Could the parents sue the nosy neighbor?
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
#262>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?
Reminds me of the time my son finally gathered the confidence to take the training wheels off his bike and learn to ride it without them. My wife and I were walking, and he was on his bike, and he was so happy and pumped about his achievement, that he asked to ride farther away, out of our sight. Now, this is a peaceful suburban neighborhood we're talking about, and we're on a stretch between his school and a park ne…
> He wasn't wearing his biking helmet that day, and we had to endure a lecture about it and veiled threats -- "I could have called CPS, you know" -- and smile politely all the way to avoid escalating.
You shouldn't have had to endure a lecture or be threatened by your neighbor. If the kid is just learning to ride a bike without training wheels, it would have been worth it to go back and get his helmet. I hope the lesson isn't "you shouldn't tell people when they are doing something dangerous," but that you shouldn't be a complete prick about it.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#263The problem is CPS/DCS. They are a lawless organization that can take your child at based solely on their feelings at the moment and not from "probable cause", "reasonable suspicion" or any of the other standards that police are generally held to. In practice that means any neighbor can report anything they don't like about your parenting and it will be acted on just because a child is involved. This leads to the par…
Please read the article before responding. The article says, quite clearly, that CPS dropped the case within weeks and that Texas family law was updated, so CPS cannot even bring cases like this against parents. The problem is that Texas's criminal law was not updated, and the cops/prosecutors made the parent pick between a crime that had a 2-year minimum prison term OR taking a plea for 64 hours of community service…
Thank you for pointing that out. I did not mean for my comment to be interpreted as being about this single instance. My intent was to comment on the general sentiment I was seeing in the comments that the US culture has turned to be an overly protective and restrictive environment for our children. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#264In 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.
I took the bus to school in London from age 8 onwards, i.e. not a school bus a normal red double decker bus. It was only two stops, but mum thought it was safer than crossing the busy road.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#265In 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.
To be fair, here in Menlo Park, CA, children of this age bike or walk half a mile to school all the time as well. It's not very different from when I lived in the London suburbs and walked myself 30 years ago. This isn't really a US/Europe split.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#266Realistically, it's a Texas cop. They talk a big game but when the rubber hits the road, they're going to be hiding. The most accurate model is that this cop is terrified of the kidnapping gangs himself. Which is why he is unable to enforce anything against them. Consequently he enforces where he can.
Gosh, that sounds like the police in Uvalde…
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't the neighbors job to be mentally functional. It is, however, the police's, DA, and CPS's job.
It's also suburban Waco, Texas. That's not exactly the epicenter of education in the US, much less even in Texas. Ironically, more rural Texas regions tend to ha√e more independent kids; after all, you'll see 10 year old kids driving the family truck on farms and ranches.
> 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?
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#268> 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…
> Let's quickly drop the idea that this is the fault of nosey neighbors No, let's not. According to the article, the neighbor who called the cops asked the boy where he lived, "verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless". Excuse me? What decent neighbor calls the cops on a neighbor's kid walking just down the street from his own house? I agree the law in question shouldn't even be on…
It puts neighbors in a bad situation. Yesterday there was a kid, probably about eight years old, outside my house wandering around by himself, yelling at passing cars. There are lots of kids in my neighborhood and I'm accustomed to them being loud when they're out playing but this kid was alone, going out into the road, and just acting a bit weird. It wasn't a kid I knew so I couldn't call the parents but calling the police also seemed like a questionable thing to do. I'm near a speed bump so cars generally go slow through here but there are other parts of the street when they often have more speed. I didn't want to approach him (all manner of trouble can come from an adult approaching a child they don't know), police seemed like overkill, but being out in the road, especially since he was walking away from the speed bump area, seemed potentially dangerous. Eventually he went into a house across the street five or six houses down which recently sold so probably is a new family to the neighborhood.
Still not sure what I should have done if he hadn't gone home or really if this is a problem waiting to happen. At his age I wandered much further from home and put myself in worse potential danger at times, though I probably never yelled at passing cars. No one ever called the police on me though there were a few times when an adult told me to stop doing whatever I was up to or go somewhere else.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#269Worth noting that child was literally safer walking home alone than being in the car, since the odds of dying in a vehicle related death are multiple times higher than odds of being abducted and killed by a stranger; odds of being abducted and physically harmed by a stranger are even less likely than being injured in vehicle accident.
Would not be surprised to learn that school districts in area even require children to walk to school if they are within that distance to their schools.
Anyone involved in this should at very least should lose their jobs and family should be awarded significant compensation for the harm done to the family.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#270> 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 someone who has been constantly annoyed for 20 years by Fortune 250 corporate IT policies, I see this slightly differently. All the confusing, contradictory, usually-non-specific-yet-sometimes-wildly-specific polices the IT department decrees come from some nice-sounding reason, usually from some white paper or consultant, or just some major screwup that caused embarrassment. But, like ISO9000 and SOX and all the…
Oh please, other countries manage to not have this kind of nonsense. If a system is this dysfunctional and destructive, it's intentional.