<story><title>Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile</title><url>https://reason.com/2022/11/16/suburban-mom-jailed-handcuffed-cps-son-walk-home/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Mountain_Skies</author><text>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&amp;#x27;m accustomed to them being loud when they&amp;#x27;re out playing but this kid was alone, going out into the road, and just acting a bit weird. It wasn&amp;#x27;t a kid I knew so I couldn&amp;#x27;t call the parents but calling the police also seemed like a questionable thing to do. I&amp;#x27;m near a speed bump so cars generally go slow through here but there are other parts of the street when they often have more speed. I didn&amp;#x27;t want to approach him (all manner of trouble can come from an adult approaching a child they don&amp;#x27;t know), police seemed like overkill, but being out in the road, especially since he was walking away from the speed bump area, seemed potentially dangerous. Eventually he went into a house across the street five or six houses down which recently sold so probably is a new family to the neighborhood.&lt;p&gt;Still not sure what I should have done if he hadn&amp;#x27;t gone home or really if this is a problem waiting to happen. At his age I wandered much further from home and put myself in worse potential danger at times, though I probably never yelled at passing cars. No one ever called the police on me though there were a few times when an adult told me to stop doing whatever I was up to or go somewhere else.</text></item><item><author>pdonis</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Let&amp;#x27;s quickly drop the idea that this is the fault of nosey neighbors&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;No, let&amp;#x27;s not. According to the article, the neighbor who called the cops asked the boy where he lived, &amp;quot;verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless&amp;quot;. Excuse me? What decent neighbor calls the cops on a neighbor&amp;#x27;s kid walking just down the street from his own house?&lt;p&gt;I agree the law in question shouldn&amp;#x27;t even be on the books in the first place, but one of the things you&amp;#x27;re supposed to do as a neighbor is to understand that we have an insane legal system and not invoke it on one of your neighbors unless you really, really have to.</text></item><item><author>nineplay</author><text>&amp;gt; As they stood on her porch, the officers told Wallace that her son could have been kidnapped and sex trafficked. &amp;quot;&amp;#x27;You don&amp;#x27;t see much sex trafficking where you are, but where I patrol in downtown Waco, we do,&amp;#x27;&amp;quot; said one of the cops, according to Wallace&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;I still didn&amp;#x27;t know it was illegal and I said, &amp;#x27;I don&amp;#x27;t know,&amp;#x27;&amp;quot; says Wallace. &amp;quot;That&amp;#x27;s when the cop replied, &amp;#x27;Okay, I&amp;#x27;m going to have to arrest you.&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s quickly drop the idea that this is the fault of nosey neighbors, helicopter parents, soccer moms, or &amp;quot;Karens&amp;quot;.  This is 100% a justice department problem and anyone from the police to the district attorney could have nipped this nonsense in the bud.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hn_user2</author><text>Weird time to be alive when we are afraid to get within 10 feet of a kid a yell &amp;quot;HEY KID, GET OUT OF THE ROAD!&amp;quot;. And yet, totally understand.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile</title><url>https://reason.com/2022/11/16/suburban-mom-jailed-handcuffed-cps-son-walk-home/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Mountain_Skies</author><text>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&amp;#x27;m accustomed to them being loud when they&amp;#x27;re out playing but this kid was alone, going out into the road, and just acting a bit weird. It wasn&amp;#x27;t a kid I knew so I couldn&amp;#x27;t call the parents but calling the police also seemed like a questionable thing to do. I&amp;#x27;m near a speed bump so cars generally go slow through here but there are other parts of the street when they often have more speed. I didn&amp;#x27;t want to approach him (all manner of trouble can come from an adult approaching a child they don&amp;#x27;t know), police seemed like overkill, but being out in the road, especially since he was walking away from the speed bump area, seemed potentially dangerous. Eventually he went into a house across the street five or six houses down which recently sold so probably is a new family to the neighborhood.&lt;p&gt;Still not sure what I should have done if he hadn&amp;#x27;t gone home or really if this is a problem waiting to happen. At his age I wandered much further from home and put myself in worse potential danger at times, though I probably never yelled at passing cars. No one ever called the police on me though there were a few times when an adult told me to stop doing whatever I was up to or go somewhere else.</text></item><item><author>pdonis</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Let&amp;#x27;s quickly drop the idea that this is the fault of nosey neighbors&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;No, let&amp;#x27;s not. According to the article, the neighbor who called the cops asked the boy where he lived, &amp;quot;verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless&amp;quot;. Excuse me? What decent neighbor calls the cops on a neighbor&amp;#x27;s kid walking just down the street from his own house?&lt;p&gt;I agree the law in question shouldn&amp;#x27;t even be on the books in the first place, but one of the things you&amp;#x27;re supposed to do as a neighbor is to understand that we have an insane legal system and not invoke it on one of your neighbors unless you really, really have to.</text></item><item><author>nineplay</author><text>&amp;gt; As they stood on her porch, the officers told Wallace that her son could have been kidnapped and sex trafficked. &amp;quot;&amp;#x27;You don&amp;#x27;t see much sex trafficking where you are, but where I patrol in downtown Waco, we do,&amp;#x27;&amp;quot; said one of the cops, according to Wallace&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;I still didn&amp;#x27;t know it was illegal and I said, &amp;#x27;I don&amp;#x27;t know,&amp;#x27;&amp;quot; says Wallace. &amp;quot;That&amp;#x27;s when the cop replied, &amp;#x27;Okay, I&amp;#x27;m going to have to arrest you.&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s quickly drop the idea that this is the fault of nosey neighbors, helicopter parents, soccer moms, or &amp;quot;Karens&amp;quot;.  This is 100% a justice department problem and anyone from the police to the district attorney could have nipped this nonsense in the bud.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pdonis</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Still not sure what I should have done&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t know which house the kid belongs in, the first thing I would do is to find out. Start knocking on doors and asking if it&amp;#x27;s their kid.&lt;p&gt;Now that you &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; know, the obvious thing to do is to introduce yourself to the neighbors and describe what their kid was doing. They&amp;#x27;re new to the neighborhood so you can pitch it as letting them know that there are a lot of passing cars at that point and kids should be aware of the danger.</text></comment>