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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

#441
post #170

> 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…

Fundamentally it's the fault of the politicians who passed the law and the people who voted for them. If you don't want to be arrested for breaking a stupid law, vote for someone who will repeal it. Sure the police could in theory neglect to do their job which is enforcing the law but then they'd probably just get fired and replaced by police who did do their job.

The police exercise their discretion when it comes to enforcing the law all the time.

Outside of incredibly particular offenses, "It's the law, I have to enforce it, I have no choice" is just an excuse.

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

#442

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

Well, part of the problem is our infrastructure choices over the past many decades. When you build suburbs that are very isolated from places you need to go and then need to drive to literally everything you do, nearly everyone starts viewing normal activities like walking to a grocery store as abnormal. As a result, kids can’t actually go anywhere until they turn 16 and get a car. :/

There are a lot of excellent videos about this sad problem, like this: https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw

But at the end of the day, when it’s not actually possible to be independent every day, you just loose this culture. And countries that made different infrastructure and development decisions 6 decades ago are in a much better place today — it doesn’t have to be this way.

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

#443

This is (one of) the logical conclusions of suburban, car-enforced social alienation: if you don't know your neighbors and your neighbors don't know you, then everything that isn't immediately familiar to either party is treated with suspicion. And this holds for the entire "food chain": police who don't live in the areas they patrol, DAs and CPS employees who don't understand their communities, &c. It's civically an…

Car-centric Suburbanization is the root of almost all problems faced by the US today.

Of course, nothing is monocausal. But if it were, that faulty would be 'car centric suburbia'.

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

#444
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its funny, because I see young-ish kids alone or in small groups walking around all the time in Brooklyn. Between 2:30 and 4:00 PM the sidewalks around my apartment are choked with unaccompanied kids.

I live in Manhattan and my wife and I just had our first kid a few weeks ago. We've been talking about it for months now, but we want our kid to have that kind of independence and familiarity with the city. On one hand it's good for their development and on another hand it just seems practical that they be able to navigate the city on their own for safety reasons. I've offended a lot of suburban friends and family th…

> I've been told that it's irresponsible, that I'll be endangering him

With all due respect, whoever is telling you that is should mind their own fucking business.

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

#445
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, sure. What are the statistics behind TFA; how many moms are getting jailed for their kids walking to school? Should anybody care?

I think it makes sense for third parties (us) to "care" when something like the headline happens. We should make it clear to those involved that it's not acceptable (we should try to punish them), and we should try to help aggrieved parties. But no, you should not "care" in the sense of worrying about it happening to yourself. The probability is so small it's not worth it, along with an infinity of other freak occurr…

The [Fine] Article

> We should make it clear to those involved that it's not acceptable (we should try to punish them), and we should try to help aggrieved parties.

Here, we agree. But when you cite statistics in the manner you did, you're arguing against cloistering myself and my child in our home, quaking in fear of the improbable: beating on a straw-man.

If you re-read the last line of my first comment, you may notice that the "law and order" mentality that I'm railing against is fear-based governance. We have equipped and trained our police to be paramilitary forces that are nearly unaccountable for their misbehavior: a resounding success of fear-based governance. De-escalating the cycle of violence requires vacating fear-based governance -- convincing the police to over-react less, convincing citizens to call the authorities less; convincing voters to react to broken windows with investment in fixing windows rather than jail time and extrajudicial killings. And in the meantime, we need to hold people accountable for perpetrating administrative violence against innocent people like in TFA.

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

#446
post #388
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…

The actions of the neighbor is something we can't control for, because we can't control the attitudes and behaviors of people. We can only influence them to some degree. What we can control is the law, and law enforcement response. 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…

> The actions of the neighbor is something we can't control for, because we can't control the attitudes and behaviors of people. We can only influence them to some degree.

I agree, but this is perfectly consistent with what I said. Not every adult meets the requirements for an adult citizen in a civil society. That doesn't mean those requirements don't exist.

> What we can control is the law, and law enforcement response.

To the extent this is true, it does not preclude also expecting adult citizens to be reasonable. Indeed, the more we can count on that, the less people will feel the need to invoke the law. Which makes it much easier to make the law more reasonable.

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

#447
post #152
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I agree that we've destroyed all of the third spaces. It's also important to point that those that didn't literally get razed to the ground have been monetized. There are very few third spaces left that are free to engage with. There's either the real threat of "buy something or get out," or the social expectation to do so. This impacts teens especially so because their money must either come from their parents ie: "Mom can I have five dollars to spend on going to with ?" which is an impediment to spending real relationship building time with peers or they have to get a job to earn such money which precludes them from going out in the first place.

As a footnote: Yes, I know this seems fairly reductive and there's a lot of nuance left on the table. A single counter example won't change my mind because I'm talking about tendencies instead of black or white expression.

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

#448

> 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…

Youtube keeps suggesting https://www.youtube.com/@AuditTheAudit to me. In many of the videos the officers just make up what they think the law is. Just a warning, more than a few of the videos on AuditTheAudit are infuriating due to the level of arrogance, incompetence, negligence, and abuse of authority displayed. But, it is nice that there is a way to air this dirty laundry in public. As GI Joe says, "Knowing is ha…

>As GI Joe says, "Knowing is half the battle".

Not really disagreeing (and this really is a fantastic channel), but in wellness circles this is called the "GI Joe Fallacy"[1]. The idea being that knowing about something really is a tiny part of actually solving it. Most people are very aware of their problems, and simple awareness isn't very helpful.

To put it in more startup-y terms, success comes from 1% ideas and 99% execution.

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

#449
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its funny, because I see young-ish kids alone or in small groups walking around all the time in Brooklyn. Between 2:30 and 4:00 PM the sidewalks around my apartment are choked with unaccompanied kids.

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.

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

#450
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

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.

Totally agree, is there a way to tag a HN manager to get the comment deleted?
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