Before the mob shows up with the pitchforks and torches, I'm going ask that we presume the author of the pieces quoted above is talking about conditions where leaving the child in the car will not result in them being broiled alive in thirty seconds.

As a child in the Deep South, I was left alone in the car from late fall to early spring for as long as 40 minutes on occasion and managed to not die.

It was also a far more pleasant experience than being dragged all around the store.

Heck, I grew up in the South too, and we were left in the car in mid-summer, with the windows down. If it got too hot in the car, we got out. Simple.

In fact, we were often left with the keys so that we could listen to the radio, with strict orders not to attempt to start the engine or move the gear lever. GM cars used to have this strange wiring where, by various combinations of the ignition switch, turn signal, pressing the brake, and holding the flasher switch part way in, you could make the turn signals and dash indicator lights do really strange things. Hours of entertainment for simple minds. Or, we'd pop the hood and poke around underneath, looking at the various parts and trying to figure out what they did.

Suggest you have several problems here:

1. Municipal policing in metropolitan centers. Suburban interests tend to be very resistant to the formation of metropolitan police departments (and the attendant optimization of deployments that such departments might practice). So, the locus of the bulk of the tax base in most cities is one place and the locus of those neighborhoods where law enforcement is most incrementally beneficial is another. That leaves you with far more disorder and anxiety in slums than you need tolerate given the resources on hand and also with a scrum of suburban police with time on their hands.

2. The effect of trial lawyers and (perhaps) social workers intermediated through the county attorney's office or the town attorney's office.

3. Socially-sanctioned aggression. Non-violent aggression is always there, but not encouraged or succored unless the authorities have time on their hands or are under the influence of trial lawyers and social workers. (And I'd put serious money on a wager that both occupations attract and retain a great many people who are just cauldrons of aggression).

Because children are now considered to be government property.

For one thing, there are way too many cops, as evidenced by the fact that there isn't enough serious crime for them to be too busy for crap like this.

Secondly, way too many cops became cops because they take pleasure in bullying people. Bullies aren't exactly models of bravery, and bullying mothers and homemakers is much safer than arresting potentially violent criminals. And officer safety is law enforcement's highest priority.

I constantly fear that leaving my kids in the car, play outside, or letting them walk to a bathroom alone will get me arrested. They are MORE than capable. But in this Orwellian nightmare of a country we live in, with people who can't mind their own damn business, it's an unfortunate reality. My arrest would be just what my ex-wife needs to allow this nightmare police state to remove what little time with my kids I have left. There is a serious, slippery, conspiracy slope here wherein the government wants to control, legislate all free choice away - from how we parent to what and how we buy.... and they have bully police officers running around like we are in a marshall law state, arresting innocent people, using excessive force, putting holes in baby's chests with flash bang grenades because they want to use their new toys and hurt people. There's a systemic, sickness and there's no cure.

That same thought drives me even though my kids are older now - I can't afford to mess up even a little bit because of my ex. It's a real fear because I know good and well the consequences if something happens on my watch. So they don't get the freedom I felt I had as a kid to run around all night with girlfriends or drive to the city to watch a movie on a whim. It's sad and I know it. They need to be able to make mistakes and mature, but I can't afford to be the one to make a mistake right now.

The author was, I believe, referring to a recent case where the police even noted that the interior of the car was not hot.

I don't know about a half hour, I never clocked it, but I spent tons of time in the car alone. Not sure why I had to go just to sit in the car, but that's what I did a lot growing up. Probably starting around 4th grade or so.

Now, I wouldn't leave my kids - even once they hit age 10 or 11 - in the car alone for a minute. I seriously have skipped stopping in the gas station store to buy a water because I was afraid of being arrested. Not on the highway, but near our home. I once considered paying cash for gas but figured it wasn't worth the risk or charges for walking into the gas station.

And had that poor mother in Stockton, California taken her 12-year-old with her into the bank, the girl might be dead now too.

I constantly fear that leaving my kids in the car, play outside, or letting them walk to a bathroom alone will get me arrested. They are MORE than capable. But in this Orwellian nightmare of a country we live in, with people who can't mind their own damn business, it's an unfortunate reality.

You CONSTANTLY fear?

The USA is an "Orwellian nightmare"?

There sure are some drama queens on this board.

For one thing, there are way too many cops, as evidenced by the fact that there isn't enough serious crime for them to be too busy for crap like this.

No, there are not. When you have inner city homicide rates which exceed those of suburban townships by 15 to 1, you do not have 'way too many cops'. What you have is suboptimal deployment of your police manpower.

The USA is an "Orwellian nightmare"?

Yes, pretty much, In 1986 the day care where my son was at accused my husband of child abuse, because there was a baby sock caught up inside of my son's diaper. My husband had changed him, in a darkened bedroom on a bed where I had clean laundry stacked, early in the morning, before dropping him off.

They claimed that the caregiver at day care, said that the sock was stuffed into his anus, which was complete bullshit, but how do you prove that the nitwit was lying?

I have no doubt if that had happened today, the police would have been called, and my husband probably arrested.

> Suggest you have several problems here:
>
> 1. _________________________

I can't figure out exactly how your participation annoys. I should try to put it in a sentence.

> What you have is suboptimal deployment
> of your police manpower.

Ah, so it's a management thing… OK then.


We used to have a guy here named brian [sic]. No matter what the conflict or conundrum offered by Amy's post, there was a 50/50 chance that his comment would begin with the word "Simple.," as a sentence, as if everything in life were a pop quiz for which his reflexes were superbly honed. He never, ever stopped for analysis before, or even after, dispensing his corrective edicts.

It might be like that.

Rolling around in the back of the station wagon while mom drove around running errands was one of my favorite things to do as a kid. The absolute thrill of going completely limp and just being tossed about while the huge monster of a car unpredictabely turned here and there and stopped and started while we let gravity and the laws of physics do their thing. When she stopped on an errand, we’d pop the top window in the back and hang our feet out while lying on the floor of the trunk and reading or napping and never fearing that someone would snatch us up or steal the car with us in it. I remember also having a battle with a bag of groceries in the back once. Me and the big-as-my-face gallon of milk once went head to head at a particularly harsh turn. I think I won. Can’t be sure based on the pretty good sized bruise on my outer thigh.
Good times.
Now a days, my mom would likely be arrested for child endangerment and neglect if we had been seen flying around the back or unattended like that. If that milk had crashed into me like it did then, they’d see that bruise and add child abuse on just for good measure. The most amazing part is we were never once seriously injured in that car. I remember being more seriously injured while sitting in the back seat, with my seatbelt on, of my mom’s sedan and a truck plowed into her from behind as she was pulling into my grandmothers driveway.
I sustained more injuries from my involvement in competitive cheer and dance than I EVER did in that car.

We were also latchkey kids. I learned how to cook and did, often, for my sister and myself when mom had to work late. I was no gourmet but the idea of slicing a tomato or turning on the stove, unsupervised, at 10 years old was never horrifying to anyone. They didn’t see it as a ‘danger’. Now though, I imagine that child protective services would have swooped us away into protective custody.

Ironic that none of this ‘concern for our well-being’ was there when my father was on his drunk benders in the backyard, screaming out obscenities or when he was having ‘secret’ meetings with me in my room. I guess that sort of outrage and call to action is only reserved for when the Bishops are diddling Alter boys and not when it’s happening to little girls in their homes.

> I once considered paying cash for gas but
> figured it wasn't worth the risk or charges
> for walking into the gas station.

I'm blessedly childless, but that's poignant.

> The absolute thrill of going completely
> limp and just being tossed about while
> the huge monster of a car unpredictabely
> turned here and there and stopped and
> started while we let gravity and the
> laws of physics do their thing.

☑

You ladies are taking me back. (We couldn't afford a wagon, but I remember doing that in the family cars of close friends,)

Among my earliest memories is riding in an ancient car, I don't know what kind, that didn't even have a back seat. So we three kids would STAND in the tight area, and get cranky and pick fights, all the way down the road.

Air bags? Seat belts? Are you kidding?

How many parents + families know their law enforcement members anymore? Or did we ever?

I was concerned about the increase in crime in the county and was surprised that the sheriff sat down and answered questions and was helpful. I live in a rural county, though.

The USA is an "Orwellian nightmare"? Yes, pretty much, In 1986 the day care where my son was at accused my husband of child abuse, because there was a baby sock caught up inside of my son's diaper. My husband had changed him, in a darkened bedroom on a bed where I had clean laundry stacked, early in the morning, before dropping him off. They claimed that the caregiver at day care, said that the sock was stuffed into his anus, which was complete bullshit, but how do you prove that the nitwit was lying?

Something that happened at a private company 28 years ago = TOTALITARIAN STATE RULED BY BIG BROTHER.

I stand by my original statement: For a group that professes admiration on self-reliance and self-determination, there sure are a lot of drama queens on this board.

Crid, the back of the neighbors pick-up truck was where the real action happened. The best was the windy side roads with lots of bumps. I don't recall anyone ever going over the side but we had a pretty good scare when the neighbors son played a game of "Bed Surfing" once. As the name implies, he 'surfed' the truck bed when it was in motion. He fell on his ass and almost went sliding out the back when the truck flap fell open. Fortunately, we weren't going that fast and he was able to hang on until the next stop.

Aaaahhh... good times.

Something that happened at a private company 28 years ago = TOTALITARIAN STATE RULED BY BIG BROTHER.

I stand by my original statement: For a group that professes admiration on self-reliance and self-determination, there sure are a lot of drama queens on this board.

Posted by: Kevin at July 18, 2014 11:45 AM

I have a lot more real life examples, starting with the poor Amiraults.

If you don't believe we are living in a police state, you haven't been paying attention.

...you have several problems here.... ~ Posted by: Art Deco at July 18, 2014 6:35 AM

Nope, only one problem.

Too many people view government oversight and regulation as the societal bubble wrap that will prevent bad things from happening.

E.g., We don't want children dying in hot cars, so the government (through the police) act to make sure no one leaves a child in a car ... at all ... ever.

And when bad things inevitably happen, we apply even more government oversight and regulation to prevent more bad things from happening.

Unfortunately, bad things will happen. And no amount of paternalistic government oversight and regulation is going to prevent that; and too much will ensure it.

As a society, we've infantilized ourselves.

Isab: "...the caregiver at day care, said that the sock was stuffed into his anus..."

What the hell kind of weirdo even thinks of stuff like that? Definitely the kind you wouldn't want taking care of your kids.

I can't figure out exactly how your participation annoys. I should try to put it in a sentence.

It doesn't. You just have personality problems.

Nope, only one problem. Too many people view government oversight and regulation as the societal bubble wrap that will prevent bad things from happening.

You can find such people, I have no doubt, but I doubt that's what's driving this.

At the back of this you have the results from some lawsuit. That affects what the underwriters are telling you, that affects what your legal counsel is telling you. Here, there, and the next place, lawsuits can be a perfect storm where a sense of entitlement collides with enablers on the bench and in the jury box it only takes one opinion in the case reporter to make 'persuasive authority'. In the back of this you have some nest of social workers, who are bound and determined to assert their value to the larger world. In the back of this you have some wretched suburban woman making life difficult for other people because that's how she rolls.

What the hell kind of weirdo even thinks of stuff like that? Definitely the kind you wouldn't want taking care of your kids.

Posted by: Ken R at July 18, 2014 1:53 PM

Minimum wage workers with low I.Qs who are trying to impress the boss with what a good job they are doing detecting child abuse.

Kind of like those TSA agents stealing nail files from 80 year old women.

And also, there were not a lot of options for reliable child care at Fort Sill Oklahoma in 1986.

Now you know one of the big reasons, I got out of the Army a year later.

And also why my engineer husband stopped tutoring kids in math at the public library. The consequences of a baseless accusation from a mentally disturbed child looking for attention were just too great.

It always annoys me when these threads about an unreasonable police reaction devolve into the whole "we were just fine with no seatbelts, thank you very much!" thing. No, parents should not be arrested for allowing their capable, well-behaved 9 year olds to wait in the car or go to the park alone. But frankly, yes, parents who don't make their kids wear seatbelts and let them tumble all around the backseat of a moving car on public roads absolutely should be arrested for child endangerment. Child abduction is incredibly unlikely, car accidents are not.

I wouldn't say that I constantly fear being arrested for my parenting decisions (which include letting children under ten but over five stay in the car, walk to the corner store, and even go to public bathrooms) but I do think that some police or CPS attention is a far more likely outcome than an abduction or other catastrophe. And I do think a lot of my comfort in letting my kids be free is due to my area (a middle class neighborhood in Texas) and the fact that my kids and I are pretty similar to our cops and our neighbors in race and class. I'm not saying every bad arrest has an element of racism or classism in it, but I do think it's likely to be a factor in some of them.

"It always annoys me when these threads about an unreasonable police reaction devolve into the whole "we were just fine with no seatbelts, thank you very much!" thing. No, parents should not be arrested for allowing their capable, well-behaved 9 year olds to wait in the car or go to the park alone. But frankly, yes, parents who don't make their kids wear seatbelts and let them tumble all around the backseat of a moving car on public roads absolutely should be arrested for child endangerment. Child abduction is incredibly unlikely, car accidents are not."

Let's carry this logic a little further. Should the parent who commits any traffic infraction, while they have a child In the car be arrested for child endangerment, or should we wait for fault to be assigned in every accident regardless of injury, and arrest them then?

How bout a return to the old standard, before the advent of pre crime, and thought crime, where losing your child in an accident or by a mistake on your part is seen as punishment enough ?

You start arresting people for what could happen, rather than what actually did, you are on a slippery slope to the Gulag.

At what point do you think the legal threats are going to be enough to deter people from having children at all?

Hint. It is already happening.

...there isn't enough serious crime for them to be too busy...

There might be plenty of "serious crime" but astonished parents and children don't tend to shoot back at the poor police too often.

> these threads about an unreasonable police
> reaction devolve into the whole "we were
> just fine with no seatbelts, thank you
> very much!" thing.

Naw, we're not saying that. We're not THAT old.

Well, some of us are, but we're still not saying that.

The point is not that you can whip kids with belts and chains and everything turns out great.

The point is that my parents were as loving as any in America, and they nonetheless took risks that aren't well tolerated any more. Putting that in a sentence in no way diminishes the warmth of their shelter or the reach of their judgment.

What we really, REALLY want to make clear is that it's terribly unlikely that people today have developed some incredible new resources of decency and compassion that weren't available, or expressed, in parenthood a generation or two ago.

M'kay?

That did not happen. Human nature is not in transition.

'Kay.

Now, you'll notice that we didn't respond to the bottom half of Sabrina's comment, either. We don't want government plowing into every child's bedroom at every hour of the day or not to be sure they're getting just the right attention from their families. Whatever the depth of her irony or her sarcasm, she offers the understanding that ham-handed government intrusion would almost certainly mean worse outcomes for the larger number of kids.


After Sandy Hook, a lot of people were screaming for Paul Blart-style cops in our schools, but with guns....

As if daily encounters with that kind of hardware on those kinds of hips wouldn't bring even more deadly assaults to the schoolyard.

Pick your demons carefully.

Jenny.

Arrest away. Beg for your neighbors to be carted off in handcuffs. Cheer as the parents lose their jobs, and the children are taken away to foster care. Applaud as these children, now abandoned by a government agency incapable of applying policy to personal needs, are abused by people who game the system, as well as the system itself.

My point: there are cases when arrest is simply not called for.

Statistically you are more likely to be molested by a family member or a family friend than abducted by a stranger

Likewise you are even more likely to be molested in foster care and suffer higher rates of physical abuse and murder than while in the care of your parents.

These people who have kids parents arrested in order to 'help' them are more often than not getting them molested and murdered

>I can't figure out exactly how your participation annoys. I should try to put it in a sentence. -- Crid

I think it's his combination of smugness, pretentiousness, narrow-mindedness, and outright rudeness, combined with his utter lack of wit and his propensity for pulling random statistics out of his ass and putting them forward as conclusive.

I think it's his combination of smugness, pretentiousness, narrow-mindedness, and outright rudeness, combined with his utter lack of wit and his propensity for pulling random statistics out of his ass and putting them forward as conclusive.

Thanks for sharing, sister.

> I think it's his combination of smugness,
> pretentiousness, narrow-mindedness, and
> outright rudeness, combined with his utter
> lack of wit and his propensity for pulling
> random statistics out of his ass and putting
> them forward as conclusive.

That's an interesting hypothesis, one well-substantiated by his comments.

I'll have to think about it some more.

At the back of this you have the results from some lawsuit. That affects what the underwriters are telling you, that affects what your legal counsel is telling you. Here, there, and the next place, lawsuits can be a perfect storm where a sense of entitlement collides with enablers on the bench and in the jury box it only takes one opinion in the case reporter to make 'persuasive authority'. In the back of this you have some nest of social workers, who are bound and determined to assert their value to the larger world. In the back of this you have some wretched suburban woman making life difficult for other people because that's how she rolls. ~ Posted by: Art Deco at July 18, 2014 2:04 PM

And you have all those things ... in the back of this ... because people somehow expect that all this enhanced government oversight (through courts and agencies) will prevent the bad things in question from happening ... in the back of this.

Take away guns and no one will get shot. Ban drugs and no one will overdose. Arrest parents who leave their children in hot cars (or any cars) and children will not die tragically. Naive.

...you have some wretched suburban woman making life difficult for other people because that's how she rolls. ~ Posted by: Art Deco at July 18, 2014 2:04 PM

Why "wretched suburban" woman? Can urbanites not be wretched? Do they not make life difficult for other people? Or is it your assertion that the suburbs are populated entirely by intellectually inferior, small-minded busybodies?

Why "wretched suburban" woman? Can urbanites not be wretched? Do they not make life difficult for other people? Or is it your assertion that the suburbs are populated entirely by intellectually inferior, small-minded busybodies?

The incident in question happened in Bristol, Ct. southwest of Hartford. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

In the back of it.