This is creepy having to write this. It reminds me of the prisoner of war camp in north korea where prisoners of war were told to write essays criticizing their own position.
Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
631–640 of 763 posts
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#632insane that she chose to plead guilty, here's the Texas child endangerment law that the prosecution would've needed to prove... "Under Texas law child endangerment is "any act that exposes a child under the age of 15 to imminent risk of death, bodily harm or physical or mental impairment." The act may be intentional or reckless or may be considered criminally negligent behavior carried out by an act of omission. For…
And you've got to remember that neither the arresting officer's actions nor the DA's actions were objectively reasonable, so why make any assumptions about whether the jury's actions would be objectively reasonable?
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#633Earlier quoted context omitted.
The check and balance part isn't working. Any decent judge should see this lacks probable cause. But judges are not impartial and instead side with the DA/police by default.
DAs more than judges, since DAs need successful convictions on crimes important to their constituency to get re-elected, and they need police cooperation to get successful convictions. A judge may well throw this out on its merits, but the case has to progress far enough that a judge has the chance to consider it on its merits. A DA offering a plea deal "so you avoid risking jail time" is basically circumventing that…
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#634Earlier 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…
We live in Hong Kong and think that it's a great environment (albeit insanely expensive) to raise our one-year old child but heard the same reaction to friends and family. Some people get obsessed with the idea of safety and can't understand the value of freedom to explore, easy access to culture in the form of theatre, art, museums, ... Instead they only optimise for that single dimension of safety and are offended whenever someone challenges their obsession by making a different choice than them.
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#635Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. I let my kids walk about 0.5mi to the park and I'm more afraid of some nosey busy-body calling CPS on them than I am about traffic or kidnappers. When I was growing up in the 90s, I'd routinely bike many miles away from home and disappear for hours before I came home. Nowadays letting your kids do that is liable to get CPS called on you. How the heck did we end up here?!
>How the heck did we end up here?! In my view, America as a society became paranoid after 9/11. What you're seeing is a symptom of this. It isn't like this in other countries: kids walk around by themselves all the time.
I've been in one of the most rural county of West Virginia, i saw kids outside each time i left the "house".
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#636Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you think there’s nothing wrong with blowing through a school zone at 150mph? Speed limit laws are clearly flawed in many ways but there is a clear reason why they should exist.
Speed limits (in North America) are simply the 85th percentile speed of drivers on a specific type of road. The onus should be on the civil engineer who designed the road to make it physically impossible to go 150 in the first place - e.g. narrow/curved lanes, speed bumps, concrete bollards, trees on the sides, etc. If roads are actually designed properly, then speed limit laws are unnecessary because drivers will na…
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#637Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you think there’s nothing wrong with blowing through a school zone at 150mph? Speed limit laws are clearly flawed in many ways but there is a clear reason why they should exist.
> So you think there’s nothing wrong with blowing through a school zone at 150mph? I have said no such thing. Do you really believe that the law is the only thing that defines what's "wrong"? > Speed limit laws are clearly flawed in many ways but there is a clear reason why they should exist. No, what is clear is that the law should be written to penalize actual harm. Speed limit laws don't do that. They penalize peo…
Re: Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile
#638Earlier quoted context omitted.
Investigating is one thing but it seems that they also punished them before starting their investigation.
It's pretty much required, for obvious reasons, for CPS to put mitigations in place for whatever they might be investigating. Mitigations often feel like punishments, for sure, with the key difference that they are only until the investigation is resolved.