts of abuse, though. Knowing this, a neighbor with a beef with parent-neighbors could cause them a lot of grief by manufacturing a false report to the police or CPS, in such a way that they won't get in trouble themselves. I get that sometimes pro-active measures are prudent, but "hey, police, I saw my neighbor's kid walking outside unattended" is not one of those times. And even…

> I get that sometimes pro-active measures are prudent, but "hey, police, I saw my neighbor's kid walking outside unattended" is not one of those times.

It's possible that "I saw a kid walking alone" isn't enough to justify an CPS investigation but "This child's parent was just arrested and is being charged with a felony for endangering this child" is reason enough.

At the point CPS got involved, they were investigating the home of someone being charged with felony child endangerment. We don't know what CPS polices demand n that situation, or what alternatives were available to the family, but after hearing what options they had the family agreed to the safety plan. If the alternative was "this or we have to remove you or your children from your home" I'd say it was the right choice.

It's entirely possible that CPS did their job exactly as they should have and were required to do under the circumstances. In fact, if the family had gone to trial it would have helped their case that CPS investigated the home and determined that that the complaint was unfounded.

There's no reason to think that a neighbor with a beef could have called CPS and had this happen to anyone else. There's not even reason to think that a neighbor calling the cops would do it since those cops would have to be as dumb as the one in this story and arrest and charge an innocent person with felony child endangerment for it to work. That should be a pretty high bar to clear. The police screwed this one up, and that's what opened the door to all the other grief.

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

#573

Post by giantg2 »

zehaeva wrote: post #346
soco wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the main resistance to cashless bail is the poor implementation in many jurisdictions.

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

#574

Post by ajford »

kentm wrote: post #179
kelseyfrog wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Same. I let my kids walk about 0.5mi to the park and I'm more afraid of some nosey busy-body calling CPS on them than I am about traffic or kidnappers.

When I was growing up in the 90s, I'd routinely bike many miles away from home and disappear for hours before I came home. Nowadays letting your kids do that is liable to get CPS called on you.

How the heck did we end up here?!

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

#575

Post by jeddy3 »

beaned wrote: post #49
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #14

Vaguely 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.

First of all, "one out of a thousand" is grossly wrong.

And yeah, of course nobody wants that, but you can't take away a healthy part of growing up because of that.

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

#577

Post by cbsmith »

handoflixue wrote: post #566
cbsmith wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't just say the ends justify the means, without actually working out the price you're paying. I wasn't suggesting that the ends justify the means. I'm simply speaking to the realities of the situation. However, from an ends justifying the means perspective, if you're not going to investigate, there's little point in hearing the case, and more importantly in people making the call in the first place. "When an…

> Sure, there are horror stories about CPS being overzealous, but this isn't one of those stories. The parents were forced in to two weeks of supervision, requiring another adult around them 24/7. The innocent parents, who had not actually done anything wrong. How is that not "overzealous"? > I don't much like the "family safety plans", but it's a huge leap from there to 24/7 monitoring... "Wallace and her husband co…

> The parents were forced in to two weeks of supervision, requiring another adult around them 24/7. The innocent parents, who had not actually done anything wrong.

> How is that not "overzealous"?

I didn't say it wasn't overzealous. I said it wasn't one of the horror stories about them being overzealous. I was specifically referring to the power to "destroy families". That didn't happen here.

> "Wallace and her husband could not be alone with their kids for even a second."

>

> That sure sounds like 24/7 monitoring, even if it's not the government doing it.

At best that's 24/7 for 14 days. In truth though, it's not monitoring at all, as there was no monitoring requirement, just that they couldn't be left alone with the kids. I mean, they literally considered a sleeping grandmother somewhere in the house to be sufficient. It's certainly intrusive and unpleasant, but it's not 24/7 monitoring, nor is it a slippery slope towards that.

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

#578

Post by michaelmrose »

hanspeter wrote: post #539
michaelmrose wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bad logic. If it was real it would be on google applies only to conspicuous news stories that effect many people or happen to catch the spotlight. There are 338M of us here in the US. I'm sure for all of us there are events that are notable, terrible, extraordinary. People are in accidents, die, are wronged, fail, triumph and most of it never makes the news and isn't available on google. If I search for my ow…

Something that makes frontpage on Hackernews certainly should be newsworthy and not seeing other media or bloggers pick it up is a little surprising.

Call a local paper in the area where it happened and suggest they cover it?

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

#579

Post by necovek »

fluidcruft wrote: post #409
scarby2 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would think someone would take a look at the allegation and determine that this was not necessary anyone with an ounce of sense knows that an 8 year old can walk half a mile on the street. 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...

It certainly looks that way, but there are other factors at play such as the child being problematic and discipline being dumping him on the street to walk. It's not merely some kid playing in the neighborhood. Some car came to a stop and a kid was kicked out and there was likely yelling involved. It's certainly suspicious. Child abuse investigations aren't about one incident in isolation.

"Hey kid, are you alright?"

"My mom made me walk home because I was mean to my siblings."

"Where do you live?"

"That house over there."

Alternative, less dumb reality:

"Carry on."

A bit more concerned, still less dumb reality:

"I'll walk with you."

Dumb reality:

"I am calling the cops!"

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

#580

Post by cbsmith »

autoexec wrote: post #572
kelnos wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sort of thinking enables all sorts of abuse, though. Knowing this, a neighbor with a beef with parent-neighbors could cause them a lot of grief by manufacturing a false report to the police or CPS, in such a way that they won't get in trouble themselves. I get that sometimes pro-active measures are prudent, but "hey, police, I saw my neighbor's kid walking outside unattended" is not one of those times. And even…

> I get that sometimes pro-active measures are prudent, but "hey, police, I saw my neighbor's kid walking outside unattended" is not one of those times. It's possible that "I saw a kid walking alone" isn't enough to justify an CPS investigation but "This child's parent was just arrested and is being charged with a felony for endangering this child" is reason enough. At the point CPS got involved, they were investigat…

> At the point CPS got involved, they were investigating the home of someone being charged with felony child endangerment. We don't know what CPS polices demand n that situation, or what alternatives were available to the family, but after hearing what options they had the family agreed to the safety plan. If the alternative was "this or we have to remove you or your children from your home" I'd say it was the right choice.

It's also worth noting that CPS's investigation would no doubt serve as helpful for the parent's defense against the charges.

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