Yeah I worry about this when I'm out with my daughter. Men are presumptively doing bad things, especially to kids, in the eyes of busybodies and cops.

Disgusting.

I don't fault the cop for investigating. He was called, so he has to. And a little girl trying to pull someone into a telephone pole might look like she's trying to get away from him.

I do fault the cop for not apologizing and explaining that he has to investigate when someone calls.

> I don't fault the cop for investigating. He was called, so he has to.

Yeah.

He was Just Doing His Job, so we certainly can't expect him to have good sense, or refuse to do a stupid or evil thing.

"He was Just Doing His Job, so we certainly can't expect him to have good sense, or refuse to do a stupid or evil thing."

I'm not sure what stupid or evil thing he was supposed to refuse to do. Refusing to respond to a 9-1-1 call is probably not an option for the police officer. But I agree with Patrick; the cop could have smoothed things over with an apology.

Tangentially speaking: How often to people make calls like this? What's gotten into people's heads these days that makes them call 9-1-1 when they see a man and a girl walking together? I'm glad my daughters are older now.

How often to people make calls like this? What's gotten into people's heads these days that makes them call 9-1-1 when they see a man and a girl walking together? I'm glad my daughters are older now.

Yeah, me too, OldRPM, both wondering about those people and glad my girls are older now. Seems to me that because the media sensationalizes everything, people are too damn ready to get all up in other peoples' business. Even when they don't belong there.

And I understand how people like TJIC seem to think that people can't live their lives without someone else's intervention, especially theirs, as if anyone they don't personally know is suspect. Of what, doesn't matter, because what if?

Well, what if that just happens to be a loving father spending time with his precious daughter? Who are you to make a judgement call without seeing something that raises a red flag? Oh that's right, what looks like innocence to some, raises a red flag for others, so every instance MUST be investigated! Better to be safe than sorry! Even at the expense of frightening a child who is out with her father, and causing the dad considerable discomfort and causing him to question his parenting. Oh, but that's okay, right, because what if?.

Makes me want to hurl.

I'm not sure what people expected the cop to do. 911 calls can not be ignored. Police have to respond, even if the caller calls back and says it was a mistake.

Blame the caller. Blame the cop's attitude afterwards. But cops get no latitude in showing up to a 911 call, not should they.

Really. Do you REALLY want to give individual police the option of saying "I don't think someone is really trying to break into a house, this caller is hysterical. I'm going for coffee instead."?

This happened just because he was male? The game looked to a passerby like the girl was trying to get away from him. Maybe it was really over-the-top horseplay.

I don't think there's anything wrong with asking the question or having the cops ask in this case. The cop should have apologized and been more respectful.

My 4-year-old little granddaughter loves to take a long walk with me to the park to play on the swings and have her picture taken on the playground toys. I love hearing her giggle and sing while she swings high over my head. But I'm always afraid that sooner or later some hyper-suspicious twit will call the cops.

Sometimes on a warm day I like to sit in a park and read. But in this politically correct, progressive city I'm hesitant to go into a park alone if there are children playing there.

I worry about this with my husband. We had a late-in-life baby (he was 40 when she was born). I worry that people will eye him suspiciously when he's with our daughter. It's too bad. Almost every woman grew up being Daddy's Little Girl. I still look to my dad when I don't know what to do. I can't imagine getting cross-eyed looks for hugging him. Too much media hype on the occasional bad guys is ruining it for the majority good guys...

Yes, the cop should have been nicer. If the little girl becomes afraid of cops, it is a bad precedent. Someday, she may need their help. I certainly don't have a problem with someone calling and reporting or the police following up on the call.

I few people are going to make a bad call and over-react if eople really care to report things that are suspicious. The other choice is to look the other way and either feel regret when we didn't follow up on our nagging little suspicions.

I think that I have been guilty of both things. I didn't report a man who was alone in a park with a metal detector that turned out to be a convicted child molester. I just removed my child because my child kept trying to wander off with him.

Perhaps not everything must be investigated. I wouln't want to make that call. I reported someone pointed a gun at at my son and me. The dispatcher asked for details and suggested that it might have been just a bb gun. When I was not qualified o give her details and justify my call well enough, I told her to just forget it. Around that time, our neighbor was burgled. $20,000 worth of equipment was stolen. Of course, I didn't know that. I just saw one suspicious thing.

In the Sandusky case, the mom didn't actually see molestation. She just noticed that her son's hair was wet and started investigating. She just saw one suspicious thing.

Positive male role models are disappearing from schools, sports and families.

I wonder why?

At a hospital where I worked, a man in his late 40's brought his 14-year-old daughter to the ER. She had gotten sick and was going to stay overnight. As the dad got ready to leave he hugged his daughter, called her "sweetheart" and "precious", and kissed her on the cheek near the corner of her mouth. She seemed comforted.

A child and family counselor who was there wrote a note in the chart saying that the father's behavior toward his daughter was "sexually inappropriate." No objective description of the behavior, so that other clinicians following up later could form their own impressions, and no explanation of why it was "sexually inappropriate."

Neither I nor a nurse who was there thought there was anything "sexually inappropriate" about the father's affection. Knowing that such comments in a medical record can cause repercussions, after the counselor left we both followed her note with our own notes describing the interaction between the father and daughter.

That counselor had two children of her own, a son and daughter, who both ran away in their early teens to go live with their father. I think she had some resentment that she took out on others.

@jen:
> If the little girl becomes afraid of cops, it is a bad precedent.

No, it's a GOOD precedent.

For whatever reasons, cops in modern society have chosen to be the enemies of freedom and the enemies of the Constitution.

Cops earn their grotesquely inflated salaries and benefits packages by enforcing unjust laws, beating up photographers, jailing people for consensual "crimes", lying on the stand, and handing out tickets for trivial things...all while putting thin-blue-line bumperstickers on their cars so that they don't have to live by the same standards that the peons do.

Kids SHOULD learn to distrust and avoid them.

The day after the discussion about the case where a man in Barnes & Noble was questioned, we had a similar incident in our children's library. A person went to the adult department and reported that there was a man sitting in the children's room with no children and that he was suspicious. When the front desk called us to let us know about it, we laughed. The man has no less than five boys who were all on the computers not 20 feet away from him. If this person had bothered to look around, rather than basing everything on a gut instinct, they may have been able to figure it out for themselves.

Sometimes, when looking at Jen's one suspicious thing, you need to look longer than a second, and really fit the "one suspicious thing" in its proper context.

"Hello, 911? Yes, I see something going on in my neighborhood. There's this guy impersonating a police officer, and he's doing it to separate young girls from their parents and talk to them privately. He has a real-looking uniform and badge and car and everything. No, I can't hear what he's saying."

(later)

"Oh, that was a real police officer? Well, you can never tell for sure. It doesn't hurt to be too careful, right? You should be glad that I'm looking out for public safety.?

We only heard from the dad, and even he admitted there was a game going on that might have looked like a struggle.

TJ: He was Just Doing His Job, so we certainly can't expect him to have good sense, or refuse to do a stupid or evil thing.

What stupid, evil thing did he do? Respond to a call to report a possible child abduction? Are you expecting him to know that those two people were father and daughter before he actually got there to investigate?

Would you feel better if he just decided, "Ho-hum, probably just some nut who doesn't know what they're talking about" when he gets a call to investigate a kidnapping?

Sometimes on a warm day I like to sit in a park and read. But in this politically correct, progressive city I'm hesitant to go into a park alone if there are children playing there.

I'm not sure what "politically correct" or "progressive" has to do with it. I live in a city that's neither of those things, and you wouldn't catch me reading a book in park within a quarter-mile of a playground. The monomania among parents regarding imagined threats of pedophilia is too great. Their world, and they're welcome to it.

Ditto what Kevin said. It generally does not matter the politics of the town you're in on this issue.

Ha, Cousin Dave, that's a good one!

momof4 has the thread-winner though:

"I'm not sure what people expected the cop to do. 911 calls can not be ignored. Police have to respond, even if the caller calls back and says it was a mistake.

Blame the caller. Blame the cop's attitude afterwards. But cops get no latitude in showing up to a 911 call, not should they. "

subpoean the name and sue for defamation. Blast it through all the media. fear may accomplish what commone sense and decency cannot.

Because that call was indecent, just like that pervert couselor someone mentions above who reported a father for giving his daughter a kiss. They saw it as sexual, ie. they sexuaized it, when it was not. Perverted fucks.

"They saw it as sexual, ie. they sexuaized it, when it was not. Perverted fucks."

I wonder how often that kind of thing happens (I'm not doubting you, Gingko, I'm just wondering) -- people with authority, educated beyond their intelligence, harming other people because they can't see that they're projecting their own hangups on others.

hose of you saying the cop was just doing his job and how was he supposed to react how about this
------------------------

PO "Hey folks. Hey Darling you mind if I ask your brother a question?"

Daughter "He's not my brother!! He's my Dad.

PO "No way. You are way to grown up to have such a young looking dad.

----------------
Imagine not being a complete and total asshole when interacting with the public? He could have gotten most of the info he needed just being nice to them, playing with the girl to offset any uinease she might feel and then explain the situation about the call to the father with out being a complete jerk about it

Lujlp; That would have made too much sense and not allowed the cop to "assert his authority."

Some of this could be forestalled with some simple cogent questions from the 9-1-1 operators.

• What else is happening?


• Does the [child] seem happy?


• Are there other people on the street?


• Does the [adult] look upset?


• What makes you suspicious?

Then when the cop drives by, just pull up on the next block and park. Don't even get out of the car, just sit there. Don't stare but observe. Does the guy look around, avoid the cop, turn around? Do they take next available turn?

This is the same concept as those who open carry have to deal with and the cops are going to have to deal with in MWAG cases. Then there are the numerous videos of a Man With a Gun cops site:youtube.com">MWAG (Man With A Gun calls.

Has any of this interference ever resulted in a kid being saved from a pedophile? Or is it all malicious busybodies hiding behind anonymity giving innocent people a hard time?

I'm going with the latter.

"I wonder how often that kind of thing happens (I'm not doubting you, Gingko, I'm just wondering) -- people with authority, educated beyond their intelligence, harming other people because they can't see that they're projecting their own hangups on others. "

RPM, Mark has it right. it's not over-educated people or bureaucrats, it's everyday malicious busybodies. How rare or unocmmon is that kind of person? so it happens a lot.

They should be sued into the ground every time they try it.

No, Jim, it's NOT okay for the 911 operators to determine if a situation is serious. Think about that-you want to give some high school grad miles and miles away from you, in some small dark room, the right to deny you the police? Really? There is a reason the operators aren't allowed to and neither are the cops taking the call-it's because it hasn't worked out so well in the past when they could.

Mother o' pearl, there are some dumb commenters on here defending this ridiculous situation. You've got some busybody woman who has her man hating head full of fantasies of abduction tearing herself away from her Criminal Minds marathon to report a father and daughter having fun; a 911 operator wha apparently doesn't have the sense to ask any questions as they are trained to do (yes, momof4, they actually are trained for their job, unlike, say, just being able to get pregnant without instructions); and an incompetent asshole cop hassling a citizen. The cop and the hag who called in the complaint should both be sued back into the stone age.

No, Jim, it's NOT okay for the 911 operators to determine if a situation is serious. Think about that-you want to give some high school grad miles and miles away from you, in some small dark room, the right to deny you the police? Really? -- momof4 at August 2, 2012 12:06 PM

We all know how good the advice of 9-1-1 operators is (Google Trayvon Martin 911).

But if an operator just asked a simple question: "Does the man with a gun have it in his hand?" and then respond according to the law (i.e. "It is allowed for anyone to open carry a firearm in the state of [state]. Is he doing anything else?")

That would probably cut down about a 25% waste of gas for LEOs.