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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

#151

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, unfortunately, mimics my experiences. No idea when or how it happened, but it is noticeable

Could it be the deluge of televised fear-inducing content ? A great deal anxiety feeds on this distorted view of "what's happening".

But go and have a walk. What do you see "happening" ? nothing.

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

#152
post #147

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…

Of the high school and jr high kids I know, for most of them their life is on their phone. It doesn't cover that age group but I thought this graph was pretty interesting: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1310218/time-spent-using... Generally the younger you are the more likely you are to be a heavy user of your phone. There is no data for it but I would expect that high school and jr high kids are probably even h…

Because what else there's left to do? Getting your family arrested for playing in the front yard or walking to your friend or hanging in a parking lot? So we destroyed all fun activities then we're still complaining they don't do any fun activities?

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

#153

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, unfortunately, mimics my experiences. No idea when or how it happened, but it is noticeable

In Switzerland you'd get called by the teacher if you don't let your kid walk by itself to kindergarten, because independence and learning and all.

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

#154

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, unfortunately, mimics my experiences. No idea when or how it happened, but it is noticeable

No post body was provided.

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

#155
post #86

> 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…

>> > 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 Then go downtown and.. do some police work? What the hell man, stop harassing an innocent mother.

The counterpoint to this is that this is exactly what the police do in downtown Waco as well. It just doesn't normally happen to "respectable" society, so you don't hear about it.

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

#156
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Yes, but what's their incentive to do so?

Not only that, they have a reverse incentive: Say something bad happens to that kid, now the cops will be on the hook for letting them alone.

The real problem is that the fabric of society is mostly gone. In years past, those cops would be chewed out by the old ladies at church the next Sunday. No wonder there is such a backlash building up in conservative areas of the country.

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

#157

>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?

Paranoid suburbanites. In the US, happened to me twice as an 11/12 year old north of Chicago, just for walking down the street - and once in Charlottesville, in the burbs, aged 24 - again for walking down the street. Once in Germany, aged 10 in a suburb of Frankfurt - I was sitting in a park with a book. Oh, and once in the U.K., in Hatfield aged 22, waiting outside my girlfriend’s house having arrived a bit before her.

Only got put in a cop car in the US - in both Germany and the U.K. they realised I was just doing normal human stuff - both childhood occasions in the US they gave my parents a talking to, as an adult they were unreasonably suspicious as to why I would be walking rather than driving, but let me go with a warning to drive in future.

So - the problem is the police, and the justice system, as curtain-twitchers live the world over.

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

#158
Is this state dependent or neighborhood-dependent? Interestingly, my son is 12 and he rides his bike absolutely everywhere. The only ask we have is that he should let us know where he is going and ping us once he reaches there, but he was out with his friends all the time. We seem to be an outlier though since none of his friends' parents seem to trust their kids that much.

Another data point, I have seen more kids playing around in the streets in a working class neighborhood and the richer neighborhoods are empty. These kind of issues seem to come from the more entitled, upper middle-class people who have been primed to be paranoid through crime reporting.

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

#159

Quoted post unavailable.

im sure you read only the best facebook chain memes [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31742595 Penises are shrinking because of pollution (2021) (euronews.com) 5 points by jonahbenton 5 months ago | past | 1 comment

This made my day thank you

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

#160
post #125

As a Canadian this is like a story from some 3rd world country. I remember frequently walking to school that distance as a kid. It wasn't abnormal nor dangerous. That it would be "illegal" is some crazy stuff.

I think you have it backwards. This kind of nonsense doesn’t happen in third world countries. (Other kinds of nonsense, for sure.)
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