Comment by indrora
7 months ago
In the US at least, we’re at a point where letting your kids play in your yard is enough to get arrested and jailed with child endangerment. Within the last 30 days, a woman has been arrested and charged with child endangerment for the crime of… letting her child walk to the store [1] and others have been jailed for letting their child play outside [2].
So what do you do to entertain children? Use what you have. Dunk them on the internet via YouTube first and then let them free range because you’re tired and can’t give a fuck anymore.
^1 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/Family/mom-arrested-after-son... ^2 https://www.aol.com/news/2015-12-03-woman-gets-arrested-for-...
My wife and I had CPS called on us (in Texas, no less) because I had some construction leftovers inside my fence, waiting to be taken to the dump, and my neighbor was concerned that my kids would be hurt playing around it.
We were interviewed, they found there were no issues, and the case was dropped. Very stressful experience, though.
And for what? I grew up on a farm in Nebraska. We had endless fields and roads around us to explore. The only off-limits area was an abandoned hog confinement, which to be fair, absolutely could have killed us (by falling into the open trench of porcine waste) – naturally, we still went there.
I know that reeks of survivor bias, but given the length of time Homo sapiens have survived, I think it’s a reasonably safe assumption that kids, when left to their own devices, are unlikely to be seriously injured or killed. Though, that’s probably only true if they’ve been exposed to it gradually over time, and are aware of the risks.
In my experience most neighbor complaints are not about the complaint but rather about the neighbor and/or the neighbor relationship, especially if its the first approach to the "issue". To my understanding, the majority of complaints (to all form of neighbor complaints) are false and made by a small number of complainers.
However this doesn't mean the government should not act. An interview of a false complaint is a small cost to pay compared to not doing anything when there is a real problem. Most of the time those employed to do the investigation known to look for signs of false reports and neighbor conflicts in order to filter them out, but at the same time they do need to make sure as to not miss-classify a real complaint.
Thanks, I needed that. In a thread full of people criticising UK law, I am very happy to have a crazy US example to make me feel better.
Reading that article, it seems that the mom was arrested because the cops wanted to. Someone called the cops for a child walking down the highway by themselves, and then the cops showed up and arrested her. Cops can arrest people for any reason practically, a lot of times because they just don't like you. I was thrown up against the back of a patrol car and searched when ordering chinese food late at night once. I don't see that she was charged by the prosecutor, or that the child was taken away.
The other link you have is neighbors that obviously dislike each other, and they told the cops the kid was in danger.
It is a very interesting counterpoint to the line throughout this discussion that the UK is some kind of oppressive state, yet you state here that in the US a cop can arrest people just because they want to. That would be an extreme edge case in the UK. Constitutional freedom of speech, and a paramilitary police force that can ignore the law.
Yeah it sucks. The police are pretty unaccountable due to their local nature and their unions. When people try to do something about it they go on 'soft strike' and refuse to enforce basic laws in retaliation.
Are kids in the US even able to go to school on their own like ours still do in europe?
You don't think there is some half way point between forcing them to stay inside and letting a 4 year old, wander 40m away with no supervision.
4 year old was playing in gated garden. Not like he was roaming downtown. I would say that this is very sad inability to communicate with your neighbours, when you call cops instead of just letting parents of kid know that there might be some dangers.