Hacker News Reader

Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it either. I've had the police called three times on my 3rd grade son because he has been playing in our front yard. We live in a bland Californian suburban neighborhood built in the 1990s. He doesn't get outside much anymore. The plastic holds we put on the tree in the front go unused - bleached by the 258 beautiful sunny days we have each year. Instead he's learned to occupy his time on screens, but I hear people complain about that too.

View on HN

I want to know what happened to the people calling the police. There needs to be consequences for people who call the cops on someone to falsely report a crime. Start holding people accountable for their nosiness and people will start minding their own business. An encounter gone wrong with our militarized police can end an innocent life, result in significant injury, cause them to lose their job, and needlessly involve them in the expensive legal system. People ought to err on the side of not inflicting this on each other unless it's obvious that urgent violent intervention is necessary.

Brah you're not even allowed to know who called CPS on you. It's anonymous and it's illegal for them to tell you the identity of the caller.

Not only are there no consequences, but the system is set up to ensure that one can make any accusation they like, that CPS will be administratively required to investigate it, and that the pain will always be asymmetric. Also CPS investigations typically aren't 'criminal' investigations so it's doubtful you could argue that any false accusations as 'falsely reporting a crime.' You may be told that it's not a criminal but child welfare case.

It's practically the perfect system for a vindictive neighbor / ex-spouse / whatever.

You have no reason to suspect thay anyone reported a crime. Just that a child was reported alone outside.

And why is "child alone outside" something that needs to be reported to the police? People calling 911 with such bullshit should be fined for unnecessarily blocking the line for those with real emergencies.

Weird. I live in California and kids including my own, roam all around the neighborhood at that age. Never heard of the police being called.

There's a pair of kids that roam around our neighborhood looking for bugs and lizards and just generally having an adventure.

It's a safe neighborhood and my first instinct was, "Why don't those parents monitor their children" but then I thought for a minute and remembered my own childhood where me and my brothers would walk to the park, look for worms, ride our bikes, go on adventures.

Those kids are welcome to look for bugs and lizards now, everyone keeps an eye out for them, one fell and scrapped his knee and was crying outside our house so I went to check on him and carried him back to his house to get cleaned up. My wife is worried we will get sued at some point if they get injured on our property, but I guess that's the risk I'll have to take so that 2 kids can just play outside and have fun.

I hate to say this, but having lived in a place with a lot of cultural diversity:

1) If a little black boy or girl came along I felt fine fixing their bicycle or whatever.

2) If a poor looking white kid I felt fine that their parents wouldn't accuse me of some bullshit if they were on my property or whatever.

3) Middle class or better seeming white kids. No fucking chance in hell. Won't talk to them. Won't willingly let them on my property. Won't engage or look at them. Scared to hell parents will accuse me of something or sue.

I apply the same heuristic to the adults.

Engaging children can be nourishing to the soul of those who enjoy it. But the calculus is definitely different from adults.

From a cold calculating standpoint, engaging an affluent adult can come with significant upsides: jobs, access to political power, commerce, international interface, mobility. An affluent adult can fuck you in a lot of ways, but you can also trade with them in ways that can really help you.

On the other hand, the relationship with children is asymmetric. A poor / minority child isn't going to offer you anything (from a selfish viewpoint), but neither is an affluent one. However an affluent family can absolutely crush you if they misinterpret some engagement with their children. The poor / minority family may be less likely to have the power to make a misunderstanding turn into a significant legal hassle for you. Therefore the calculus for engaging an affluent child look pretty bad, while that of engaging a poor child look more like neutral.

For adults I find it more of a wash, with the upsides typically higher than the downsides for engaging most any sane adult.

I should have said "basically the same heuristic"

I'm well aware of the benefits of having people with resources on good terms with me.

A child of a rich parent might marry your poor child.

This is wild.

This is called discrimination. But it's on to do it bevause the group being targeted are affluent whites.

Yes I discriminate.

Lets assume poors/minorities are equally as likely as anyone else to accuse you of something improperly (although that's probably a poor assumption, as those of higher social class tend to have better access or confidence to access formal government systems, especially when you consider things like illegal immigrants probably won't approach police under any conditions).

Now imagine thye go to police, or to the court. Which parents do you think garners the best odds and rapport with the legal and enforcement systems in the US:

1) The black factory workers

2) White single mom in the trailer park.

3) White business owner of the local dentist office.

The legal system discriminates. Then I pick to minimize my chances of being the victim of a discriminating legal system. Sadly there's not much chance the cops are going to believe the black factory worker or trailer park mom in the place I lived, false accusation or no. Hell in that same city they shoot black guys just for having a CCW and telling the cops they're legally carrying. I simply had nothing to worry about.

The axiom that the rich tend to get away with more in the US is sadly a true one. The other end of that is that the rich also tend to be able to garner much more social capital to pursue claims against you, whether they are true or not. My fear is not so much the false claims alone (which can come from anyone of any race/class), but people who may make a false claim and also be on the upper end of the spectrum of holder of social capital to actually execute that claim.

My risk tolerance being what it is, I could choose to ignore ALL children and thus not discriminate. Instead I choose to discriminate and will engage children if I think that someone who makes some bogus claim won't be taken seriously by the justice system. If the justice system / police treated poor blacks as well as affluent whites, I would choose to not engage children at all ever. If this makes me a bad person, so be it, but it's a measured response to the sad realities we live in.

Discriminations original meaning is to tell the difference between things. Op is recognising the difference between things that are unlikely to cause them a problem, and things that are going to cause them a problem. This is just common sense actually, though in the world of wokeness plain common sense is not common enough.

Don't worry about getting sued. That's what your renters or homeowners insurance is for.

When you get sued, your premiums go up. So, yeah, you should worry about that.

I'm guessing you are in a tract home area with HOA? Some folks in these neighborhoods are such control freaks.

absolutely. HOAs bring out the worst in humanity.

We were house-hunting. At one house, we were there just a couple minutes when an older man started knocking at the door. The realtor answered, and they guy started talking about how he was some muckety-muck in the local HOA, and we were parked partly off the driveway in the gravel, and had to move our car.

We said we were just inspecting the house, and would be gone in ten minutes, but he just kept repeating that we were breaking the rules, and needed to move our car over.

The realtor looked at us and said "ok, you're not interested in this place, right?" "Nope".

I’ve witnessed a neighbor scream bloody murder at a pair of teenage boys for using the pool, because the age limit is 16 and these boys were only 13. Quite the offense. The same man will speed around every speed bump in the neighborhood, swerving into the parking spaces narrowly dodging parked cars and, on occasion, pedestrians and pets.

Retired carpetbaggers with nothing to do and no check-and-balance to their behavior. Ever since that fateful day I’ve pondered just how to setup an HOA to counter such behavior.

There is likely a bylaws provision for amending the bylaws. It may take a bit of politicking and organizing, but if everyone indeed dislikes this person, there's a chance someone could succeed in amending them to counter this behavior, and that person could be you.

If you live there, run for the HOA board next time they have elections. Get the rules changed.

That's just grumpy old man syndrome. My dad had it. My neighbor has it too - our neighborhood doesn't have an HOA, but he still loves to do all sorts of goofy stuff, including put traffic cones on the street parking infront of his house.

I guess the problem with HOAs is they empower these sorts of people with authority.

Tract homes, but no HOA in my neighborhood. There is a very HOA-vibe in my city, however, if that makes sense. There is a type.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com