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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

#521

Post by Sharlin »

pdpi wrote: post #458
babypuncher wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people take this to mean "laws bad" when in reality I think LBJ was saying to be careful in how you craft your laws so you can prevent this kind of abuse.

If you adapted it for software, it's almost the same as saying "don't focus too much on the happy path, make sure you limit the blast radius for the failures cases", which just sounds like sensible advice. You really have to take the adversarial mindset when thinking about large scale systems like this, to make sense of how they can break.

Thinking about the failure modes is the default mindset of a traditional engineer. Unfortunately software engineers in general are entirely too focused on the happy path and nothing else.

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

#522

Post by TulliusCicero »

fluidcruft wrote: post #354
dragonwriter wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That was only while they investigated (which I'm fine with). I’m not; there should be some reasonable basis for this level of intrusion, which there was not (note that the facts of the report were true and confirmed and still did not violate family law that CPS enforces; this isn't a case where someone reported something which would have warranted CPS intervention if confirmed.)

How could CPS possibly know that before they investigate?

So you think it's fine for CPS to force these measures onto a parent just off of random accusations?

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

#523

Post by Zvez »

ddalex wrote: post #511
zhdc1 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My son is expected to walk to and from school without parental support once he starts kindergarten. We don't live in the states.

Switzerland ? One of the places that is somewhat normal...

actually this is more than normal in all 3rd world countries. Starting from 6-7 years most kids walk to/from school on their own.

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

#524

Post by pessimizer »

bhelkey wrote: post #478
pessimizer wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the fault of the nosey neighbor Only in the most unproductive way. You're not going to fix the problem by exterminating all nosy neighbors. If your new roof leaks when it rains, it's not the rain's fault, blame it on the person who builds roofs ignoring the unavoidable fact that rain will eventually fall.

> 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. I have no problem blaming this behavior. To be clear, it would not be productive to blame only the neighbor.

That woman has no certification or authority to decide whether a child is in danger, and the fact that the kid was a block away from home is not some undeniable indicator that he wasn't.

That woman has a civic responsibility to call authorities when she's worried about the welfare of a child. The authorities have a responsibility to be competent. The woman fulfilled her responsibility, the entire justice system failed. If the police and justice system aren't expected to have or use any expertise beyond some random concerned chick, they're not only failures, but useless. Lone individuals shouldn't be held to a higher standard than these people that we vest with the authority to make these decisions.

If anything, it would be nice if the police would have explained to her, when she called, the minimum standards for intervention when suspecting that a child is in danger. The reason they can't is because they don't have any.

Instead, it's somehow super-important to focus on and villainize this random concerned busybody. It's not important, and that woman could have been a hero for reporting on any other day (or with a legitimate justice system.)

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

#525

Post by manholio »

yunwal wrote: post #371
diydsp wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recursive problem if that parents are young: a 2 year old in public with its 20 year old father could be required to have a 50 year old present at all times.

50 year olds are getting on the old side. Could easily be taken down by an in-shape mid-20s person. Best solution is for everyone to just travel with their own pack of trained wolves.

An unsupervised pack of wolves could always be attacked by a bear or hunted down by mistake, a clear case of animal negligence. Wolves should be accompanied at all times by armed midgets.

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

#526

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

pessimizer wrote: post #427
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This strikes me as crazy. Every interaction with any human or inanimate object bears the risk of death, it's just so low it's not worth thinking about it. U.S. police kill about ~1000 people per year, and the vast majority of those aren't at all questionable. If there are 330,000,000 people in the U.S., that's 0.000303% of the population per year. Each person has, on average, maybe 10 contentious police interactions…

> So, if you're young, black, male, and running around Chicago I did this without the drugs and guns part, and had guns drawn on me three times growing up in Chicago for the crime of walking. If I had been killed, I'm sure it would have been coded in a way for you not to see it as a problem.

My point is exactly that your experience is very unusual

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

#527

Post by trgn »

klipt wrote: post #281
bhelkey wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Reasonable Childhood Independence law that Texas passed in 2021 ... clarifies that parents are allowed to let their kids engage in independent activities as long as they aren't putting them in serious, likely danger. The police did not enforce…

> Unfortunately, HB567 amended only family law, not criminal law. This meant the cops were still free to punish Wallace. Legislators failed to change the criminal law.

but serious question, how does this violate criminal law?

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

#529

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Sharlin wrote: post #521
pdpi wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you adapted it for software, it's almost the same as saying "don't focus too much on the happy path, make sure you limit the blast radius for the failures cases", which just sounds like sensible advice. You really have to take the adversarial mindset when thinking about large scale systems like this, to make sense of how they can break.

Thinking about the failure modes is the default mindset of a traditional engineer. Unfortunately software engineers in general are entirely too focused on the happy path and nothing else.

Not me.

When I write software, every line of code is accompanied by the thought "I'm a blackhat hacker, with execution thread. How do I leverage this line of code?"

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

#530

Post by necovek »

kelnos wrote: post #334
pessimizer wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the fault of the nosey neighbor Only in the most unproductive way. You're not going to fix the problem by exterminating all nosy neighbors. If your new roof leaks when it rains, it's not the rain's fault, blame it on the person who builds roofs ignoring the unavoidable fact that rain will eventually fall.

Right: what do we care about more, ideals or outcomes? Certainly we don't want to be doing immoral or unethical things to achieve the outcomes we want, but sometimes the ideal is just not particularly achievable. In this case, we want to avoid situations where parents are punished for their entirely reasonable childcare decisions. We're never going to be able to eliminate all ignorant busybody neighbors; that's just…

> So the law needs to be structured (and law enforcement trained) to ensure nosy neighbors can't cause damage like this.

Let's take this a bit further. We are never going to be able to eliminate all ignorant law enforcement regardless of training, that's just not realistic. Or prosecutors. Or...

I mean, this is a case in point (all of them were dumb or unwilling to admit to error in judgement), and I am sure you've seen plenty yourself: I don't know a single person who hasn't first-handedly experienced a dumb police officer (not saying they all are, but some certainly are).

If we accept that we'll never get everyone to be perfect, we should accept that we rely on everyone to not be dumb. It starts with your neighbour and you.

If I was the parent, I'd include the neighbour in my damages (emotional, reputational and lost income) suit along with the police and all the other institutions that didn't put a stop to this. Provided the parents can win anything in court, which I am not even sure about.

If the neighbour was really worried, they could have accompanied the kid to the house and had a chat with the parents.

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