When I was 8 I used to ride my bike all over town and was out from morning to evening on weekends. Are we really at the point where a half mile walk through the suburbs with sidewalk the whole way is considered dangerous?
Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
461–470 of 763 posts
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My children have had the cops called on them for playing in our front yard. Where do you live? Whenever I read these stories it feels like I live on a different planet from everyone else.
I live in a vast Californian suburb dominated by single family residences built in the 90s. The homes are priced around the median for the area. The residents are split about 50/50 politically and racially plural. The majority are married and earn ever so slightly below median income. It's about as average as you can get. Note: I looked up these stats to make sure I got them right. They are mostly at the voting preci…
Move to a sane state.
I live in the midwest, in a smaller town. You still see kids playing in the neighborhood and parks and running around. Kids walk and bike to school. Nobody would call the cops over a kid walking by himself unless he looked to be lost or in distress.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#463> 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…
> Child services had the family agree to a safety plan, which meant Wallace and her husband could not be alone with their kids for even a second. Their mothers—the children's grandmothers—had to visit and trade-off overnight stays in order to guarantee the parents were constantly supervised. After two weeks, child services closed Wallace's case, finding the complaint was unfounded. This is the fault of the nosey neig…
CPS dismissed the case.. it seems it's the police and/or district attorney that kept pushing it.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
The DA's role to win as many cases as they can. They only drop cases they don't think they can win. Threatening people with charges if they don't take plea deals is an easy way for them to win. That's what led to a news item last year of some immigrant truck driver getting over 100 years in prison (plus mandatory minimums) because he didn't take a plea deal after his breaks failed and he hit a car and killed some peo…
For anyone curious, the governor commuted his sentence in that case to 10 years, eligible for parole in 2026 [1]. It wasn't a simple accident though - it involved a great deal of negligence at the minimum. [1] https://www.fox29.com/news/truck-driver-rogel-aguilera-meder...
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Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I write software, I know that users will do dumb things and it is my responsibility to write my code in such a way that they can cause no damage. The legal system should have similar responsibilities. If citizens can report crimes, some citizens will incorrectly report non-crimes. If the legal system can't handle that, the that is entirely the fault of the legal system.
The legal system long ago worked around this - they allow virtually every person at every level to exercise "discretion." An officer can frequently choose how to handle an issue, a prosecutor can choose not to prosecute, etc. Occasionally, we see well meaning policies going astray - the "must arrest someone" domestic calls in jurisdictions are a contentious-but-great example. Sometimes calls get put in spuriously and…
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Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I never really understood this argument. It is true that _just_ knowing isn't enough, but, you're pretty limited in what you can do if you don't know.
I guess my case falls apart when it comes to law enforcement. They don't know the law yet they're enforcing it.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#467It looks like a lot of the EU crowd have jumped in here with the usual US sucks, everything about the US is crazy. Just to give some perspective, I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia and the kids in my neighborhood are always outside, no parents in sight, riding their bikes around, going down to the creek etc... Same was true when I lived in upstate NY. The US is a huge country and comparing Texas to other parts is somewhat like comparing France to Poland.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> smile politely all the way to avoid escalating. That attitude, while perhaps more comfortable in some ways, just enables the sort of behaviour you encountered, and apparently disliked, from that woman. A blunt response like, "Fuck off. Don't talk to my son.", followed by walking away from her, may have been harsher and not particularly polite, but perhaps it'd cause a person like her to avoid such meddling in the f…
Or smile politely yourself, say "thanks for your concern" and walk away.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#469Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#470ah yes, the limited government/personal responsibility state of Texas