Arrest the passerby for wasting police time and resources
The onlooker called the police because they observed a child walking alone along a rural highway with no shoulder or sidewalk. There’s plenty of very reportable reasons for a child to be walking alone along the highway and plenty of perfectly normal reasons for that to happen
Honestly the police and prosecutor are the only ones who are in the wrong. The police should have simply stopped by the boy to make sure all was well, give them a ride home if possible, and notify the parents so they can take it from there. Charging the parent with Reckless Conduct for this incident is absolutely bonkers
@Trainguyrom @firewyre Better idea for people who observe a child walking where there’s no sidewalk and think it’s a problem: call the damned transportation department and demand proper infrastructure!
Then whip him on the public square.
Two things. One : that is ridiculous overreach.
Two : we shouldn’t accept a society so dangerous our kids can’t explore and have fun…
It’s not dangerous, as long as you manage to evade the police.
Your second point is really difficult for me as a parent with a new kid. Feels like we “know” so much more about serial killers / bad things that happen to kids that we’re terrified of letting them do anything.
Of course in this case it would have been trivially solved by the city just adding sidewalks, but that feels like another point here.
Of course in this case it would have been trivially solved by the city just adding sidewalks, but that feels like another point here
It sounds like the family lives just outside of city limits of a small town, so a sidewalk or trail would involve significant investment for the benefit of very few people. I think in this instance its not actually an infrastructure problem but simply a challenge of where some people choose to live.
When you choose to live outside of town you’re specifically choosing to always drive everywhere, and to receive no city services at all, and you’re subjecting your kids who lack the same freedoms that you do to the same choices. Plenty of people choose the individualism of not receiving city services in exchange for being alone in the woods
As much as I’d love a world where everyone has a sidewalk, once you’re out in the sticks it just becomes really hard to make sense to put a trail or sidewalk there. Especially because even if you imagine a world where every town is connected together by a dedicated cycle trail, said trail would ideally not run directly parallel to the noisy highway
heard someone say “these kids will never have a summer like ‘85” and that frustrates me. I remember as a kid exploring the whole town with my friends. Predators or dangerous people was not so common. We should work towards getting that high trust society back. The type where we can leave our doors unlocked at night…
Probably unrealistic in cities!
@zululove @bignate31 Not at all. Kids in cities typically have a lot more freedom than kids in suburbs and crime rates are far lower now than they were in the 80s. The only differences are the car-dominance of the urban form and the climate of fear which is constantly stoked by politicians, tv, and social media.
That’s good parenting, most definitely a good instinct to have.
Instead of building sidewalks, they arrest working moms, amazing.
Makes me angry that removing the ability for self-sufficiency – even just walking alone for errands – only furthers dystopia.
Why most American GenXers thump their chests about being turn-key kids… yet they should be opposing such overreach.
Of course in the US
When I was a kid in the 60s, during the school year, I walked a mile to and from school, starting at age 5.
On weekends or summers, I would eat breakfast, jump on my bike, and not be back until dinner at 5 (The Rule). I had no ID, no money, no phone, no watch, no water, no food, nothing. And my mom had no idea where I was, either.
If I got thirsty, I’d knock on a door, and ask for a glass of water, and always got one. If I needed to know what time it was, I’d ask someone. I got pretty good at judging the time of day by the setting sun, and could always get home before 5. I never felt unsafe, as long as I could avoid the Robolotto brothers.
My mother sent me to the corner store for milk when I was 6. Should I call the cops now and stool her out?
I grew up in a small town, by the time i was 6 or 7 i did groceries with my bike. When i was 10 we went pretty much everywhere by bus, bike, inline skates or by foot. The next city was like 10km away where we would traverse all the time. My mom should be in Auschwitz i guess.
Yeah, I definitely walked further than a mile everyday to and from school from 7-14. Sketchiest thing was the old dude handing out those mini Bibles trying to indoctrinate children and shitty drivers.
I never thought rural Georgia would be so car-brained about it but I guess I’m not surprised
Was it a dangerous walk? This, too, was subjective. The prosecutor, Emma Harper, certainly thought so. Later, in a phone call to Patterson’s attorney, David DeLugas, which DeLugas legally recorded and shared with CNN, the prosecutor called it “a busy highway with no sidewalk” and said, “It’s not walkable. It’s not safe … That’s not a thing that you do here. Because you’re gonna get hit by a car.”
Cars are dangerous - I know, let’s arrest people who don’t use them!
When I was 7, I would mow a lawn for 10$ and then ride my bike to a movie rental store and rent video games. It was about 5 miles away.
When I was 8 or so, I rode the subway to the end of the line and back just for fun…
this is from december and she has a gofundme for her legal defense apparently (might be : https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-parentsusas-fight-for-brits-parental-rights )
Why don’t kids go outside anymore?
Wait I thought CNN was trash, this was a good article.
“I stopped to ask him if he was okay and he needed help, and he lied, and said that his mother works here at the post office,” the caller said. “And then he just took off away from me.”
Which is exactly that id want my kids to do, if some random person pulled up next to them in a vehicle. When in doubt get the fuck out of there
Yeah. Literally a smart kid. Quick thinking.
Sounds like he was taught about stranger danger. Good parenting.
You lot really hate walking don’t you
I used to walk to my elementary school (roughly ages 5-10) which was a mile away. Lots of kids in my town walked to school.
I drive by a school to go to the gym in the morning. There are tons of kids that STILL walk to school. I think these Karen cases are few and far between.
The elementary and high schools in my neighborhood pay the students if they walk rather than take the bus, as both a costsaving and environmental measure. It’s a pittance sure, but in a country of 350 million people its extremely easy to find singular examples of any behavior to further any narrative. This article would have a point were it an examination of broad trends, but one example of the cops being the cops does hardly a well-founded narrative weave…
Different kid who was killed walking across a difficult-to-cross street resulted in the parents, not the driver, being charged with manslaughter for letting their kid walk outside.
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Crime is at a 50 year low across the entire country.
Crime is now institutionalized.
Source: White House, Congress, Supreme Court, SEC, FTC, Red States, Police, Prisons etc…
Hysteria about crime is at a historical high.
It’s pretty much a nothing burger that before the internet and instant world wide access few karens would know about.
When it comes to “news” these days, the more outrageous and rare the story the better. Got to keep the readership outraged for those eyeballs…
It still has a chilling effect, though. I’m in Georgia and I restrict what my kids would do more than I otherwise would for fear of some Karen cop persecuting me for no fucking reason.
Brit here. It was .5 miles to my primary school and .8 miles to my secondary school, and I walked it every day from age 5 to age 16.
Uphill both ways
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Etan_Patz
This was the case that really changed the way kids were treated in the US.
Before this, it was normal for kids to travel great distances on their own.
Laws are waayy to often based on single cases of something. Same with the whole “dont microwave your cat” stuff. So many have to suffer because some idiots or a random case of crazy or bad luck.
Yeah, I’m still angry that I’m not allowed to microwave my cat, just because some idiot back in the days used the Popcorn program for that instead of the Feline & Furry program.
Any law named after a victim is a shit law.
Any law named after a victim is a shit law.
Ah yes, how dare Kari demand we check notes call 911 without pressing remembering which number is required to dial out.
https://www.911.gov/issues/legislation-and-policy/kari-s-law-and-ray-baum-s-act/
That bitch…
And may have helped launch it, but no one did more to further it than the father of kidnapped child Adam Walsh.
Adam’s father, John Walsh, became an advocate for victims of violent crimes and is the host of the television program America’s Most Wanted. He has also hosted The Hunt with John Walsh and In Pursuit with John Walsh.[3] Convicted serial killer Ottis Toole confessed to Adam’s murder, but was never convicted of the crime because evidence was reportedly lost and Toole later recanted his confession. Toole died in prison of liver failure on September 15, 1996.[4] No new evidence has come to light since then, and police announced in December 2008 that the Walsh case was closed and that they were satisfied that Toole was the killer.
That’s funny.
1 kid goes missing, all of America changes how they act.
100s of kids die in school shootings, America does nothing.
This is very odd for US to not return to normalcy.
Just read this as never heard the name, the guys conviction was overturned, I mean is America turning in the land of the free pedo? Wtf?
A federal appeals court on Monday ordered that a man convicted in the disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 should receive a new trial or be released.
That’s not what overturned means. He’s not been released, there was apparently conduct in the trail that a superior court ruled merits revisiting it - if the lower court decides to be snitty about it then he potentially could be released, but that’s extremely rare.
This is the way the court system should work (though it should be a whole lot faster…), reviewing previous convictions repeatedly to ensure that the results were fair and correct.
It’s the technicalities of the legal process. Cops knew he did it, but fucked up and bungled the case by losing the evidence that would have seen him have the judge throw the book at him. It didn’t happen because courts are lenient on murdering chomos, it happened because the PD involved in the case were fucking halfwits. Also, it’s not “turning into” anything, John Walsh started hosting America’s Most Wanted in the early 90’s - his son Adam was murdered before then, these events are decades old.
Once again the rest of the world wonders how a whole country can be so… unreal
