Hacker News Reader

Comment by kurisufag | Hacker News Reader

>A woman one block away had called the cops to report a boy walking outside alone. That lady had actually asked Aiden where he lived, verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless. The cops picked up Aiden on his own block.

this is the real problem here. who in their right mind calls the cops on a kid walking around his own neighborhood?

View on HN

> who in their right mind calls the cops on a kid walking around his own neighborhood?

I wish I knew. My children have had the cops called on them for playing in our front yard. I wish they could spend their afternoons climbing trees and playing in the grass like I did growing up, but there's a group of people who see children playing outside of direct parent supervision as a categorically dangerous activity.

I'm always struck when I take my kids to school and see the high schoolers gathered around waiting for their bus to pick them up. You wouldn't even know they exist otherwise - there's no other signs of their existence, no groups of them playing at the park, no sounds of games in the streets, no hoots or hollers from down the block - just nothing, silence. Each house is an island and each teen a castaway from 4pm when they get home to 7am when they leave for school, severed from the neighborhood and each other while the same folks say, "How come kids don't play outside anymore?"

This, unfortunately, mimics my experiences. No idea when or how it happened, but it is noticeable

Could it be the deluge of televised fear-inducing content ? A great deal anxiety feeds on this distorted view of "what's happening".

But go and have a walk. What do you see "happening" ? nothing.

In Switzerland you'd get called by the teacher if you don't let your kid walk by itself to kindergarten, because independence and learning and all.

We just moved to Sweden from Missouri; yesterday I picked up our 3yo from daycare and had this exchange:

Kid: <Happily playing with clay>

Teacher: Oh, by the way, he fell out of a small tree today, he was climbing and fell, so he may have a small bruise, just so you are aware

Me: Oh ok. What tree?

Teacher: Oh we took them to <forest 5 miles from daycare> and grilled hot dogs today!

Kid: I found a snail!

God! This is so AWESOME!!! Freedom

I have visited nurseries that don't let kids go out to the playground when it rains... in the UK! I suspect some of my child classmates were Gremlins.

Wednesday is forest trip day, weather schmeather. Once after a stormy Wednesday the kindergarten stayed closed for the rest of the week as most of the involved - kids and educators - got a cold. Still Switzerland yes.

LOL. We've got Gremlins here in Belgrade, Serbia too.

But in my kid's preschool (for 5-6 year olds), when they were presenting a plan for this year and how they'll be crossing the street to another of their buildings for a few hours, one of the parents was worried they'll do that even if it rains or snows!

When asked how will they bring their kid to preschool not dressed for the elements, it was (not-surprisingly) "by car". I guess going outside is limited to sunny weather for their kids!

To be fair I have nothing against this especially in kindergarten's muddy garden, everything will be completely dirty and kids wet, some of them may not have change and even in free time I am not really fan of playing outside in rain, everything is slipper, easy to fall down and make yourself dirty or hurt yourself when climbing on slippery stuff. I don't mind if they go for walk in waterproof stuff in rain.

Have you seen the open recess space ? ( kids playing in a non enclosed area, just delimited with poles )

How did they get to that forest 5 miles away?

The city has buses specifically equipped for small kids / toddlers, which the various daycares take turns using

Well, part of the problem is our infrastructure choices over the past many decades. When you build suburbs that are very isolated from places you need to go and then need to drive to literally everything you do, nearly everyone starts viewing normal activities like walking to a grocery store as abnormal. As a result, kids can’t actually go anywhere until they turn 16 and get a car. :/

There are a lot of excellent videos about this sad problem, like this: https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw

But at the end of the day, when it’s not actually possible to be independent every day, you just loose this culture. And countries that made different infrastructure and development decisions 6 decades ago are in a much better place today — it doesn’t have to be this way.

I think this is a very important point. City planning/the space we live in is basically presetting the architecture of our daily life.

Of the high school and jr high kids I know, for most of them their life is on their phone. It doesn't cover that age group but I thought this graph was pretty interesting:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1310218/time-spent-using...

Generally the younger you are the more likely you are to be a heavy user of your phone. There is no data for it but I would expect that high school and jr high kids are probably even higher users than 18 - 34.

Because what else there's left to do? Getting your family arrested for playing in the front yard or walking to your friend or hanging in a parking lot? So we destroyed all fun activities then we're still complaining they don't do any fun activities?

I agree that we've destroyed all of the third spaces. It's also important to point that those that didn't literally get razed to the ground have been monetized. There are very few third spaces left that are free to engage with. There's either the real threat of "buy something or get out," or the social expectation to do so. This impacts teens especially so because their money must either come from their parents ie: "Mom can I have five dollars to spend on going to <place> with <friend>?" which is an impediment to spending real relationship building time with peers or they have to get a job to earn such money which precludes them from going out in the first place.

As a footnote: Yes, I know this seems fairly reductive and there's a lot of nuance left on the table. A single counter example won't change my mind because I'm talking about tendencies instead of black or white expression.

Yeah no shit. There are numerous videos on Instagram of teens literally being physically assaulted by 50-70 year old "adults" for skateboarding.

Is there some type of penalty/law for intentionally using the police to harass people?

"Abuse of emergency services," but this isn't that.

Sounds exactly like that.

This is a serious worry of mine. I often let my elementary kids walk home from school by themselves because we live close enough and they have good sense around what little traffic there is. But I always worry that someone will throw a fit about it. I worry about that a LOT more than kidnappers.

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 think it's the suburbs effect.

I've been in one of the most rural county of West Virginia, i saw kids outside each time i left the "house".

If it's the suburbs effect, then it's been very slow to come to this point, because America has had subdivisions since the 1950s. Back in the 80s and 90s, what we're reading about here never happened.

Also, most other western countries have been suburbanised just as long and don't have this madness.

> In my view, America as a society became paranoid after 9/11.

Oh, it was on this track well before 9/11. Satanic Panic and Stranger Danger as concepts were there long before terrorist attacks on American soil, for a lot longer duration, and were largely explicitly about the dangers to children.

I don't know how accurate it is, but an FBI investigator by the name of Ken Lanning links Satanic Panic to the development of X-Rays and the discovery by doctors of evidence of rampant child abuse.[1] The idea being that people just couldn't accept that kids were being abused at such high rates at home, therefore there must be this secretive "other" harming the children.

People have been primed by the media to be this paranoid for a long time, because it gets attention.

[1]: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/satanic-panic

My son is expected to walk to and from school without parental support once he starts kindergarten.

We don't live in the states.

Switzerland ? One of the places that is somewhat normal...

actually this is more than normal in all 3rd world countries. Starting from 6-7 years most kids walk to/from school on their own.

> in all 3rd world countries

Not true.

Yes, the poverty stricken parents have all the time in the world to walk their kids around all day. /s

They'd be lucky to even have two live parents and in the picture.

You have some really deep knowledge of what 3rd world countries are like.

Please continue and tell me more about the topic.

I'd go even that far that 7-9 yo kids in Vietnam, Laos or Thailand already ride motorbike (scooter) at that age, I crashed because of them once in Laos (on the way to Plain of jars), just suddenly stopped in front of me on dusty road, I stopped as well, but sadly I had passenger behind me who balanced in other direction, so we flipped to side when bike slipped a bit.

Also normal in germany. At least for elementary school (which is after kindergarden). My guess would be that it's normal in other european countries.

Heck I was riding the U-bahn at age 11

I grew up on the countryside. Elementary school was in a different town. I had to walk 500m to the bus station and then take the school bus each day at age 7. At age 11 it was then secondary school, which included a longer walk to a different bus station and taking a public bus instead of a pure school bus.

Yeah that blew me away when I was stationed (GI) in Frankfurt, all the kids riding the trains and streetcars to school.

My kids, ages 8 and 6 walk 2 km home from school on their own. New Zealand, largest city. It's definitely fairly normal here.

It's hard to fathom that this could be considered illegal.

Do you do a school walking train? If not, be careful. Under 14 unsupervised, even walking home, is illegal. Some parents have started reporting this to schools in AKL and WEL.

This sounds insane.

What fun is it being a kid if you can't explore? That was the only really good part, otherwise childhood and adolescence is mostly suffering.

Wasted youth.

They only legislated this in the 80's directly after the US serial killer craze started. Golden State Killer, Son of Sam, Hillside Stranglers, Ted Bundy, etc.

Richard Ramirez became popular a few years after the law was enforced, and at that point it solidified for everyone "this was the right decision".

Many parents in the 90's let their kids walk home alone, and explore their neighbourhoods on their own.. And even today it's popular in rural areas. But the nature of where people live now is more related to cost of living and jobs, which everyone changes every few years - so nobody knows their neighbours or their community.

Now it's normal to shame parents who do this. And schools automatically notify the authorities if they're told about it.

Would kids get taken away from parents for this? Unlikely, legislation only pushes a $2,000 fine.

Yes, kids have been abducted in New Zealand. Yes, kids have been assaulted in New Zealand. It is a possibility.

I grew up in the Bay Area in the 90s and we were allowed to roam as free as we wanted. Sometimes we were a bit naughty but nothing too too crazy.

Everything is a possibility, it's all about the statistical probability of a bad outcome actually happening.

Someone could break into my house and murder me at any moment. I still don't wander around with a bat or a club because such events are sufficiently rare here in West Menlo Park.

When I was a kid, it seemed like adults were idiots by and large.

Now as I'm getting a bit more ahem, experienced, my perception is regressing back towards this hypothesis.

Why are the karens winning? :/

Very normal in Spain, too

Middle East.

Very normal in Japan. Kids that age routine take subways around Tokyo by themselves, ride bikes by themselves, etc.

As usual, America is the weird one, perhaps with some other Anglophone nations following suit.

Some of my kids 7yo classmates already walk to school ~1km in Prague by themselves in pairs, I guess alone it would be boring, personally I don't mind having at least morning walk to/from school since for the rest of the day I may sit next to desk, asked my kids if he wants to go by himself, he said no, but I guess when I will walk my younger daughter they can go back home together. Only thing I am really affraid is them crossing the road, I am certainly not affraid about anyone kidnapping them or other nonsense.

Recently when going by tram with kids somewhere I saw ~8-9yo girl travelling by herself seeing her confused started to cry, so I approached her, she said she is going wrong direction, told her to get off with us and then just directed her to right tram in different direction and went with my kids own way. Told her it's not big deal, she just lost few minutes and it can happen anyone to confuse tram numbers. Before COVID I used to approach tourists going in direction to my home since many of them went wrong direction, but surprisingly often I am met with German tourists who like riding trams whole line back and forth, I've had this hobby with Beijing subway lines when I lived there.

Actually my father (from small 40K town) came to visit just yesterday and he also took tram in wrong direction, realized it after 3 stops, but had problem to get back since there was no stop in opposite direction nearby, which happens with some stops, usually you just need to cross the road/tracks.

> My children have had the cops called on them for playing in our front yard.

Where do you live?

Whenever I read these stories it feels like I live on a different planet from everyone else.

I live in a vast Californian suburb dominated by single family residences built in the 90s. The homes are priced around the median for the area. The residents are split about 50/50 politically and racially plural. The majority are married and earn ever so slightly below median income. It's about as average as you can get.

Note: I looked up these stats to make sure I got them right. They are mostly at the voting precinct, and census BG level, but I'm abstaining from posting them for obvious reasons.

Move to a sane state.

I live in the midwest, in a smaller town. You still see kids playing in the neighborhood and parks and running around. Kids walk and bike to school. Nobody would call the cops over a kid walking by himself unless he looked to be lost or in distress.

Yeah I lived in the midwest and there are roaming bands of ~10 year olds who are legit criminals, ripping off and stealing things from myself and other neighbors and basically living independently outside of school and sleeping at home.

Cops and CPS can't be bothered (note I never personally called them, although I have had to address the children directly to ask them to stop stealing from my house). I still prefer that to a "safe" place where my kids have to risk getting ripped away from their parents for walking to a park.

The key to not dealing with police is moving to a high crime area with a weak police presence. These kind of CPS paranoia stuff is generally not enforced in places that are actually less safe for children. If the area is safe, that's when CPS/police will have the time to focus on you to call it unsafe. That is, kids aren't really safe from CPS of accusing them of being unsafe unless it is actually unsafe, in which case authorities never responded in the first place because CPS and the police are busy visiting an abandoned crack-baby.

Sorry, but my life is more complicated than "move to a sane state." I would have to put a child of mine into an abusive household and subject myself to fewer legal protections because if who I am. It's ok to live somewhere and observe and critique it. I'm a multifaceted individual whose writings on a very narrow topic cannot be reduced to "move." Thank you for sharing your experience though.

I live in suburban Ohio and had the same thing happen to my family. My son was playing by himself in the front yard. Someone called the cops, they walked him to my door and they lectured me about "watching" my kid.

It’s a shame you can’t press charges on or sue that person for attempted child abduction. Sure, they took the child to your front door, but you didn’t give them permission to do that. They are not the guardian and they had to trespass to do so.

Fwiw, I live in California as well, Bay Area specifically. My elementary school kid walks ~2/3mi from school (with a friend) and my middle schooler bikes a few miles to school solo. So do many of their friends. It’s the norm in my neighborhood.

Utah has a free range parenting law on their books.

https://www.npr.org/2018/04/01/598630200/utah-passes-free-ra...

> but there's a group of people who see children playing outside of direct parent supervision as a categorically dangerous activity

We can broaden that a bit to: “There’s an ever growing group of people who think they can and should be the arbiter of other people’s behavior.”

Everyone needs to learn to mind their own fucking business.

Kudos to you for bucking the trend and encouraging your kids to do things like spending afternoons romping around outside!

Complete anecdata, but the parents in my close friend group are split between "parents with a more free-range kid mindset" and "typical upper-middle-class parental paranoia."

The free-range kids are mostly happy-go-lucky, emotionally stable, and thriving. Almost every single kid over the age of 10 with paranoid parents is diagnosed with a mental health condition of some sort. I mean I literally can only think of one who is not in therapy or taking medication. I think the isolation and lack of unsupervised group activities that you describe is a big part of it.

One of my more paranoid friends made a judgmental comment recently regarding my other friend's daughter not being in therapy. I was extremely confused and asked if the kiddo was having emotional issues. Her response was, "Well not yet, but 12 is a very stressful age, and I think that when you have the money to do so, it's just good parenting to ensure your kid is talking to a therapist on a regular basis."

The level of paranoia needed to believe that every single perfectly stable 12-year-old needs weekly visits with a mental health professional to ensure their health and safety, and that not supplying this is neglectful, is just... bizarre.

I cannot help but believe this sort of behavior is severely damaging the psyche of these kids. And I also don't see how it can't be hurting the parents as well. Imagine how incredibly stressful it must be to be a parent who believes every stranger, every walk around the block, and every pre-teen mood swing is a serious danger to their child.

Our society is way too tolerant of that kind of behavior. It's similar to how there are still occasional people wearing masks, even outdoors. It needs to become socially acceptable to tell people they're being paranoid and weird, in the same way they feel it's acceptable to tell others they're not paranoid enough.

Masks are a bit trickier, since some people are severely immunocompromised or have loved ones who are immunocompromised. If you are undergoing chemo, or your parent is on hospice care, it actually makes sense to keep wearing a mask everywhere, and doctors are encouraging this (not just to defend against COVID germs, but all germs).

But as for outside masks, I agree, it's just straight up unscientific. Especially when people are wearing flimsy cloth masks that do little to ward off COVID germs in the first place! Although I know some people keep them on outside if they're walking between buildings, just because it's easier than taking it on/off constantly.

So anyway, masks kind of fall into that category of "I ain't gonna judge if I don't know your exact situation."

But I agree, it would be nice to be able to tell my friends who are perfectly healthy with no at-risk loved ones, hey, you really don't need to keep wearing a mask outside for the rest of your life. Both because it's silly, and because it seems genuinely damaging to their mental health... I have a couple friends who still get anxious/upset when someone gets within 6 feet of them without a mask on, and it's just a needlessly stressful way to live that is taking a very, very serious toll on their mental health.

We basically jail our children at this point.

It was like this when I was in high school as well: There is no place where young people are allowed to gather and explore their personalities.

Kids from the project/poor neighborhood in metro cities still do this to a dangerous extent. I dunno what's a good balanced approach ..

Reminds me of the time my son finally gathered the confidence to take the training wheels off his bike and learn to ride it without them. My wife and I were walking, and he was on his bike, and he was so happy and pumped about his achievement, that he asked to ride farther away, out of our sight.

Now, this is a peaceful suburban neighborhood we're talking about, and we're on a stretch between his school and a park near our home. He's riding his bike on the sidewalk, and he's being careful about it.

Off he goes, and the two of us stroll peacefully until we see him stopped, with an old lady talking to him. He wasn't wearing his biking helmet that day, and we had to endure a lecture about it and veiled threats -- "I could have called CPS, you know" -- and smile politely all the way to avoid escalating.

Somewhere along the way, our society blurred the line between "stepping in to prevent child abuse" and "thinking you're entitled to being hostile and sanctimonious to other parents".

“we had to endure a lecture about it and veiled threats”

no you didn’t you were just too afraid to tell her to fuck off like any normal person would do in that situation

> smile politely all the way to avoid escalating.

That attitude, while perhaps more comfortable in some ways, just enables the sort of behaviour you encountered, and apparently disliked, from that woman.

A blunt response like, "Fuck off. Don't talk to my son.", followed by walking away from her, may have been harsher and not particularly polite, but perhaps it'd cause a person like her to avoid such meddling in the future.

Depending on where you are, she might have gone decades without any kind of resistance to her behaviour.

Too much politeness can be worse than none at all.

> A blunt response like, "Fuck off. Don't talk to my son.", followed by walking away from her, may have been harsher and not particularly polite, but perhaps it'd cause a person like her to avoid such meddling in the future.

Or it means she's definitely calling CPS next time.

Or calling them this time, immediately, and mentioning "belligerent parents" who "may be intoxicated". CPS starts up a file on you and now you have a lot of people looking into your house, kids, and family. Maybe the police see an easy arrest, or easy fines. Is it worth it to make a point here? Even at the potential cost of your or your family's freedom?

Play the same game. "I was concerned this woman was talking to my son, I couldn't hear her but the conversation seemed to be something about how she wanted him to come over to her house and how handsome he is, and then when I came into her eyeline she suddenly started ranting about helmets and CPS. I'm really confused about the whole thing officer, I assume she is just elderly but can you ask her to not talk to my son further?"

I'm sorry, are we honestly entertaining this idea? I try to write measured, patient replies on this site, but holy crap, it's hard sometimes.

Think about what you're proposing. You want me to drag my son, a kid who was little enough back then to still ride a bike with training wheels, into a tense argument between a weird lady, some scary-looking adults, and his parents who suddenly decided to lie through their teeth for some reason? Aside from what example I would be setting for him, how do you think a kid would handle a situation like that?

It wasn't enough that this lady already pissed on his parade, I'm supposed to compound it and put us all at risk of having him taken away because we were "negligent" and also falsely accused someone of being a pedo?

Have we forgotten that the #1 priority in this whole situation is the kid, not our pride or out desire to put someone in their place?

Nope it goes like this. Weird stranger wants to parent your kid, tell her to pound sand. They call the cops and portray you in the worst light possible, making thinly veiled insinuations that you are not providing a safe environment for your child.

You don't know this person. A little old lady is unlikely to be a child molester statistically but it has happened. So when the cops knock on your door, maybe that's the concern that leaps to the front of your mind. Don't accuse anyone of anything just mention details, for example perhaps she touched him on the stomach to stop him "she placed her hand near his penis". Get creative. "Obviously a sensitive topic like this can't be discussed in earshot of the child victim".

You may say "I want to do the right thing" and that's fine, but personally I want the right thing to happen (ie. Kids being allowed to play outside) and I'm willing to bend the rules in the very same way that the people trying to prevent that are.

Yeah society is horrible and narcissistic, so lets just make it all worse.

While I don't agree with the person you're replying to exactly on tactics, I think they have a point.

The #1 priority should not be the kid.

The #1 priority should be the benefit of all kids.

In this example risk is introduced to the custodial relationship of the immediate child for the hopeful benefit of all children. It's possible this could be a rational risk. Whether it would be effective I have my doubts.

If we use some arbitrary numbers perhaps it would be just to risk 1/1000 chance your own kid gets tossed in foster care by CPS if it means 10 unknown kids end up with 10% longer lifespan because they built healthy habits by being able to play alone outside because a threatening old lady got put in her place.

I want to be dead honest with you: The Internet is full of "I would have said X" situations where everyone acts like X is this big gotcha. It will make you outraged, but these people are all paper tigers. Drop the argument. Walk away. Your life will be better for it. Their advice is worth nothing.

I disagree. I think a slightly better way that just politely nodding is to say "I stand firmly by my decision to allow my child to roam freely within my neighborhood."

It's easy to call someone an enabler, but it might be more generous to assume they have reasons other than being "comfortable".

The first thing you learn as an immigrant to the US is to avoid escalating conflicts, especially with Americans. Even a perfectly legal immigrant like me, in a "blue state" like Washington, will avoid rocking the boat. You don't have a safety net to fall back on, you don't have extended family to help you out and support you, and you already have too many other things to worry about, so you try to avoid the risk of having a random stranger make your life a living hell because you misjudged how safe it is to tell them off.

No, it would solidify that persons' belief that the people were bad people and embolden her to act more swiftly next time.

Confrontation and escalation with swearing doesn't teach people a lesson. It makes them dig their heels in.

> No, it would solidify that persons' belief that the people were bad people

Stop giving a shit about other peoples opinions. Responding aggressively to a threat from someone is perfectly valid, and if that impacts their opinion of you, that's their issue.

LOL, let me tell you what happens if you say "fuck off" to an elderly lady if you are a normal dude.

The retired lady, with nothing to do with her time all days, will sit back and scheme about the interaction. She will decide you are an adversary, disrespectful man who needs to be put in his place after 'abusing' an elderly citizen and a child.

You have maybe 1,2 free hours a day to deal with unexpected things that come up. SHE HAS ALL FUCKIN DAY. She will calculate and connive, and avail herself of every authority and ear and talk to them like a sweet concerned grandma who is bearing witness to an evil child abuser. And they will believe her. Every lie she spends 5 minutes conniving, will take days to months to disprove while CPS tries to comb through your personal life.

You have a kid and thus exposed to CPS complaints at anytime. She has no underage kids. You have a job to lose. She does not.

In any verbal conversation, you are the automatic loser. In any physical confrontation, you are the automatic agressor. You cannot win. Literally the only way to win an argument with an elderly lady is to walk off if the situation doesn't call for polite chit chat.

A fix: legal penalties for filing false or irrelevant CPS reports.

IANAL but I think there also are no legal penalties for filling out a restraining order for crazy old ladies who threaten your family. In some states, the judges apparently issue them "because it was filled out right" [0], and a after it's ordered the bitch could be thrown in jail if she accidently gets with X yards of your family and could have her gun rights taken away.

Note: Not legal advice

[0] http://www.dvmen.org/dv-16.htm

Or smile politely yourself, say "thanks for your concern" and walk away.

> "Fuck off. Don't talk to my son."

That's the worst response. It puts them in the defensive.

If there is any "good" way, it is to be incredibly obsequious and deferential. Most of all, these kind of people just need their tummy tickled. "Yes, ma'am, will take it into consideration next time, ma'am".

Works great with cops too. They totally love that shit.

If you can, you can then nudge in right direction. "Have you met little Timmy yet? He's such a sweet little scamp, always wanting to ride his bike like his poppy". "oh you live here, i love that spicebush in your front yard. we've wanted to plant one too".

We have a busybody neighbor, she's always calling code enforcement on neighbors. I'm just really sickly sweet with her, I loath every second of it, but I don't think now she'll ever call inspections on us since we now have an expectation to chat when we cross paths.

Anyway, it's hard, and there is no "win" here. But if there is an angle, the angle is to treat them like dumb, stupid babies.

"I will call 911 right now as a stranger is trying to abduct my son" should be the correct response.

Not a jab at you, but so tired of random people thinking they know what is best for my son from a 3 second interaction. We really need to bring back some shaming as I truly believe that is how you get a community to work together again instead of against each other.

> He wasn't wearing his biking helmet that day, and we had to endure a lecture about it and veiled threats -- "I could have called CPS, you know" -- and smile politely all the way to avoid escalating.

You shouldn't have had to endure a lecture or be threatened by your neighbor. If the kid is just learning to ride a bike without training wheels, it would have been worth it to go back and get his helmet. I hope the lesson isn't "you shouldn't tell people when they are doing something dangerous," but that you shouldn't be a complete prick about it.

I mean, yeah, we should have brought his helmet, even with training wheels on. You can still fall and crack your skull. I know that and I don't dispute he should've been wearing his helmet.

As for why we didn't go back, his decision to try taking the wheels off was completely unexpected -- he had been dead set against it for quite a while -- and I didn't want to take the wind out of his sails by saying, "Okay, but you have to wait 15 more minutes while I quickly hop in the car, drive back home, get your helmet, and come back with it."

It was a calculated risk, and you can always argue that we shouldn't have taken it.

The point of the whole story is exactly what you said in the last sentence. It's not so much what people think they're entitled to say, it's how they say it. Just look at the replies to my story: you've got a whole bunch of people who think it's perfectly fine to lecture me about how I'm part of the problem here and to do so in a rather hostile manner.

This is the kind of thing I was trying to point out in the first place, the fact that the more and more people these days feel entitled to be crappy to other people in order to prove some point.

This isn't something you need to defend. Millions of people ride daily without a helmet (including kids learning) and are fien.

Yes, teaching bike safety is important, but it's also not that big a deal.

There will always be people who overreact and call the police for inappropriate reasons. That isn't the problem. The problem is that the police, and then the DA, chose to make this a criminal matter. Either of them could and should have dismissed the issue after verifying that the child was not being put into a harmful environment.

Don't forget about the child safety services/social workers - they should have to be reasonable too.

I suspect child services / social workers are punished far more severely for false negatives than false positives. I think it is safe to say the outrage of failing to save a child would outweigh the embarrassment of a false positive such as this. I could easily see major news outlets and local politicians raising hell for failing to stop abuse but raising far less hell for something like this.

I have had multiple experiences with multiple CPS departments through multiple friends and family members. CPS hardly ever does anything and are largely useless. The only time they did anything was when the police opened up a second investigation because of the problems, and they told them "Don't talk to CPS talk to the cops and have them talk to CPS".

Assume the default for these kinds of agencies is false negatives.

No one wants to be the weak link that gets their name blasted in newspapers when a kid gets harmed. Not that it would really be their fault, but the incentives are obvious to "play it safe".

I feel like "playing it safe" could have been accomplished with the officers just dropping the kid back off back home. I don't see why it would escalate to pressing charges.

2 months later when something happens to the kid this entire thing will get replayed in the media and everyone that didn't do anything will be made out to be a villain.

My armchair analysis here is that behaving in a reasonable fashion would not result in being able to obtain and exercise more power.

The desire for more power, and thus funding, and thus better career aspirations is as relevant to CPS as it is the local PD.

Of all the spilled ink on the topic of how this stuff happens, there seems to be a culture of, "We lock up the bad guys and throw away the key". It doesn't take much to put you into the "Bad Guy" territory, and once you're there, you're not a person, a mother, a son or spouse with a life all your own. You're a threat to the societal order (no longer a human being), and deserve the full weight of punishment regardless of its implications.

The police departments which manage to actually take high crime areas, and turn them around into lower crime areas despite widespread poverty have undertaken a paradigm shift from, "Putting away bad guys" to "Building a community". Getting to know the community, its problems, its major players and learning what their struggles are and trying to find a way to integrate into solving those problems, using law enforcement as a tool and not its own pursuit.

Correct! There's a lot of crazy people out in the world who'll call the cops for all manner of things. The correct response would have been to ignore the call following a couple questions by the 911 operator. "Is the child in danger in any way?" the response would be "No." and then hang up on them.

""Is the child in danger in any way?" the response would be "No." and then hang up on them."

After informing them, that unlike childs walking outside, abuse of 911 is a real crime.

The problem is the person calling will lie or exaggerate instead of saying no. If questioned later, they can fall back on claiming they were just trying to help and avoid getting in trouble.

Angry or nosy neighbors, police and social services can get each other caught up in a cycle of escalation that lasts years for some unfortunate families.

In that case the police should investigate and then rightfully conclude there is no danger and leave the child alone to continue walking in the street. After that they should arrest the caller for exaggerating (i.e. lying) regardless of their claimed intentions.

This assume some sort of rationality in our legal bureaucracy of course. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to exist.

> The problem is the person calling will lie or exaggerate instead of saying no.

The person calling is likely not "lying" about anything. If they believe it is dangerous for a kid to walk in the street, then the answer is a truthful "yes".

These people simply have different worldviews.

"Yes" is not an answer that should be responded to. Details are what should be responded to. Cops shouldn't be asking the neighbor's approval to investigate. They should treat a report as a witness, and refer to a checklist of types of observations that need to be investigated.

If a neighbor makes up details in a report to police, they should be charged with a crime. If the cops are asking "do you think we should investigate" to private citizens, they have abandoned all responsibility as law enforcement.

Imagine crowdsourcing your authority, making the justice system a militia for lazy mobs. Completely upside-down.

I agree. The problem is that police in much of the US are poorly trained, poorly funded, poorly managed, and increasingly marginalized. The US system of strong local governance means that only the nice neighborhoods get nice public services.

> There will always be people who overreact and call the police for inappropriate reasons. That isn't the problem.

It's not the problem, but it is a problem. There's no reason we shouldn't try to work on both.

> The problem is that the police, and then the DA, chose to make this a criminal matter. Either of them could and should have dismissed the issue after verifying that the child was not being put into a harmful environment.

Yes, but what's their incentive to do so? The more I look at the society in this country, the more I see that the incentives for LEOs are perfectly aligned with corruption and abuse of power.

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.

> But judges are not impartial and instead side with the DA/police by default.

Anybody, and I do mean ANYBODY, who has been to traffic court knows the courts are the extension of the cops. Worse yet, in criminal court, judges tell the jury that "being a cop doesnt give any more or less truthfulness or power on their words".

The judges work with with cops and prosecution on a daily basis. They work against you extremely rarely.

> any decent judge should see this lacks probable cause

You're shoehorning complaints about the judiciary into a case which never made it to a judge.

She paid bail. Bail is set by a judge. Plus, felony charges generally require a hearing before the trial.

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, as the judge doesn't have the resources or authority to investigate every plea deal that comes their way.

You're supposed to have a hearing at which a judge determines if probably cause was met and then set bail. So a judge should have reviewed this.

Judges, DAs and by extension any public arm including police should remember that doctrine coming from Roman law "It is more important that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt be punished" (John Adams, 1770) or likewise "the law holds that it is better that 10 guilty persons escape, than that 1 innocent suffer" (William Blackstone, 1769) or "it is better to let the crime of a guilty person go unpunished than to condemn the innocent" (SCOTUS, 1895).

Maybe we should remind everyone about this when they cry about cashless bail.

I think the main resistance to cashless bail is the poor implementation in many jurisdictions.

> It's not the problem, but it is a problem. There's no reason we shouldn't try to work on both.

There's problems, and then there's unavoidable problems. Failure to design a system with checks and balances for the unavoidable problem is an avoidable problem. ;-)

> Yes, but what's their incentive to do so?

Not only that, they have a reverse incentive: Say something bad happens to that kid, now the cops will be on the hook for letting them alone.

The real problem is that the fabric of society is mostly gone. In years past, those cops would be chewed out by the old ladies at church the next Sunday. No wonder there is such a backlash building up in conservative areas of the country.

False. Police have zero duty to protect anyone, per the Supreme Court.

In fact, I’d argue that is part of the problem here: there is no liability for police, CPS agents, prosecutors, or judges for overreach and absurd enforcement actions.

> It's not the problem, but it is a problem. There's no reason we shouldn't try to work on both.

There's one reason: that overreaction is retrospective, and that if you can't cure cop overreaction (when you have complete control over training and livelihood), and you can't cure the entire system's overreaction when they have all the time in the world to think about what they're doing, you have no business dictating to individuals whether they're overreacting or not.

Blaming CPS overreactions on nosy neighbors is just like blaming SWATting on SWATters: an excuse for law enforcement failure, and in that an encouragement to law enforcement to continue to fail in exactly the same way.

Part of it is the procedural philosophy on crime that simultaneously makes crimes easy to prosecute, and demands the police act on any letter-of-the-law violation, without thinking.

You can get phony DUIs now too. How many people are on some pharmaceutical? Well if so, you’re automatically guilty, even if your doctors tells you that you can drive, and must take the meds.

I had neighbour, who lives across the street, call the police because my dog barked when he walked up my driveway. We weren't home at the time.

He called because there was "an animal in distress."

We pulled into the driveway just as an RCMP officer was arriving "on the scene."

She entered the house with us, petted the dog, and rolled her eyes. And "closed the file."

The dog was doing its job.

Asshole neighbours (even in Canada) are a real problem.

I am with your neighbor, I hate dogs left alone which annoy all neighbors with constant barking, while their owner doesn't have to listen to it. It's less of an problem in the house, but huge problem in residential apartment building, so obviously you call cops to annoy neighbor to force him to do soemthing about it by police harassing him, not that because you would genuinely think there is animal in distress. If your dog barks at everyone passing around your house, there is something wrong with your dog and you raising it. If you can't take care of dog and raise it properly, don't get one.

To be clear, he doesn't bark at people walking by the house. He barks at people who walk up the driveway, open the gate, and walk towards the house. He didn't bark until the guy was a meter or two away from the house.

That's his job.

He was left alone in the house for an hour. I have video surveillance showing the neighbour skulking around on my property.

Sorry, this is the reason we got a dog.

If the neighbour had a problem with the dog barking, he could have asked me "hey, when I come on your property and walk around your house, why does the dog bark?"

why do you keep gate unlocked when nobody is at home then? seems like easy solution to stop people trespassing and annoying the dog unnecessary and if it was locked and someone was there he can bark as much he wants because nobody should be there, obviously this doesn't work for people without gate

It may come as a surprise to you, but I don't even lock my front door.

If the dog is inside the house, you can't hear his barks from outside of our property, by the way. Neighbour only heard him because he was right next to the house.

Easier solution: don't be an asshole neighbour.

Not sure why you want to regulate what I do with my house and dog, which isn't harming or annoying anyone, while completely missing the point -- the neighbour shouldn't be there.

And he certainly shouldn't have called the police for something that he caused.

My neighbor (not old) threatened to call the police on my 12 year old daughter because she didn't stop for him... to scold her. On the surface he's a reasonable, responsible adult but for some reason was/is triggered by neighborhood kids simply "having fun". People can be strange.

> People can be strange.

You usually only notice people when they do something weird-- maybe 999 days out of 1000 that neighbor is perfectly normal, but on that one day they were having an off day. That's the day you notice them.

An advantage of living further from people is that just fewer interactions with strangers and near-strangers so fewer opportunities to be the victim of someone's off-day.

This is very common. We used to get harassed by old farts and security when we lived on a golf course.

One came up to our back door ranting and screaming, and my dad had to tell him to fuck off.

Paranoid suburbanites. In the US, happened to me twice as an 11/12 year old north of Chicago, just for walking down the street - and once in Charlottesville, in the burbs, aged 24 - again for walking down the street. Once in Germany, aged 10 in a suburb of Frankfurt - I was sitting in a park with a book. Oh, and once in the U.K., in Hatfield aged 22, waiting outside my girlfriend’s house having arrived a bit before her.

Only got put in a cop car in the US - in both Germany and the U.K. they realised I was just doing normal human stuff - both childhood occasions in the US they gave my parents a talking to, as an adult they were unreasonably suspicious as to why I would be walking rather than driving, but let me go with a warning to drive in future.

So - the problem is the police, and the justice system, as curtain-twitchers live the world over.

It sounds like the cop had the discretion and chose to arrest her after she answered a question negatively. This seems to be another big part of the problem.

She probably “didn’t cooperate”… “she wouldn’t lift her sack and spread her cheeks, so we took her to jail.”

IMO, too many people took the wrong lessons from being ignored as children themselves, and they swung too hard into "Watch over your children 24/7 or you're hurting your children."

They're watching the same newscasts and true-crime documentaries that are leading to perceptions of nonexistent "crime waves" with all the pathologies that come along.

Also don't forget the inflation of the term "sex trafficking" which has been twisted to apply to things that most people would not ordinarily apply it to, so that police departments can look better in the news. They bust a prostitution ring, and every prostitute gets counted as a "sex-trafficking victim" so they can spin it as this great liberation of people. Reading the headlines it sounds like Taken, but the reality is much less black and white.

Doesn't help that every few months a certain political party screams about a 'caravan' of migrants coming to the borders with the sole purpose of causing crime.

I think it's mostly an artifact of 1980s and 1990s daytime TV hyping every single missing child and making a generation of parents think this was happening everywhere all the time.

> who in their right mind calls the cops on a kid walking around his own neighborhood?

The profoundly innumerate, that’s who. They overestimate the risk of an adverse event because they rely solely on media reports of child safety events to anchor their estimates, never stopping to consider that the media doesn’t report on children safely walking home.

Had the cops called on me for wearing a hood and walking home at 7:30PM from my friends house, gun put in my face and told to get on the ground. I was 10.

Low and behold a few years later I find out that its my highschool police officer I get to see every day!

The real problem is the cop finding a perfectly fine child walking home in his own neighborhood and arresting his mother like a violent criminal for such a grave offense.

The same type of person who likely is on the HOA board for their neighborhood in order to create their own pathetic little fiefdom and sense of power.

Half the problem, no? The other half being the police.

I upvote this, because you probably mean in this specific case and in this specific country.

But my personal experience with the police here where I live is *very different* from the stories I hear from the US.

Yes, I was talking about an article describing a specific incident in a specific country.

But I agree that there’s a real problem with the police in the US, one that most US citizens seem not to be able to see clearly (except for people in black neighborhoods, who know what’s up with the cops—but the rest of the country hasn’t been listening to them). I was born and raised in the US, but I’ve been living outside the country for a few years, and the cop problem is one reason I don’t think I’ll be moving back.

Remember the stories you hear are outliers the normal is different here, but if you don't watch the local norm can change

> who in their right mind calls the cops on a kid walking around his own neighborhood?

This really depends on your life experience.

For some this is no big deal. For some this means the parents are in a drunken/drug stupor. For some taking care of a kid means being instantly labeled as a pedo by parents, police and neighbours.

No, the real problem is that we continue to elevate low stakes local issues into high stakes national / international news because it advances our own preferred narratives.

Interesting that her child actually told a stranger where he lived. No real street smarts in Waco children cause it's too safe, I guess.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com