As I was saying here just the other day, codependent people tend towards positions of petty authority often involving children, and social work is one of their main choices. Because codependent people were frequently raised in homes where there was alcoholism or they were beaten violently and often, they may have a vendetta against people who are failing to beat their children and may take those children and deliver them to a foster family where there is rape and abuse. Notice that it is not terribly unusual for a social worker’s children to be raped or murdered by their live boy friend/girl friend. Also look at long running scandal likes Jerry Savile and ponder how easy it was for him to surround himself with enablers.
This is in NC, but you get the idea.
The charges against Wanda Sue Larson, a former social services worker, and her boyfriend Dorian Lee Harper came as investigators revealed more details about the shocking abuse the child endured while living in the Union County home.
Could have been worse, they might have sent an APC and grenade launchers.
I have a suspicion that the NRA is coming back to haunt the US via the police force. After their pushing for open and concealed carry laws, the police are going to assume that everybody is potentially an armed criminal. And they want to live to draw their pensions. So, escalation.
The police are only human. They read about women shooting their husbands through the bedroom door, two year olds firing off mommy’s handgun and killing her, and they don’t think “two in three hundred million”, they think “that could have been me in Walmart” or “is that guy going to get the gun under his pillow?”.
People in general are poor at risk estimation. And, while once upon a time you could be fairly sure that people in “nice” neighborhoods were going to be pro-police, this is less obvious than it was. They may be extreme libertarians, they may be rich drug dealers. The result is that completely minor incidents (overanxious neighbor complains, police visit, say to neighbor “you know you were wasting police time”) become potential armed conflicts.
Nice income stream for Glock and co., though.
Guilty of defying a petty tyrant… Lawyer up!
Hey Boing Boing, auto play on videos…BAD.
Auto playing video provider, Adblock’d.
My ten year old niece (who lives in the UK) is strongly encouraged / almost required to walk home from school without adult supervision. It is the primary school’s policy to get kids used to the idea of walking home independently or in groups before they go to secondary school next year.
I walked to and from school alone (or with same age friends) at the age of 6 in the UK - although that was 40+ years ago.
Has our society truly become this crazy?
(And there is nothing more that a cop hates than someone questioning their authority - even when they are clearly in the wrong)
There was a family on our old street who let their children walk without an adult to school at a very young age (younger than the rest of us). The children were on the small side and looked much younger than they were. One time a neighbor saw one of them walking home from school (actually, the oldest one, and by then he was around 10) and did a double-take; but then she saw me walking a little ways away so she walked up to me and asked about the child. I explained that it was normal in that family. She shrugged and went on her way.
If you don’t know your neighbors, and you don’t walk in your neighborhood, then your first reaction is going to be to call the police. And we know how well that usually turns out.
A friend of mine had someone call social services on their family because their kids were playing outside in their own fenced in yard. The porch is not visible from the street, so there is no way to tell if an adult was on it watching, but regardless the report said that there were several children playing without adult supervision. The kids in the house range from 3 to 15, so it is unlikely that just the 3 year old was outside because the report said there was several children.
But because of rules the family had to be investigated. Stay at home mom, college professor Dad.
I understand rules about investigating reasonable reports, but frankly, there needs to be some reasonableness in evaluating reports.
This is part of the wuss-ification of America. Back in the old days all we had was outside, and we liked it!
That’s why whenever I see children walking unaccompanied I pull over and offer them a ride and candy.
I started kindergarten in 1962 in a rural area. I was forced to walk 1 1/2 miles to school and back every day. (Only one car in family and dad needed it to get to work.) Two years later I was joined by my little sister. I don’t think people would have looked twice at little kids on their own back then. We are bringing up a nation full of kids who have no self confidence and fear everything. Reinforced by Fox News and the NRA.
Back in the olden days, when I was just a sprout, my mom preferred that we spent our time outdoors! And more often than not, we had zero supervision. And no one called the cops. Imagine that.
To be fair though at any given time there are probably a couple serial killers roaming the DC area. What was the case (“Rt 7 Stalker?” What was it?) of the two Virginia teenage girls who got off the school bus in front of their house and vanished from the home. Their corpses were found in the river, but the ritualistic nature of the killing linked these murders to a known serial killer.
Why wouldn’t the neighbours ask the kids whether they were okay first? Why would calling the cops be the first reaction?
Why wouldn’t the neighbours ask the kids whether they were okay first?
Because they would then have no independent witness testimony that they were not abusing the kids themselves in the interaction – i.e. they would be vulnerable to a made-up accusation.
How is that “to be fair”? So 2 out of a couple of million people are probably serial killers? That’s not cause to require all kids be locked up or chaperoned at all times.
As much as the reaction about the unsupervised kids sucks, I can’t help but think that the father’s initial refusal to get his id hasn’t exacerbated the situation. It’s not right, but, to my mind, that is not the time to point out the il/legality of anything except your right to take the fifth (and you apparently have to claim it verbally now, not just remain silent). I would imagine that any hesitancy to comply is going to be used to incriminate you.
You’re probably right, but it seems more fair to expect a highly trained police officer to behave properly in a stressful situation than a dad who answers the door to such an unexpected situation. Actually, the situation was probably only very minimally stressful to the officer, until she manufactured stress by failing to act in a reasonable way.
From the linked article: “My husband grew up in the former Soviet Union.”
That’s the problem, right there. That’s probably seen as way more Other than being black in Maryland.
