Are you sure they were unsupervised? They were discretely tailed by an armed drone. The same one that’s targeting you now! I hope you’re not feeling jumpy today. Best to remain very, very calm.
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Had to go back 12 years to find an article about it, huh. Sounds like a real problem.
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We haven’t. It’s assholes outside who are convinced kids shouldn’t be playing outside end up calling the cops on kids.
The parents in this case are not clingy. The kids aren’t calling the cops. The parents aren’t calling the cops, a third party called the cops who then overreacted. If six cop cars pulled up on a house it better be because people are waving actual guns around.
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This showed up on Reason.com before Christmas and my brother-in-law shared it with me. Kids walking a mile unaccompanied seems perfectly fine, but the Reason article didn’t mention that the important detail that they were picked up by the Discovery Building, which is in downtown Silver Spring. (map)
To answer your question, my guess is because there weren’t any neighbors (EDIT: at the Discovery Bldg., as opposed to in a neighborhood). I walked to school (not alone, but not with adults) starting in Kindergarten, then biked to school in 3rd and 4th grade (after that, we lived too far from school). So I can certainly sympathize if the kids had been walking through a residential neighborhood, but according to what the newspaper reported, this wasn’t the case.
I suppose context is everything, and kids walk around Manhattan (or Addis Ababa) all the time (and in such places, perhaps people are accustomed to seeing them), but downtown Silver Spring (particularly at the busy intersection by the Discovery Bldg.) is not where I’d send my kids by themselves, nor would my parents have sent me though a place that busy without a grown-up. I don’t imagine that the MoCo police are used to seeing kids by themselves there, either.
at my school in texas we aren’t permitted to take the kids outside for recess if the wind chill is below 40 degrees fahrenheit. it seems a little silly to the teachers and the kids but the principals have gotten so many complaints from parents about taking them outside when it’s that cold that they made that rule and enforce it.
Meanwhile, here in Alaska…
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I’m sorry, but while you and my wife are MSW’s (Masters of Social Work), there’s plenty more foot soldiers with BA’s doing social work that are known as “social workers”. My wife ran a shelter while she was getting her MSW and LCSW.
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my campus has grades 4-6, by the way, so it’s not like we’re talking about a bunch of 5-year-olds.
Sorry, but that is exactly the time to insist on your rights being respected. Just because they are cops, that doesn’t mean they can violate your rights. If you can’t use your rights in those situations,then we don’t really have those rights at all.
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Well, I wish I could feel more comfortable imagining myself in that kind of situation, but the police are not lawyers and when they are talking to you on your doorstep or from outside your car, you are not in a court of law. Like it or not, legal or not, they are in control of the situation.
When I lived in Montgomery county, my neighborhood was the epicenter of the Beltway Sniper shootings and a couple people were killed in location I often went… When I lived in PG County we did not hang out in the front yard much because there were weekly car accident in front of the house (the intersection really needed a stop light) and at least once a year a car would come flying through the front yard at nearly highway speeds. These weren’t bad areas, but it’s just one fhose “Toto we’re not in Kansas any more” environments. Riding the subways in New York would probably be safer.
So, no visits from chums of your kids then? Just playing safe, I imagine.
How many social workers failed to see right through Jerry Sandusky? Everyone was so busy giving each other awards. And not that far away was the Cash For Kids scandal where kids were being snatched from their homes and sent into the privatized juvenile prison system without being charged with crimes. Yes people are in prison in both cases. But where were the social workers? The list of kids which were sent to by social workers to foster homes where they are killed is long indeed.
Aha! I believe you’ve just exposed the plan.
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We used to have gym class outside with the puddles frozen. it was a valuable lesson in personal responsibility to remember to bring a sweatshirt.
Well, “play dates” does seem to be a relatively recent term, which is to say it’s entered my awareness within just the past 10 years or so.
I suppose with appropriate background checks and notification of intent to CPS, a recurring play date that did not require parental supervision more often than 4 times out of 5 could possibly be set up.
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At my house, children are allowed to go outside by themselves, find real live snakes, and handle them. Sometimes they find and handle old bones, too.
I do make them wash their hands before supper, though.
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I wish I could retire but at 69 I’m still at it and will be for a few more years…raising seven boys was a piss-poor get rich quick scheme. That said I’ve never worked for any of the child protective agencies because they have the most thankless and impossible job I can imagine. They are kind of the Obama of agencies in that it doesn’t matter what they do someone is gonna condemn them to hell and back. The handful of MSW’s that I knew who did work there were swamped with responsibility and had almost zero authority. Bean-counters and bureaucrat’s usually run those places and too often they have a business mindset. I worked in health/mental health and now work reintegrating Federal Felons back into society. It’s not really a fun job but the need is great and gratitude often heartfelt when we get it.
My problem was believing all the peace love and happiness of the 60’s plus all the do-gooder shit Holy Mother Church infected us little dumbass Catholic kids with. Basically I was double fucked and gullible but I got all these great sons out of the deal so…
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When I were a lad, the practice of kids’ chums visiting kids at their parents’ homes was so ‘not a thing’ that it didn’t even have a name. It didn’t seem to need one, it just happened. But obviously if it’s now ‘a thing’ with ‘a name’ (like the rather cloying ‘play date’). then your police procedure (the non-shooty version of course) should also allow that neighbour-chilluns might also legitimately be seen entering your house. Is all I meant. IYSWIM.
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And you arm them.
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