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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
#532No post body was provided.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I think the element missing here is that these "safety plans" tend to be "voluntary."
It's the CPS equivalent of "let me in your house or else I'll get a search warrant and things will go worse for you." If they had the evidence to get in the house, they wouldn't be standing there asking you, the police would be there with battering rams busting in.
It's a bluff. If there is actually evidence they need to remove the child they will go get the order from the judge and execute it. And if that evidence exists, in no way would anyone in their right mind let you keep the kid by signing a "safety plan" to pretty please keep grandma and grandma around, who are not in any way credentialled/vetted to host supervised visitation.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#534Earlier 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...
Also normal in germany. At least for elementary school (which is after kindergarden). My guess would be that it's normal in other european countries.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 faile…
That woman is dumb. Authorities are indeed incompetent to pursue this further, but those two are unrelated. If either of those were not true, dumb thing would not have happened — as humans, we are all in this together, and it's all of our responsibility to do better. That neighbour included.
If she was worried about a child, she should have accompanied them home.
Next time, she'll send police over when a kid can't watch more TV (or go to a party, or eat more sweets, or...) and ends up crying her guts out: hey, she's worried about children's welfare. I would be having police at my door almost every other day with a neighbour like that.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
It sounds like you did the right thing, you were concerned and kept an eye on things. Calling the police would have been overkill and maybe wrecked this kids' family life (like what happened in the article). Other than that, I see no problem with approaching the kid and saying something like "hey, you can get hurt playing in the street, please take this to your backyard", or something like that. As long as you don't try and start a conversation it's not going to be weird. If you have a kid he may even know who you are already. All of the kids in my neighborhood know me as "Edward's dad", even though I wouldn't be able to pick most of them out of a lineup.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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 future. No, it would solidify that persons' belief that the people were bad people and embolden her to act more swiftly next time. Confrontation and escalation with swearing doesn't teach people a lesson…
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Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#538Earlier 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…
> "Fuck off. Don't talk to my son."
That's the worst response. It puts them in the defensive.
If there is any "good" way, it is to be incredibly obsequious and deferential. Most of all, these kind of people just need their tummy tickled. "Yes, ma'am, will take it into consideration next time, ma'am".
Works great with cops too. They totally love that shit.
If you can, you can then nudge in right direction. "Have you met little Timmy yet? He's such a sweet little scamp, always wanting to ride his bike like his poppy". "oh you live here, i love that spicebush in your front yard. we've wanted to plant one too".
We have a busybody neighbor, she's always calling code enforcement on neighbors. I'm just really sickly sweet with her, I loath every second of it, but I don't think now she'll ever call inspections on us since we now have an expectation to chat when we cross paths.
Anyway, it's hard, and there is no "win" here. But if there is an angle, the angle is to treat them like dumb, stupid babies.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#539I'm suspicious of the story, honestly. What are they leaving out? Searching for her name in google news, the Reason story is the only hit, and since this is the perfect piece to stoke their readers' engagement, I'm skeptical of their vetting. The GoFundMe was created back in September, and you would surely expect at least local news hits in google news by now.
This is bad logic. If it was real it would be on google applies only to conspicuous news stories that effect many people or happen to catch the spotlight. There are 338M of us here in the US. I'm sure for all of us there are events that are notable, terrible, extraordinary. People are in accidents, die, are wronged, fail, triumph and most of it never makes the news and isn't available on google. If I search for my ow…
Something that makes frontpage on Hackernews certainly should be newsworthy and not seeing other media or bloggers pick it up is a little surprising.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry, are we honestly entertaining this idea? I try to write measured, patient replies on this site, but holy crap, it's hard sometimes. Think about what you're proposing. You want me to drag my son, a kid who was little enough back then to still ride a bike with training wheels, into a tense argument between a weird lady, some scary-looking adults, and his parents who suddenly decided to lie through their teeth…
Nope it goes like this. Weird stranger wants to parent your kid, tell her to pound sand. They call the cops and portray you in the worst light possible, making thinly veiled insinuations that you are not providing a safe environment for your child. You don't know this person. A little old lady is unlikely to be a child molester statistically but it has happened. So when the cops knock on your door, maybe that's the c…
Yeah society is horrible and narcissistic, so lets just make it all worse.