37 ms·

Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile

• throwboi123 4y ago
  America is so fucking stupid
• egberts1 4y ago
  I walked 7 miles to school every day, both ways, some uphills, some downhills, sometimes to karate, sometime barefooted, and sometimes in the snow … literally. Now, I am fearless. We don’t need to be scaring our kids into cowardly submission if they are trained in common sense and defensive protection.
• AtomicOrbital 4y ago
  government has gone way too far ... kids need the freedom and independence of exploring their neighborhood and surroundings ... when I was that age all the kids in town would travel as a pack sometimes riding our bikes 10 miles to the next village with our dogs running at our sides ... I do not buy the Oh restrict to save them mentality ... when gov imposes what has happened here it kills the future of our kids
• greyhair 4y ago
  As a parent of three young adult kids, all I can say is WTF. My kids were allowed to walk, scooter, and tricycle around our block from the time they were five years old. They were allowed to walk into town, as long as they were with at least one friend, from the time they were eight. From sixteen up, as long as they were with a group of at least three, they could take the train into NYC. When my son was sixteen, we put him on a bus with one friend (also sixteen), for a five hour bus ride to Boston so he could go visit his sister at college, and so his friend could visit her sister at college. And this mom got arrested because he kid walked a half mile on sidewalks to get home? In our town, there are no busses for the middle school, the kids walk, some of them over a half mile, every school day.
• gerash 4y ago
  Wow, this officer and the rest of the justice system ruined their family. Their tax dollars at work!
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• EchoReflection 4y ago
  If ever there was a bastardization of "justice"...
• Friedduck 4y ago
  My mother-in-law, also from Waco, took a bus alone to Fort Worth, changed buses, and continued on to Witchita Falls. All at age five. For all of our nation’s ills, a child walking on his own block outside is a crime that warrants this extraordinary attention? I can’t believe the family didn’t sue the county.
• ldh0011 4y ago
  This is ridiculous, kids can (and should) be a little bit independent. It was in his own neighborhood. And 20 years in prison as a maximum punishment?
  • ceejayoz 4y ago
    Popehat has a good article on maximum sentences and why "faces a max of x years in jail" tends to be nothing like the actual probable consequence. https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
    • ghastmaster 4y ago
      He is referring to federal sentencing.
      • ceejayoz 4y ago
        The same thing happens in state sentencing. There's a vast gap between minimum and maximum sentencing. Most sentences fall somewhere in the middle, depending on the details of the particular act in question. (You stole from a little old lady versus stealing from a drug dealer, for example.)
        • nicbou 4y ago
          Doesn't that lead to vastly unfair sentencing? For example you could target a specific group with harsher sentences, or use minor crimes to stick people with the maximum sentence. Everyone is guilty of something.
          • ceejayoz 4y ago
            Yes. 20% longer for black men for the same crime. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/black-men-sentenced-to-more-time-for-committing-the-exact-same-crime-as-a-white-person-study-finds/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/black... (Some would say this is the point.)
• kurisufag 4y ago
  >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?
  • falcolas 4y ago
    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."
    • emodendroket 4y ago
      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.
      • Enginerrrd 4y ago
        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.
    • giarc 4y ago
      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.
    • api 4y ago
      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.
• emodendroket 4y ago
  The warped perception of child kidnappers hiding behind every bush not only obscures real dangers like unsafe crosswalks but also outright creates a real legion of kid-snatchers. Horrifying.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• Maximus9000 4y ago
  > Waco, Texas What? If this draconian policy is happening in Texas, the land of the free, can I assume it's even worse in the rest of North America? I hope Texans are up-in-arms about this government overreach.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • ElevenLathe 4y ago
    It's frustrating because these kinds of overreactions are based on a perception that crime is much worse than it is. At the same time, the perception that these kinds of incidents are common is itself wrong. Both false perceptions are caused by the "man bites dog" effect, where the media reports what is interesting, and media consumers therefore overestimate the frequency with which these unusual events occur. This kind of incident is NOT NORMAL. I have lived in various neighborhoods in Austin and a midsize city in Michigan, and kids walking or riding their bike around the neighborhood are common. The same is true of relatives' neighborhoods in Wisconsin, Arizona, and California.
    • lowercased 4y ago
      Won't this incident also be counted as a 'crime' in some statistics?
    • jefftk 4y ago
      > the perception that these kinds of incidents are common is itself wrong I also thought this was extremely rare, but then when I posted about it on FB a friend commented that it had happened to them. Not as extreme as in the article, but still very traumatic for the family.
  • ipv6ipv4 4y ago
    No. It’s fine in other places.
  • WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
    Apparently, except when you have to "think of the children", in which case they will go full Kim Jong Un on you...
• josefresco 4y ago
  I'm not sure (correct me if I'm wrong) but doesn't the district attorney have the ability to drop the charges or not pursue the case? If CPS dropped the case, why didn't the DA?
  • droopyEyelids 4y ago
    Yes, but that is not in the DA's interest unless there was political pressure to drop the case.
    • mandmandam 4y ago
      What about our interest? We pay that DA's wage! We paid, and pay, the wages of everyone involved in locking that woman up - the police, the prosecutors, the jail staff. It shouldn't take forming a political action group to fix things like this. That DA is unfit for purpose, his interest be damned.
  • mlindner 4y ago
    The DA's role to win as many cases as they can. They only drop cases they don't think they can win. Threatening people with charges if they don't take plea deals is an easy way for them to win. That's what led to a news item last year of some immigrant truck driver getting over 100 years in prison (plus mandatory minimums) because he didn't take a plea deal after his breaks failed and he hit a car and killed some people accidentally.
    • mandmandam 4y ago
      That's not actually their role. It's not what we pay them to do. It may be how they view their role, and it may be how their incentives line up. But it's not actually their job. I bet you know this, I'm just clarifying.
      • cbsmith 4y ago
        Yeah, I think it's a bit unfair to reduce this to the indifference of DAs. They focus on getting plea deals and convictions because that's what their constituents focus on. No DA wants to squeeze out a plea deal if their constituents are going to be angry & disappointed with.
• SirensOfTitan 4y ago
  Vaguely relevant, from Peter Grey's book "Free to Learn": > In our culture today, parents and other adults overprotect children from possible dangers in play. We seriously underestimate children’s ability to take care of themselves and make good judgments [...] Our underestimation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy—by depriving children of freedom, we deprive them of the opportunities they need to learn how to take control of their own behavior and emotions.
  • beaned 4y ago
    Nobody wants to be the one parent out of a thousand who has their kid scooped up off the street because they were letting their kid explore and be free. Edit: Not sure why I'm being downvoted, this comment isn't a judgment on anyone or promoting any type of child-rearing philosophy. It's just an obvious truth. Nobody wants to be that parent, and that obviously influences behavior.
    • obscurette 4y ago
      Yes, I don't want to be this one parent. But it's many orders of magnitude more likely that I handicap my kids if I don't let my kids explore the world with (reasonable) freedom. PS. I'm a father of three girls and live in Europe. Kids here navigate on their own with public transport if needed between home/school/etc since the age of 6.
    • uoflcards22 4y ago
      Your kid is 3x more likely to be struck by lightning than kidnapped. Literally.
      • beaned 4y ago
        I'm not sure of the statistics, but even so, it's something you have more control over than a lightning strike. Edit: at first glance I'm not sure the numbers are right... Google says: "Lightning damage in the U.S. [...] In 2021, there were a total of 11 fatalities and 69 injuries reported due to lighting in the United States." Also: "In the United States, an estimated 460,000 children are reported missing every year. Federal Bureau of Investigation, NCIC." Edit again to be more specific: Many of the "goes missing" doesn't mean kidnaps, and according to wikipedia, "The vast majority of child abduction cases in the United States are parental kidnapping". However it also says: "Fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year, on average, between 2010–2017." This number is still a high multiple of the number of people (not just children) struck by lightning each year.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• commandlinefan 4y ago
  My house was 0.99 miles (seriously) from my kid's elementary school - the cutoff for bus service was 1 mile, so my kids were classified as "walkers" to elementary school. I went ahead and drove them myself anyway, but the school seemed perfectly fine with them walking 0.99 miles each way every day.
  • Bhurn00985 4y ago
    I did the same from the age of 7 and I turned out fine you know.
    • Kaibeezy 4y ago
      i've got that lotion you were asking for
    • andromeduck 4y ago
      I moved around around a lot as a kid, immigrant family & all, but one year we lived in a house whose back yard opened up to a big park with a small playground, 2-3 minute walk from the gate and visible from the porch which I'd sometimes occasion while my parents were busy studying or doing paperwork of some sort and couldn't take me. It only took 2-3 weeks before some Karen called the cops on me and CPS got involved. The process was insane and honestly pretty traumatizing to both me & my parents. The people were awful. the process was stupid and traumatizing and I suspect the stress it created, and missed work/study opportunites that it resulted for my parents had quite a bit to do with their falling appart & divorce a year or two later. I think I was around 8 at the time too.
  • neogodless 4y ago
    Grew up on a road with an old, weight-limited bridge. Bus stop was about 0.7 miles from my house. Walked there every morning, and walked home every afternoon. In kindergarten (age 5), walked with older siblings in the morning. School let out before my siblings, so I was on my own on the way home, though I think a parent would come get me most of the time (but not always!) At ages 6-8, had at least one older sibling with me in the morning and afternoon. Ages 9+ walked alone.
• bradlys 4y ago
  Police just power tripping as usual. I wonder why they don't name and shame the officers - clearly these are the people doing wrong and should be removed from their positions.
  • mox1 4y ago
    The local DA is the person to look to here. Cops don't persecute cases. Clearly the cops started this stupid ball rolling, but anyone at the local attorneys office could have just chosen not to persecute. Instead they offered the plea deal.
    • HDThoreaun 4y ago
      Cops don’t prosecute cases, they definitely persecute though.
    • josefresco 4y ago
      Current DA looks to be Barry Johnson: https://www.co.mclennan.tx.us/282/District-Attorney https://www.co.mclennan.tx.us/282/District-Attorney Not sure if he was the DA for this case. *Yes I'm fully comfortable publishing a public link for a public official.
    • demilicious 4y ago
      DAs don't have cases to prosecute if cops don't make the arrest.
    • vidanay 4y ago
      Cops do a lot of persecution. They don't do prosecution though (unless they decide to be judge, jury, and executioner that day.)
    • bhelkey 4y ago
      > The local DA is the person to look to here. Cops don't persecute cases. More than one person can be at fault. I would place some of the blame on the neighbor, the police officers, the District Attorney, and the CPS case worker for this.
    • 4y ago
• coding123 4y ago
  Man I walked home every day while in school about a mile or 2 (depending). I even took the bus. I hope my mom doesn't get the death penalty for this at the age of 75.
• helen___keller 4y ago
  Interesting, isn’t Texas a state with laws to protect “free range parenting”? https://www.treehugger.com/children-protected-reasonable-independence-laws-three-states-5188371 https://www.treehugger.com/children-protected-reasonable-ind...
  • trynewideas 4y ago
    It's in the story, which is written by a co-founder of one of the NPOs that supported the Texas law: > "Wallace believes this could be due to the Reasonable Childhood Independence law that Texas passed in 2021 with the help of Let Grow, the non-profit I co-founded. It's part of HB567, a larger child welfare reform bill, and clarifies that parents are allowed to let their kids engage in independent activities as long as they aren't putting them in serious, likely danger." But as the story notes, that bill did not affect criminal law, so the cops can still do this.
    • public_defender 4y ago
      CPS still put this woman--and inexplicably her husband--on a "safety plan" requiring supervision of other family members for two weeks. I am actually amazed that the author thought this would be a good time to plug her legislative work.
• surfsvammel 4y ago
  What kind of neighbourhood isn’t safe for an 8 year old to walk 800m? This makes me sad.
  • stardenburden 4y ago
    The neighborhood was safe, but the cop made the strawman argument that the kid could've been kidnapped for a sex trafficking Ring Downtown
• monological 4y ago
  Japan has entered the chat... In Japan, children are encouraged from early age to be independent. They even take the subway and bus by themselves, albeit it's significantly safer there than in other parts of the world. Still though, I think people in America have gone off the deep end.
  • ch4s3 4y ago
    Its funny, because I see young-ish kids alone or in small groups walking around all the time in Brooklyn. Between 2:30 and 4:00 PM the sidewalks around my apartment are choked with unaccompanied kids.
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      This is true in my part of Brooklyn as well, and it's how I was raised in Manhattan. These problems are not unique to suburbia, but they're definitely amplified.
      • ch4s3 4y ago
        I grew up on a farm and was out roaming around alone from probably the age of 5 or 6. Kids are pretty capable if you raise them to be a little self reliant and resilient.
        • woodruffw 4y ago
          Absolutely. I'm singling out suburbia (specifically, suburban car-dependent monoculture) here as the least ideal of the three "spheres."
          • ch4s3 4y ago
            Yeah I personally view suburbia writ large as a cultural backwater and site of psychologically stultifying sameness. Rural and urban places are endlessly interesting to me.
    • 4y ago
• rlkf 4y ago
  In my twice-the-size European city, kids walk twice that distance to school and back home again, alone. Every. Single. Day. If this place isn't safe enough for kids to walk by themselves, maybe the question should be raised whether the police and municipal government really is doing their job the way they're supposed to.
  • giarc 4y ago
    The irony is one of the officers claimed the boy could have been kidnapped or taken into a sex trafficking ring. And their solution is to arrest the mom, not to take care of the kidnapping or sex trafficking.
    • feet 4y ago
      See, with rugged individualism the consumer needs to be on the watch for the brands that might kill them and just vote with their wallet. Why would we regulate something when the free market will do the regulating? This parent was not exercising their responsibility as an individual to watch out for anything and everything that might hurt their child, in the US that is illegal because the free market ideology rules all.
      • vagrantJin 4y ago
        What on earth are you going on about? Please elaborate.
        • feet 4y ago
          It's commentary about attacking symptoms rather than the root cause of the problem based around the flawed "choice of the individual" and "rugged American individualism" ideologies present in the US. Cops think the neighborhood is dangerous for kids because of sex trafficking? Arrest parents for allowing kids outside instead of stopping the sex trafficking. Consumers get harmed and workers get taken advantage of by corporations? Vote with your wallet instead of actually regulating companies.
    • 4y ago
• warent 4y ago
  Note she also has a GoFundMe to help cover her legal expenses to right this wrong. It's a pretty severe miscarriage of justice that has grievously altered this innocent woman's life going into a recession. Please consider donating what you can: https://www.gofundme.com/f/restore-money-lost-after-wrongful-arrest https://www.gofundme.com/f/restore-money-lost-after-wrongful...
  • kashunstva 4y ago
    I’d even kick in a little to file a civil suit against the neighbour.
    • psychlops 4y ago
      There could have been multiple calls.
  • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > has a GoFundMe to help cover her legal expenses to right this wrong To be clear, Wallace "is in debt after losing her job and paying for the lawyer and the diversion program" and "hopes to hire a lawyer to get her record expunged so that she can work with kids again." The GoFundMe is to pay for those costs. It won't do anything to undo the original miscarriage.
    • psychlops 4y ago
      Part of the problem is that she pled guilty, thereby endorsing the position of the police and creating a larger problem in the future. I don't know what the correct response is when looking down the barrel of a 2 year sentence for nonsense, but think this publicity battle should have been before the plea.
      • eftychis 4y ago
        Agreed about the publicity battle.
      • 4y ago
• jonahbenton 4y ago
  • mlindner 4y ago
    Reason is a quality site picking out government overreach. Whether it belongs on HN is a separate question, but they're not some tabloid rag.
  • nh23423fefe 4y ago
    im sure you read only the best facebook chain memes [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31742595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31742595 Penises are shrinking because of pollution (2021) (euronews.com) 5 points by jonahbenton 5 months ago | past | 1 comment
    • infecto 4y ago
      Just amazing the OP wants to flag this post but shares with us penises shrinking.
      • leephillips 4y ago
        But what if it’s true? I would want to know.
    • lordfrito 4y ago
      This made my day thank you
• nineplay 4y ago
  > As they stood on her porch, the officers told Wallace that her son could have been kidnapped and sex trafficked. "'You don't see much sex trafficking where you are, but where I patrol in downtown Waco, we do,'" said one of the cops, according to Wallace > "I still didn't know it was illegal and I said, 'I don't know,'" says Wallace. "That's when the cop replied, 'Okay, I'm going to have to arrest you.'" Let's quickly drop the idea that this is the fault of nosey neighbors, helicopter parents, soccer moms, or "Karens". This is 100% a justice department problem and anyone from the police to the district attorney could have nipped this nonsense in the bud.
  • make3 4y ago
    Texas is so insane. SO INSANE
  • bhelkey 4y ago
    > Child services had the family agree to a safety plan, which meant Wallace and her husband could not be alone with their kids for even a second. Their mothers—the children's grandmothers—had to visit and trade-off overnight stays in order to guarantee the parents were constantly supervised. After two weeks, child services closed Wallace's case, finding the complaint was unfounded. This is the fault of the nosey neighbor AND the fault of the police AND the fault of the district attorney AND the fault of the CPS case worker. All four bear blame for this travesty.
    • candiodari 4y ago
      > All four bear blame for this travesty. That would mean they would be responsible for the damage they caused, which includes years lost income (ie. a LOT of money). So no, they bear no blame. No state accepts CPS bear any responsibility for the damage they cause. Not a single one.
    • nineplay 4y ago
      When I write software, I know that users will do dumb things and it is my responsibility to write my code in such a way that they can cause no damage. The legal system should have similar responsibilities. If citizens can report crimes, some citizens will incorrectly report non-crimes. If the legal system can't handle that, the that is entirely the fault of the legal system.
• ajross 4y ago
  I don't want to be one doing the "Don't Trust reason.com to report news" schtick, but... The only independent verification I can find on this story is a GoFundMe launched by a relative: https://www.gofundme.com/f/restore-money-lost-after-wrongful-arrest https://www.gofundme.com/f/restore-money-lost-after-wrongful... Reason exists to flog stories about our terrible government overlords, and they've been caught pushing bad info in the past. This doesn't even report info that is publicly available in the arrest report and court plea! I'd strongly recommend waiting for a general news organization like the local TV station to report this first before forming too many opinions.
  • jfk13 4y ago
    Checking the GoFundMe page, I see it has a recent update: "Here is the news writeup that a journalist published about Heather's story. Let's get this viral!" ... which links to -- yes, you guessed -- this reason.com story. There don't seem to be any other corroborating reports to be found. Make of that what you will.
  • adamsb6 4y ago
    Reason has a bias for the stories it chooses to cover, but I can't find any examples of it misreporting a story. Can you provide any?
• Max-q 4y ago
  Is there actually a law against children walking 800 meters from their home? If this was the law in the rest of the world, I think most parents would be in jail.
• giarc 4y ago
  I deal with similar worries every day (obviously not to same extent). I pick up one kid at school, then drive to after school care to pick up another. The second location also has a hockey rink and the zamboni drops their snow in the parking lot so there are snow piles 365 days a year. I let my 8 year old play in the piles while I go in and grab the other kid. I figure one day I will come out to someone wondering why this kid is playing alone.
• newaccount74 4y ago
  What kind of Orwellian dystopia. To protect kids from sex traffickers, you lock up their parents, force them to perform unpaid labor, and then you convince them to confess their sins because they are terrified what the judge might make them do.
• nearmuse 4y ago
  Because of all of these news of arrests, cops shooting someone unarmed, or people getting easily labelled as felons or sex offenders, US has become synonymous with "trigger-happy" (literally & figuratively) for me. Are people (and specifically cops) in the US really that quick to judge? Does it depend on the state? Or do these cases make the news exactly because of how outrageous and rare they are?
  • gpanders 4y ago
    >Are people (and specifically cops) in US really that quick to judge? Or do these cases make the news exactly because of how outrageous and rare they are? (With the obvious caveat that I do not claim to represent the entire American population) I think it is the latter. This kind of thing is newsworthy precisely because it gets people riled up (as it should). It is pretty shocking to me as someone who has lived in the US my entire life. As other commenters have said, I also walked to school alone as a kid with no issues.
    • bnralt 4y ago
      Kind of. I don't think this kind of thing is typical. However, when it does happen, it's astonishing how many people in the system are just fine with it and go along with it. One neighbor acting badly, or one police officer crossing his boundaries, wouldn't be an issue if the rest of the system (other officers, DA, CPS, representatives in government, etc.) worked and said "this is clearly ridiculous, stop bothering the woman." The crazy thing is to see how, once initiated, the entire system is happy to go along with the farce and the persecution of the hapless individual. One case I always think about is when a 17 year old sent a picture of his penis to his 15 year old girlfriend. Then the police went after him for child-pornography (his own penis), and demanded he either give them a picture of his erect penis or they'd inject him with something to force an erection and take it themselves[1]: > Virginia police have obtained a search warrant to photograph the erect penis of a 17-year-old facing felony child-pornography charges for sexting an explicit video to his 15-year-old girlfriend, the boy's lawyer says. > If he doesn't cooperate, the Manassas City Police Department has threatened to take him to a hospital and medically induce an erection with an injection, attorney Jessica Harbeson Foster toldThe Washington Post. > Police already photographed the teen's genitals against his will when he was arrested in late January, she said. Oh, and one of the main officers involved later killed himself after he was outed as a pedophile[2]. The authorities _eventually_ backed off after the media picked it up and there was general outrage. But it's insane that that's what needed to get people in these systems to stop clearly inappropriate behavior. The fact that the whole system is happy to go along with injustices unless there's a massive public outcry shows how broken things have become. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/virginia-teen-sexting-cops-penis-photo/12434813/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/09/virgin... [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/cop-who-wanted-to-take-pic-of-erection-in-sexting-case-commits-suicide/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/cop-who-wanted-t...
• fundad 4y ago
  Great system of policing ya got there. How you gonna pay for it?
• jonnycomputer 4y ago
  I'm afraid that I've become hesitant to call the cops even when an intervention is required (e.g. minor theft, a person is walking around disoriented, etc.), for fear that someone will get shot or beaten or otherwise have their lives ruined. I don't want to think that way. It's why I think ordinary cops shouldn't carry guns.
  • jfk13 4y ago
    > It's why I think ordinary cops shouldn't carry guns. And neither should ordinary people, generally.
• fitblipper 4y ago
  The problem is CPS/DCS. They are a lawless organization that can take your child at based solely on their feelings at the moment and not from "probable cause", "reasonable suspicion" or any of the other standards that police are generally held to. In practice that means any neighbor can report anything they don't like about your parenting and it will be acted on just because a child is involved. This leads to the parents with the most strict and overly protective and cautious parenting strategy having their methods enforced by law since they can report anything they are a little uncomfortable with in other's parenting. Why have we decided that the legal protections granted to us are only sometimes good? Why have we built in this loophole where if an accuser says the magic word "child" to the authorities they can remove our rights? When a kid is involved simply asking for a lawyer to help you understand your rights can be seen as trying to restrict access to the kid and can result in them being taken by CPS.
  • Someone1234 4y ago
    Please read the article before responding. The article says, quite clearly, that CPS dropped the case within weeks and that Texas family law was updated, so CPS cannot even bring cases like this against parents. The problem is that Texas's criminal law was not updated, and the cops/prosecutors made the parent pick between a crime that had a 2-year minimum prison term OR taking a plea for 64 hours of community service (and other things, like writing an apology letter, etc). This wasn't a CPS problem. It was a cop abusing their authority and a prosecutor who didn't drop the charges. Plus a hugely abusive plea system in US criminal cases (which is a whole huge discussion in its own right).
    • fitblipper 4y ago
      Thank you for pointing that out. I did not mean for my comment to be interpreted as being about this single instance. My intent was to comment on the general sentiment I was seeing in the comments that the US culture has turned to be an overly protective and restrictive environment for our children. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear.
• inoffensivename 4y ago
  man my kids walk home 1 mile from school on a daily basis, am I gonna get arrested?
• borvo 4y ago
  A list of outrages by authorities worthy of a failed police state.
• giantg2 4y ago
  This lady needed a better lawyer. That section of law hinges on things being reasonable. Not only did the state pass a family law statute, but CPS determined the case was unfounded. These are evidence that the actions were reasonable.
• smallerfish 4y ago
  I'm suspicious of the story, honestly. What are they leaving out? Searching for her name in google news, the Reason story is the only hit, and since this is the perfect piece to stoke their readers' engagement, I'm skeptical of their vetting. The GoFundMe was created back in September, and you would surely expect at least local news hits in google news by now.
  • public_defender 4y ago
    I agree that Reason is pretty agenda-driven, and not really a reliable source of reporting, but I don't think there is a special reason to mistrust this story. I have represented several hundreds of people in situations like this. This lady's story wouldn't be in my top quartile of stunning injustice. I have frequently called news outlets to tell them about outrageous cases, and stories like this just don't make news. It's not news that there's a child endangerment law in Texas, it's not news that the police make bullshit arrests, and there's not much else here. The fact that there are no other mentions of this lady and her case on the internet is basically the hobgoblin of my professional life.
    • antiterra 4y ago
      Have you ever looked a prosecutor in the face and just said 'what the fuck, dude?' when they pull something stunning like this?
    • Kaibeezy 4y ago
      Local news? Is nearly extinct, supposedly. Will be in (what's left of it) shortly, as this article posted today. Articles about articles are news, right? Based on the public info, the locations and stuff check out. In my experience, fakes are usually almost totally fake or unverifiable. I don't think this is fabricated.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • michaelmrose 4y ago
    This is bad logic. If it was real it would be on google applies only to conspicuous news stories that effect many people or happen to catch the spotlight. There are 338M of us here in the US. I'm sure for all of us there are events that are notable, terrible, extraordinary. People are in accidents, die, are wronged, fail, triumph and most of it never makes the news and isn't available on google. If I search for my own name all I see are far more notable Michael Roses.
• rib3ye 4y ago
  Something else is up here... If I may be allowed to speculate, perhaps she went full Karen on the police, and they got reactive.
• swader999 4y ago
  My four year old does scrambles and hiking trails to several mountain summits in our area. We get looks on the trails but he's very capable and loves it.
• wvenable 4y ago
  > She obtained a lawyer, who told her that if she admitted guilt, she could participate in a pretrial diversion program that would close the case. On the other hand, if she went to trial and lost, she faced a minimum of two years behind bars and a maximum of 20. So she took the plea deal. Nobody gets their day in court, it's just not worth it. I'd like to think a jury wouldn't convict but would you be willing to take that chance?
• matthewaveryusa 4y ago
  For parents here that want to see local US laws: https://letgrow.org/resources/state-policy-maps/ https://letgrow.org/resources/state-policy-maps/
• wyldfire 4y ago
  > Her diversion program required 65 hours of community service, which Wallace completed at an early childhood center. The program mandated that she only work there during the weekends, when there were no kids around for her to endanger. "for her to endanger"‽‽ The craziness started with the neighbor, continued with the cops, but then also through to sentencing!
• thwayunion 4y ago
  The attitudes on childhood independence vary wildly based on density and penetration of car culture. For example: I have a neighbor whose 10 year old rides the subway, alone, to and from school. This includes some amount of walking on either side -- something close to half a mile in aggregate on google maps. In the suburb where I grew up, parents are now required to meet their middle school children at the bus stop or arrange for alternative transportation. In middle school, in the same community, which hasn't changed much, I rode my bike several miles. So this is a recent change. AFAICT it's because of some pedestrian fatalities and injuries a few years back. Raising children in a car-dependent suburb seems like a good way to set them up for a few years of stunted adulthood while they learn basic "how to operate without an adult literally physically present" skills... I'd like to move to the suburbs so I can have a nicer house and a yard, but I don't think I want to subject my children to that environment.
• tensor 4y ago
  As a Canadian this is like a story from some 3rd world country. I remember frequently walking to school that distance as a kid. It wasn't abnormal nor dangerous. That it would be "illegal" is some crazy stuff.
  • leephillips 4y ago
    I think you have it backwards. This kind of nonsense doesn’t happen in third world countries. (Other kinds of nonsense, for sure.)
  • swat535 4y ago
    I was born and raised in a 3rd world country, this doesn't happen over there. Kids are pretty independent from a young age and learn to take the public transport at like 7 by themselves.. From what I can gather, Europeans doesn't have this issue either.. This kind of insanity is only an American problem AFAIK.
  • midoridensha 4y ago
    >As a Canadian this is like a story from some 3rd world country. I remember frequently walking to school that distance as a kid. It wasn't abnormal nor dangerous. I'm American, and grew up there several decades ago. I also walked/biked that distance to school as a kid. Things in America are completely different from those times. That's one of the big reasons I left.
  • bananatype 4y ago
• renewiltord 4y ago
  Realistically, it's a Texas cop. They talk a big game but when the rubber hits the road, they're going to be hiding. The most accurate model is that this cop is terrified of the kidnapping gangs himself. Which is why he is unable to enforce anything against them. Consequently he enforces where he can.
  • Overtonwindow 4y ago
    Gosh, that sounds like the police in Uvalde…
• 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  > 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 We need to name and shame this awful person who couldn't be bothered to walk the kid the half mile to his parents' house and have a human conversation. They need to be held accountable for the impact of their actions. Otherwise more people will do this.
• lacker 4y ago
  I don't know... the story as written does sound really bad. My similarly-aged kids walk about half a mile to school by themselves, as do dozens of other children that live in my neighborhood, and it would be crazy to arrest parents for this. But we're only hearing the mother's side of the story. The neighbor who called the cops, the actions of the police, it's possible they saw something that wasn't reported here. And something about this story sounds a little off to me. A kid is peacefully walking a half mile home, someone calls the cops, and the cops actually show up and intercept the kid before the kid gets home? Perhaps the kid wasn't actually okay with walking home, perhaps the mom was kicking him out of the car as a punishment, perhaps the kid didn't know what to do and asked a neighbor for help, perhaps the kid told the police that he didn't feel safe with his mother, perhaps some other stuff happened that the mom wasn't willing to tell Reason about, perhaps the police made a judgement call based on interviewing the neighbors and child that the mother had behaved inappropriately here. But maybe the story is completely accurate and this is just bad by the cops. So I hesitate to judge either way.
  • adamsb6 4y ago
    We do get some information from the other side. The giant delta between the possible prison sentence and the consequences in the plea deal is a signal that the prosecution thought they would do poorly at trial.
    • matai_kolila 4y ago
      I'm baffled as to why her attorney advised she take the plea deal.
      • jawns 4y ago
        You are? The choice is to avoid prison time entirely, or be willing to spend at least 2 years in prison if the jury gets this one wrong. The woman has already been failed by the police who arrested her and the prosecutor who declined to drop the charges. Who's to say whether she'll be failed by the jury as well?
• swader999 4y ago
  There's a societal cost/risk to this coddling of youngsters that is probably much higher than the risk reduction of this mentality.
• snickerer 4y ago
  Texas.
• woodruffw 4y ago
  This is (one of) the logical conclusions of suburban, car-enforced social alienation: if you don't know your neighbors and your neighbors don't know you, then everything that isn't immediately familiar to either party is treated with suspicion. And this holds for the entire "food chain": police who don't live in the areas they patrol, DAs and CPS employees who don't understand their communities, &c. It's civically and socially poisonous. It would of course be ridiculous to claim that these things don't happen absent of car culture: it's a broader trend than that, and there are suburban areas that buck the trend. But the urban/suburban divide here is stark: I grew up walking to school and riding public transport alone, and it's normal to see kids running around my neighborhood without any supervision. That kind of freedom works because nobody is surprised to see a 6 year old running errands; they're seen doing the same thing every day.
  • dionidium 4y ago
    When I lived in Manhattan I didn't know any of my neighbors. It's more cultural than it is environmental.
  • thescriptkiddie 4y ago
    +1 I don't have anything to add, this is just a really important point.
  • rootusrootus 4y ago
    I've lived in the city, and I currently live in a suburb. I know a lot more of my neighbors here than I did in the city. And my neighbors know my kids. On top of that, the sidewalk is filled with kids going to & from school each day, and it's noisy all afternoon as they run all over the neighborhood riding bikes and playing. So I get that you want to find car culture to be the root of all evil, but I don't buy it.
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      "Evil" is not the world I would (or did) use. And as I said: there are lots of places that buck the trend; I'm glad you live in one. For every place like yours, there are suburbs like the ones that most of my friends grew up in: ones where everybody drives in and out, where sidewalks exist primarily as a vessel for dogwalking, and nothing can be reached on foot (parks or basic living amenities).
• bythreads 4y ago
  Coming from a european perspective this is just completely balls to the walls nuts. Reminds me if that Danish mother who was arrested in N.Y. For leaving her kids sleeping in a tram outside a cafe window (with her on the other side) You guys (as a general completely unfounded generalization) live and breathe fear.
  • dinkleberg 4y ago
    As an American I can also say this is completely balls to the walls nuts.
    • kahrl 4y ago
      As an American I can also say this is completely balls to the walls nuts, AND NOT SURPRISING IN THE LEAST.
• jamesgreenleaf 4y ago
  Richard Branson, in his autobiography, tells a story about his mother asking him one day while she was driving, if he thought he could find his way home from where they were, which was miles away. He got out of the car, his mother drove off, and he walked home. He was four years old. Here's John Taylor Gatto telling the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96tEE8XoC0c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96tEE8XoC0c
• dekhn 4y ago
  There is no other press about this individual so it's hard to take this at face value without further context. Nonetheless, I'm struggling to see how the case got as far as it did with her taking a plea deal. In particular, I'd expect that if this went to court and got more press, the DA or whomever is pushing this would drop everything immediately. Or even before any of that happened, somebody just sort of said 'oh, huh, kids probablyh should be able to walk in a neighborhood on their own, and the police shouldn't arrest a parent for permitting it'
• vaidhy 4y ago
  Is this state dependent or neighborhood-dependent? Interestingly, my son is 12 and he rides his bike absolutely everywhere. The only ask we have is that he should let us know where he is going and ping us once he reaches there, but he was out with his friends all the time. We seem to be an outlier though since none of his friends' parents seem to trust their kids that much. Another data point, I have seen more kids playing around in the streets in a working class neighborhood and the richer neighborhoods are empty. These kind of issues seem to come from the more entitled, upper middle-class people who have been primed to be paranoid through crime reporting.
• SwetDrems 4y ago
  American suburban culture is embarrassing. Cities should be filled with kids living their own independent lives. Look how dutch cities are built and it's clear to see why dutch youth are the happiest and most free in the world.
• lufte 4y ago
  Offtopic: I'm seeing a trend of titles that, as a non native English speaker, always confuse me and take me a good couple of seconds to finally understand. This is one of them. It's like they use a comma where I would expect an "and" to be. I wish I had more examples to show, but I have seen a lot here in HN. Is this some new editorial style or was this always used?
  • timbit42 4y ago
    When you write a list of items, such as, "one, two, three and four", you use commas instead of "and" or "or" between each of them except the last so people know whether the rest are "and" or "or". In this case, "or" doesn't make sense so the comma means "and".
  • leephillips 4y ago
    It’s a common style of telegraphic English used in headlines. In normal prose we would write “handcuffed and jailed”. I don’t think the style is new. In fact, as a native speaker, I also sometimes have to read headlines three times to figure out what they mean.
• Dowwie 4y ago
  Waco, Texas. Why does that city sound familiar? Oh, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege
• kuboble 4y ago
  That's so insanely crazy. In Switzerland it's normal for kids as young as 4 to walk few hundred meters alone to kindergarten (if the kid is courageous enough) even in the urban city center.
• joemaller1 4y ago
  Horrifying. I would like to see this brought to Governor Abbot's attention.
• koonsolo 4y ago
  Land of the free
• birdmanjeremy 4y ago
  I'm confused. I also "still didn't know it was illegal" after reading the article. What was the crime? Were my parents guilty of this every time I road my bike around the neighborhood as a child? In the street, no less.
• NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
  This was regrettable and it shouldn't have happened. It also reflects a sort of safety-above-all note in the zeitgeist that's also regrettable. But I want to point out that the reason you're all rubbernecking is that it's unusual. Mostly, this just doesn't happen. Mostly people are reasonable. That doesn't mean we shouldn't help the lady with her gofundme and try to punish the other adults involved, though :-)
• dusted 4y ago
  Instead of making sure it's safe for kids to walk outside, police throw the parents of the kids walking outside in jail. Only in america.. Downvoted ? Really? People agree that it seems reasonable to put parents in jail for letting their kids walk outside ? I walked to and from school when I was 6 years old, no problem... If society has degenerated to the point where it's not safe for a kid to walk on the street, then we don't need to make it illegal for kids to walk on the streets, we need to make the streets safe.
  • midoridensha 4y ago
    You're probably getting downvotes from butthurt Americans who resent the "only in America" comment you made, even though it's generally correct (it seems like some of the Anglophone countries have copied some of this insanity though, to a lesser degree).
• EricE 4y ago
  land of the free, home of the brave.
• jakub_g 4y ago
  I live in continental Europe, where kids being out is total chill pretty much everywhere. I remember being 10-12 y.o. going alone to school (15 min walk) every day, and hanging out with folks playing soccer until dark in the summer (~10PM). While the US seems totally out of place with those laws, it seems UK is not far away. My brother's kids are 10 & 13 y.o. and it's real problem every time they have school vacation (several times per year), they must stay home all day because guess what, parents don't have unlimited vacation, and they're scared to let kids go out to play alone, not for something happening to them, but for someone noticing and reporting it. It's nuts.
• dougmwne 4y ago
  I walked this distance every day to school as a second grader and so did many other second graders. I crossed major roads, though there were crossing guards at some but not all intersections. This was 30 years ago. Today I spend time in Poland. It is normal for elementary children to walk to school or play in parks unsupervised in major cities. Even Texas seems to have lost it. What a sad and sorry state of things.
• medo-bear 4y ago
  so in merica, in land o da three, parents get thrown in jail for letting their kids walk alone? meanwhile here in scary eastern europe every non-rainy night i cant go sleep because apparently its ok that there are kids all over the place playing unsupervised ... you know ... having fun ... being kids ... not dogs on a leash
• ok_dad 4y ago
  This is why I like living in a neighborhood that isn't suburban and doesn't have nosy neighbors bothering you. Sure there's more loud noises like cars and motorcycles and parties, and there's a few more rusted out cars in yards, but I wouldn't trade my neighbors for 100 upper-middle-class yuppies who get into your business.
• alexb_ 4y ago
  And this is why you never, without any exception, make any sort of statement to police. It does not matter how friendly they appear, a police officer will NEVER be asking you questions for your own good. It's unfortunate we have a police force so corrupt and despicable that this needs to be our policy, but we do. >She obtained a lawyer, who told her that if she admitted guilt, she could participate in a pretrial diversion program that would close the case. Fuck this.
• WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  On top of its overall surreal basis, this case once again highlights why I can’t take the USA justice system seriously. Guilty plea shouldn’t exist in a civilised country. When you had plea bargaining, what you get is a mockery of justice.
• Zak 4y ago
  District attorney is an elected office in Texas. McLennan County DA Barry Johnson should be called upon to explain himself to the public. Chief of Police doesn't seem to be an elected office, but Chief Sheryl Victorian is still accountable to the public, and she should also be called upon to explain the policies of her department and the actions of her officers. https://www.co.mclennan.tx.us/directory.aspx?eid=185 https://www.co.mclennan.tx.us/directory.aspx?eid=185 https://www.waco-texas.com/Departments/Police-Department/Chief-of-Police https://www.waco-texas.com/Departments/Police-Department/Chi...
  • lrem 4y ago
    Which one of them has "and decide which laws are too stupid to enforce" in their job description? :/
    • Zak 4y ago
      Neither, but crimes like "child endangerment" are always a judgment call with regard to how dangerous the situation is and whether the caregiver's behavior was reasonable under the circumstances. Does making an 8 year old walk half a mile qualify? In a quiet neighborhood, no. In downtown Waco where the cop's supposed sex traffickers operate, probably still no, but it's getting into more of a grey area. On a highway with no sidewalk or shoulder, yes.
• cpursley 4y ago
  My own mother (God rest her soul) made me do this for harassing my brothers. And I totally deserved it and learned my lesson. I recommend Free Range Kids to parents. And to observe how the French raise theirs.
• lrem 4y ago
  In the meantime in Switzerland we've been summoned to the school to get a stern talking to. We have learned that our 7yo is too old to not walk to the school on her own.
• vinnie-io 4y ago
  so the shitty karen neighbor should also get arrested right for letting the kid continue on his walk home?
• DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  What in the hell has changed in the last few years that suddenly there’s this moral panic over “sex trafficking”? Like somehow it’s become this massive concern recently with no obvious cause - there hasn’t been any indication there’s an increase of it, or that it’s gone unreported or unrecognized before. It stinks massively of satanic panic.
  • MandieD 4y ago
    As someone who grew up near Waco: QAnon isn’t the complete explanation, but it’s a factor, along with the frequent screeching about caravans of illegal alien criminals. It all kind of sloshes around in people’s heads around there.
• anotheraccount9 4y ago
  Meanwhile, a 5-year-old boy becomes one of the youngest people ever to hike the Appalachian Trail (2200 miles).
• Overtonwindow 4y ago
  Could the parents sue the nosy neighbor?
• O__________O 4y ago
  Worth noting that child was literally safer walking home alone than being in the car, since the odds of dying in a vehicle related death are multiple times higher than odds of being abducted and killed by a stranger; odds of being abducted and physically harmed by a stranger are even less likely than being injured in vehicle accident. Would not be surprised to learn that school districts in area even require children to walk to school if they are within that distance to their schools. Anyone involved in this should at very least should lose their jobs and family should be awarded significant compensation for the harm done to the family.
• alkonaut 4y ago
  My 8yo walks half a mile from the bus they took across town. Are there really that many kidnappings in the US? (Let’s say, compared to some other relevant risk such as being run over by a car).
• mosselman 4y ago
  Holy shit. What did I just read?! Both the article and the comments in here describe some insane society that seems to come out of a dystopian nightmare. Neighbours calling the cops on each other for nothing and getting kids’ mothers arrested. Kids having to be supervised at all time. Police pretending like they never played outside when they were little. Wtf is wrong with the US?
• insane_dreamer 4y ago
  What a sad society we live in when kids can no longer do things that were perfectly normal for ourselves as kids because of some stupid neighbor and abusive police / CPS. As someone with elementary school children, I'm much more worried about police/CPS overreach than kidnappers. All I can say, is TG I don't (and never will) live in Texas.
• dbrowne 4y ago
  I can only imagine the horrific consequences if she were Black. 1) Children would have probably been placed in foster care regardless of the father's presence. 2) would have probably been tased or shot because she would have rightfully mouthed offed and "resisted". 3)Would have been portrayed as a delinquent parent by the media.
• sigzero 4y ago
  This is just so wrong. She needs to sue to make a stink and get it removed from her record.
• tb_technical 4y ago
  Under no circumstances do you ever talk to the police, child protective services, or any government official. If you're being investigated, always communicate through an attorney. Government workers operate with the apathy of any person at a regular job. They almost never think they're making the wrong judgements, and they can and will lie to you and misrepresent you in court.
• matai_kolila 4y ago
  > Heather Wallace plead guilty to child endangerment and can no longer work with kids. The real mistake was pleading guilty. She should have gotten better representation...
• secretsatan 4y ago
  Long thread, anyone posted the brass eye episode yet?
• locallost 4y ago
  I can't explain it other than the media creating moral panics for decades because that's what gets people's attention. At one point the fantasy becomes reality and shapes law enforcement. When it gets really sad is when grownups do things to protect kids that are actually more dangerous. The classic example being driving them everywhere when the number one danger for any child is a car crash.
• kypro 4y ago
  I think is a symptom of a larger problem - that kids today are treated like mindless idiots generally. Adults today seem to increasingly act like kids are unable to do practically anything independently, and worse, they act like they can't be trusted to anything of any importance or with any level of risk. And I'd argue that attuite is having an effect on our children because they also seem to be less independent and less capable than I remember me or my friends being when I was a kid. I suppose a good example of what I'm talking about was couple of years ago I was at the park with my family and one of the children we were with dropped a ball in the lake. As you can imagine he was upset so instinctively ran over to us crying about losing his ball. My girlfriend's response was to ask me to get his ball back, but in my opinion this is exactly the kind of situation kids should be encouraged to solve on their own. And more importantly that adults should give kids room to solve with supervision. Before I continue, it's probably worth noting that this lake was very shallow and the only real risk here was him falling in and getting a bit muddy, and in any case we were about 10 meters away so nothing bad was going to happen. Given this I said to him I wouldn't get his ball, but that instead I'd come over with him and help him find a way to get the ball back himself. So we went over to the ball and I asked him to come up with a plan to get the ball back himself and within a few seconds he found long stick and fished his ball out. In my opinion the only reason he didn't get a stick and fish it out to begin with was because like most kids his age he's been encouraged to see himself as helpless and incapable of solving his own problems. This wasn't a capability or safety thing, it was purely an issue of mindset. I've told this story a few times before and it's interesting to me that a lot of people (including my girlfriend) think that what I did was irresponsible and have told me to stop encouraging stuff like this because I'm going to get the kids hurt. And I think that's part of the problem. As a society we tell ourselves (and each other) that we're bad parents if we put our kids in any danger whatsoever. But I think this comes at the cost of our children being less independent and less resilient. If I recall correctly Richard Branson has an interesting chapter about this in his book, Losing My Virginity. In his case I think he talks about how his mum would kick him out of the car as a kid and make him find his own way home to teach him how to be independent and self-reliant. I'm not sure I agree with what she did personally, but it's interesting that Branson seems to attribute a lot of his success to his mum and how she raised him.
  • 4y ago
• eftychis 4y ago
  This is a joke right? April Fool's right?
• trillic 4y ago
  insane that she chose to plead guilty, here's the Texas child endangerment law that the prosecution would've needed to prove... "Under Texas law child endangerment is "any act that exposes a child under the age of 15 to imminent risk of death, bodily harm or physical or mental impairment." The act may be intentional or reckless or may be considered criminally negligent behavior carried out by an act of omission. For example, a person may be guilty of endangering a child if the child was not wearing a seat belt at the time of an automobile accident. Other acts that may be considered child endangerment include (1) leaving a child unattended in a motor vehicle, (2) driving while intoxicated with a child in the automobile, (3) hiring a person with a known history of sexual offense as a child care provider, (4) serving alcohol to an underage driver, (5) leaving a young child unsupervised or in the care of another young child, (6) unreasonable corporal punishment resulting in bodily injury, (7) leaving a young child unsupervised in an unsafe area, (8) leaving handguns within the reach of children, and (8) and failure to report suspected child abuse."
  • jawns 4y ago
    "unsafe area" is so broad and vague that who knows what a jury will deem unsafe enough for a conviction. And you've got to remember that neither the arresting officer's actions nor the DA's actions were objectively reasonable, so why make any assumptions about whether the jury's actions would be objectively reasonable?
• koevet 4y ago
  Wow, I live in Berlin and both my daughters (7 and 11) go and come back from school on their own, since they are 6 yo. The oldest one takes the U-Bahn (Underground) to school and the bus to attend her hobbies. Often we send one of them to the nearby supermarket to buy last minute stuff. I like to think that I'm helping them to be independent and aware of their city. Most of my daughters' friends do the same.
• user3939382 4y ago
  > The result of the indictment was that she had to perform 60 hours of community service I see a lot of discussion about who is at fault. Everyone sucks here, but my first question is who is this judge that did not throw this out in 2 seconds?? Cops, DAs, neighbors' bad behavior is one thing. Like what.
• programmarchy 4y ago
  Willing to bet there’s more to this story. From the article: > Heather Wallace's oldest son, eight-year-old Aiden, was driving his two brothers crazy in the car as they all returned from karate one afternoon in October 2021. Wallace asked Aiden to walk the rest of the way home—half a mile in quiet, suburban Waco, Texas—so that he could calm down. It’s not like the kid was happily strolling a mile home from school or the park. The article is downplaying the situation. Sounds like she kicked her kid out of the car, and I have doubts that went down peacefully. She was probably angry and her kid was probably crying and panicking. From the neighbors’ point of view it probably looked very cruel, and perhaps even dangerous depending where he was left. (Many suburbs are polluted by “stroads” which have no sidewalks and lots of traffic.) Granted, a felony seems extreme, even if the Mom was raging at the kid. But I’d want to hear the neighbor’s testimony before offering my sympathy.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• derefr 4y ago
  Is there anywhere in the world where people still practice "free-range parenting" — I can't believe there even has to be a term for that — on a cultural level? Where being a "helicopter parent" would be seen as ridiculous and uncouth by the locals? A community that's intentionally trying to set things up in such a way that their kids can be given historical levels of freedom to roam? I know about the Nordic countries, but they still don't hold a candle to even how free kids were all over the world up through the 1970s. Maybe some kind of cultural enclave? Maybe a tiny island nation? A commune? A cult? Anything?
  • midoridensha 4y ago
    Have you never been outside the US? It's only the US that's like this.
    • derefr 4y ago
      I live in Canada, and that's where my experience comes from. Argument refuted! :P But to be serious: yes, I've been outside of North America. I've been to Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, and a few other places. None of them are as bad as North America is with this expectation/nigh-on legal requirement of helicopter parenting... but they're all still far worse than what basically-everywhere in the world was like 50 years ago. To be clear, my expectation for a place that is better, isn't just that kids there can walk to school on their own; but rather that kids in such a place would be allowed — and enabled, by considerations of forestry and wildlife management — to just walk/bike out of the town or city they live in to play and have adventures in the fields and parks and maybe a little bit of thornier wilderness around them, all on their own, for hours at a time. A.K.A. "just be home for dinner." That's really how things used to be! Recently enough that anyone over 50 can tell you stories about their own solo wanderings of forests and mountains and streams as a child, in search of bugs to catch and birds to watch. Anyone under 50, though? Not so much. Not even younger people from supposedly rural areas in supposedly developing countries (that I've talked to, at least) have had a chance at this kind of youth. They might go out exploring — but parents insist that it be done with a group of friends, that they stay in cell-phone service range, and a dozen other things that mean that they have zero opportunity to clear their mind and actually take in nature for even a single minute. If you really do insist that "most of the world" has this opportunity, though, then maybe the particular set of countries I've visited (and the people I've talked to on my travels) represent a bubble of experience? I think the countries I've visited have all been Commonwealth or ex-Commonwealth nations. Maybe that's the common factor? Did the Brits invent helicopter parenting and then carry it with them wherever they went?
• nicewarmvalley 4y ago
  This is fiction to rile up comment sections right?
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• dredmorbius 4y ago
  Let's look at the outcome of this case: After two weeks, child services closed Wallace's case, finding the complaint was unfounded. Keep in mind that Reason.com is essentially an anti-government institution, for which such stories, often presented with an extreme slant or selective take on facts, are catnip. HN's own archives will show many instances of similar articles: <https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=reason.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=reason.com> I've no doubt that government overreach and overreaction is a Real Thing. But please, Reason is an entirely unreasonable exponent of such views. Let's find better sources, please.
  • viridian 4y ago
    Consider reading the article before you spend multiple paragraphs criticizing the source, because the actual outcome was that Heather Wallace is now barred from her career field and is considered a danger to children. Also, for all of your hand wringing over the source, you failed to realize that this is original piece by Lenore Skenazy, probably the most well known advocate for the free range kids movement, and she has not only contributed to Reason, but also the NY Times, WaPo, the WSJ, NPR, and PBS, among others. Blindly criticizing a source without either reading the damn article or caring about whether the piece was from an original source is incredibly intellectually lazy.
    • dredmorbius 4y ago
      I had read the article, and cited material from it. I'm not familiar with the author. Though I note that her principle publishing outlets both appear to lean strongly Right-Libertarian: Reason and the New York Sun (founded by Conrad Black), per Wikipedia. My point about Reason's slant and bias remains. If the story has legs, it should be available from another publication.
  • nicolas_t 4y ago
    CPS closed the case, the DA didn't so the woman pled guilty to child endangerment and lost her job. There's a bit more than "After two weeks, child services closed Wallace's case, finding the complaint was unfounded." if you actually read the article to the end. That said I agree with you that Reason is a bit biased.
• Ptchd 4y ago
  Did they mean 5 years-old.....
• DebtDeflation 4y ago
  When I was 8 I used to ride my bike all over town and was out from morning to evening on weekends. Are we really at the point where a half mile walk through the suburbs with sidewalk the whole way is considered dangerous?
• potbelly83 4y ago
  It looks like a lot of the EU crowd have jumped in here with the usual US sucks, everything about the US is crazy. Just to give some perspective, I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia and the kids in my neighborhood are always outside, no parents in sight, riding their bikes around, going down to the creek etc... Same was true when I lived in upstate NY. The US is a huge country and comparing Texas to other parts is somewhat like comparing France to Poland.
  • arlcode 4y ago
    If it's any consolation I think we are seeing the flip side of the occasional "EU is gonna outlaw the Internet" thread that happens whenever a new regulation is proposed/implemented. There is a legitimate issue but the situation overall is much more nuanced.
• newobj 4y ago
  ah yes, the limited government/personal responsibility state of Texas
• 2-718-281-828 4y ago
  like 30 years ago, when I went to elementary school. i literally went there by foot. a little more than one kilometer. alone. in winter it was dark - and cold. my parents being divorced and my mother being a yoga teacher giving classes in the evening I even had to to the breakfast myself. as far as I can tell I turned out alright. I have to wonder - what changed - is this "everything was better back then" trope really just a trope?
• eyear 4y ago
  I am not going to let my 8 year old walking alone, even in a safe neighborhood. You never know what is going to happen. If the bad 0.0001% happens, you will only live the rest of your life in regret and pain.
  • danny_codes 4y ago
    Can't tell if you're joking. I hope you are
• atotic 4y ago
  The solution is obvious: the kid should have been armed. The neighbor would not have approached him, and he would have been able to defend himself from predators.
• fs111 4y ago
  America is insane. Seriously insane
• SevenNation 4y ago
  It's puzzling that there don't appear to be any other likely-neutral accounts of this case. Nothing in a local paper or local TV news. No essays or posts. Zip. The case is a year old. The only thing is the gofundme page linked in the article. https://www.gofundme.com/f/restore-money-lost-after-wrongful-arrest https://www.gofundme.com/f/restore-money-lost-after-wrongful... An that plea links back to the Reason article. There's a big overlap between the plea on that page and the Reason article. It's possible there's more going on here than meets the eye.
• fabatka 4y ago
  Wow, this story is straight out of Black Mirror.
• JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  This pisses me off. When I was 8, I walked several miles to where my mom worked after school let out. I wasn't the only kid who did this! Right now, my neighborhood is a mile and a half from an elementary school. I see the kids that age walking to school. There is ZERO reason for this to have happened. I would sue the FUCK out of everyone who had a hand in this.
• vbezhenar 4y ago
  When I was 4, I decided to visit my mom. I knew the general direction, so I went few kilometers along the road until some driver stopped and took me. It was not an ordinary situation, but not a big deal either. I went to school at 7 and everyone including me walked the way (around kilometer) every day forth and back. Around this age I regularly took bus to visit my grandparents who lived on the other side of the city. I remember that I slept in the bus once and went off in an unknown area and spent next 3 hours walking around until I recognized the area and found a way back. When I was 12, I hopped on train and went to another country to visit my father. I spent a week in the train. Of course my mom asked some guy who happened to be in my cabin to watch over me. He was drunk almost all the time with some random girl who stole his money in the end lol. Not a big deal. People are too protective about their children nowadays. Children are pretty capable when they're not watched over all the time.
• quantified 4y ago
  I guess parents can decide not to vaccinate their kids or have them wear masks that protect others, but can't decide to let them outside?
• darkarmani 4y ago
  The article links to the penal code. I think they had a terrible lawyer. I also don't understand how a reasonable legislator could add "drug use in the presence of a child is an offense". Also there is an affirmable defense since they were on the way home from Karate if the walking could be affirmed to be part of that practice. "He was cooling down from karate practice". > It is a defense to prosecution under Subsection (c) that the act or omission enables the child to practice for or participate in an organized athletic event Full Text: ----- Sec. 22.041. ABANDONING OR ENDANGERING CHILD. (a) In this section, "abandon" means to leave a child in any place without providing reasonable and necessary care for the child, under circumstances under which no reasonable, similarly situated adult would leave a child of that age and ability. (b) A person commits an offense if, having custody, care, or control of a child younger than 15 years, he intentionally abandons the child in any place under circumstances that expose the child to an unreasonable risk of harm. (c) A person commits an offense if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence, by act or omission, engages in conduct that places a child younger than 15 years in imminent danger of death, bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment. (c-1) For purposes of Subsection (c), it is presumed that a person engaged in conduct that places a child in imminent danger of death, bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment if: (1) the person manufactured, possessed, or in any way introduced into the body of any person the controlled substance methamphetamine in the presence of the child; (2) the person's conduct related to the proximity or accessibility of the controlled substance methamphetamine to the child and an analysis of a specimen of the child's blood, urine, or other bodily substance indicates the presence of methamphetamine in the child's body; or (3) the person injected, ingested, inhaled, or otherwise introduced a controlled substance listed in Penalty Group 1, Section 481.102, Health and Safety Code, or Penalty Group 1-B, Section 481.1022, Health and Safety Code, into the human body when the person was not in lawful possession of the substance as defined by Section 481.002(24) of that code. (d) Except as provided by Subsection (e), an offense under Subsection (b) is: (1) a state jail felony if the actor abandoned the child with intent to return for the child; or (2) a felony of the third degree if the actor abandoned the child without intent to return for the child. (e) An offense under Subsection (b) is a felony of the second degree if the actor abandons the child under circumstances that a reasonable person would believe would place the child in imminent danger of death, bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment. (f) An offense under Subsection (c) is a state jail felony. (g) It is a defense to prosecution under Subsection (c) that the act or omission enables the child to practice for or participate in an organized athletic event and that appropriate safety equipment and procedures are employed in the event. (h) It is an exception to the application of this section that the actor voluntarily delivered the child to a designated emergency infant care provider under Section
• oort-cloud9 4y ago
• oort-cloud9 4y ago
• jasmer 4y ago
  I can understand that one person here and there will have a misappropriated sense of justice - we all have our weaknesses and odd perspectives. What I don't get is how this could be systemic, or, that other reasonable minds within the system would have such awful judgment.
• jhallenworld 4y ago
  Well I need to show this to my mom, who made 8-year old me ride my bike back to school (2.5 miles, admittedly on some busy roads) to retrieve my forgotten homework.
• Thlom 4y ago
  WTF. And here I am annoyed that my 7 year-old son doesn't want to walk to school alone?
• zhivota 4y ago
  This story is, in a nutshell, why me and my family have a plan to leave the US permanently within 2 years. We have a 4 year old and a 6 year old, and the possible futures we can see for ourselves and our children as they grow up are all dystopian to us. We can have freedom for them to play outside, if we only live in a rural area where my wife and kids will be the only non-white people around, where we will be bound to use a car for every errand, and where the politics of everyone nearby will be opposite our own. We can have a walkable neighborhood if we sacrifice safety and health (density in US cities is built on the busiest, most polluting roadways), or all of our savings to live in one of the very very few walkable, safe urban communities in the US. These things don't appear to be improving. We have half the country engaged in absolutely insane conspiracy mongering including human trafficking stories that spark the behavior seen in the article (when the woman calls the police on the child walking alone outside). We have cities and states that prioritize the car over every other means of transportation, which creates unhealthy air, unsafe urban environments, and fractures communities as highways get wider and wider. We have defacto segregation in schooling and housing, coupled with rising nativism, that means if you are non-white, your options for where to live without sacrificing your basic dignity are severely constrained. I'm not anti-US in a general sense, but I do think the above factors make it a sub-optimal place to choose to permanently settle at this point. The only reason I can see at this point to live in the US is the higher salaries, but once you've got enough where you can choose to forego that, I can't see good reasons to stay.
  • elzbardico 4y ago
    "We can have freedom for them to play outside if we only live in a rural area (...) where the politics of everyone nearby will be opposite our own." Have you ever considered the remote possibility of your politics being the reason behind the dystopian future you see arising around you?
    • zhivota 4y ago
      I have considered that the political party most aligned with my beliefs has made mistakes which have exacerbated the issues in some cases. However, I believe the other party would make things worse in important ways. As far as my personal politics, no, the things I believe in do not drive us towards this dystopia. I believe in urbanism (including public transit, cycling and other micromobility, higher density, and other related policies), less power in the hands of local police and district attorneys in favor of public safety being managed at a higher level like the state level (including things like putting traffic enforcement in the purview of an unarmed and mostly automated traffic enforcement service), better social safety nets in the form of public health care and better employment protection and welfare benefits, and a few other things. Many of these problems derive from the structure of our political system. For instance, urbanism is largely impossible in much of the US due to the structure of who determines land use policies, which is largely individual municipalities, where voters are voting in their own self interest (which tends towards keeping their own property values high). Similarly for the public safety issues I mentioned, much of the abuse we see around the country is due to the people with the most power in this space being largely unaccountable to anyone. These things have nothing to do with party, and everything to do with structure.
• strenholme 4y ago
  I thought Texas was supposed to be a “free range kids” state. The article even mentions this: HB567, a larger child welfare reform bill, and clarifies that parents are allowed to let their kids engage in independent activities as long as they aren't putting them in serious, likely danger. [...] Unfortunately, HB567 amended only family law, not criminal law. This meant the cops were still free to punish Wallace. The solution is to create a law like HB567, but that amends Texas’s criminal law so frivolous arrests like this one can not happen. Another thing would be for more states to have well defined laws which give children a minimum age when they can be left unsupervised. Related: https://reason.com/2017/03/30/mom-arrested-for-leaving-kid-alone-for-5/ https://reason.com/2017/03/30/mom-arrested-for-leaving-kid-a... — https://reason.com/2021/10/11/cop-family-lawsuit-midland-qualified-immunity-cps/ https://reason.com/2021/10/11/cop-family-lawsuit-midland-qua...
• jmaygarden 4y ago
  My kids' bus stop (in Florida) is half a mile from the house. This is absurd. She should be writing Governor Abbott about a pardon. He was just up for re-election last week and might have jumped all over this for the publicity.
• nicolas_t 4y ago
  > But in her pretrial essay, which required her to admit guilt and remorse, Wallace thanked the officers for teaching her how wrong she was to have her son walk half a mile on a warm day in his own neighborhood. From now on, Wallace wrote, "I will continue to grow more as a parent and a person." This is creepy having to write this. It reminds me of the prisoner of war camp in north korea where prisoners of war were told to write essays criticizing their own position.
• xtat 4y ago
  These kind of stories make me feel like the western world has failed and we should start over
• bernardv 4y ago
  Totally ridiculous. Again, police officers going over the top and making it up as they go.
• kthejoker2 4y ago
  My grandfather was born in Waco, had a paper route when he was 7 and hauled ice to factory workers when he was 11. All of which he did by himself. My dad was also born in Waco and spent his latchkey days roaming the neighborhood and nearby pastures, complete with BB gun and pocket knife. Amazing how society can evolve in a few generations.
• robomartin 4y ago
  This is beyond disgusting. I hope they have the legal standing to file a massive lawsuit against all involved. One of the first things that popped into my mind is the likelihood of psychological trauma of that child who, effectively, sent mom home and destroyed her career and family finances due to his behavior (which led to the "go have a walk" decision). I also have to wonder if the parents relationship with their kids --particularly the mother's-- was permanently damaged by this incident. It's like your kids became radioactive and anything you do can land you in jail for 20 years if you are not careful. This has to be horrible. Frankly, I would probably give serious thought to leaving the country and starting over somewhere else. Living an entire life with such a dark cloud over your entire family cannot be easy. I understand protecting children. However, I also understand common sense. What she did was not wrong at all. What everyone else did was horrifically wrong beyond any possible justification. They need to get justice. I hope they do. I also hope her record is cleared. BTW, this isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened. I remember other cases from many years ago: https://www.google.com/search?q=parents+arrested+for+kids+walking+to+school https://www.google.com/search?q=parents+arrested+for+kids+wa...
• RobMurray 4y ago
  This is yet another example of how f*ked up the US is. People are punished for being decent parents while lunatics still have the right to own guns. Land of the free indeed.
• rayiner 4y ago
  This happened in Waco? These folks need their Texas cards confiscated.
• HeavyStorm 4y ago
  The USA is a strange land.