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Connecticut parents arrested for letting kids walk to Dunkin' Donuts

• evgeniysharapov 4y ago
  Haha, what did America become! Country built by pioneers venturing into unknown danger, the whole ethos of the country is "exploration and endeavor". Now, one would be questioned for having kids outside.
• 1over137 4y ago
  As a non-USian, this headline made me think "What?! They are literally policing unhealthy food choices?!" The fact that it's about just letting kids walk to a nearby store is so much more mind boggling, it did not occur to me at all.
• e40 4y ago
  > I found out later from my husband that after I went inside, the arresting officer said to him, 'If she talks to me again, I'm going to arrest you both and take away your kids.'" Wow. That person definitely deserves to never be in a position of power again. Abuse like this is insane.
• feeela 4y ago
  The land of thee free - where you get arrested if your kids buy some sweets on their own.
• anm89 4y ago
  God damn this is fucking insane. Our society is broken
  • matt123456789 4y ago
    Ah, I see you’re somewhat disillusioned by the legal system. Allow me to introduce you to the healthcare system.
    • manojlds 4y ago
      They said society is broken. Broken healthcare is within that already.
    • Lapsa 4y ago
      it's like paying taxes. even when able to afford them - effort, struggle, time, irrational fear. whole thing suddenly requires so much that it's just not worth it and you end up sailing to thepiratebay
• John23832 4y ago
  When I was a kid, I spent 3 hours outside with the neighbors kids every weekday after finishing my homework. On weekends it was more like 8 at the park. I consider it a forming experience for me as a person. I was safe but also was able to explore and get exercise. Society’s urge to make everything indoor and sedentary is detrimental. It has negative health effects. It also removes any idea of community when you can’t go out and explore what is around you. That’s even before you think about freedom of movement.
  • lotsofpulp 4y ago
    This specter of unlimited liability must make the idea of becoming a parent quite daunting. You need to secure not only housing, food, and energy, but also 24/7 supervision, in the form of daycare, after daycare activities, after school activities, or one parent being with the kids at all times. Which means you are especially screwed if there is a divorce, so you probably want backup grandparents and aunts/uncles, if they can afford to be available and near you.
    • eftychis 4y ago
      I agree this is detrimental for current and future generations. Also stupid (my opinion).
    • zaroth 4y ago
      So true and very well put. I often tell people that a child takes up an infinite amount of time and resources. But one counterpoint on divorce. If you can manage to do it well, split custody, and continue to co-parent effectively, then you get to be a devoted parent spending every waking moment and spare penny taking care of your kids… for half of the time. And then you get to spend the other half of your time as a single adult. It’s not a sales pitch, and I think in most cases it doesn’t work out so well, but getting divorced and equally sharing the children has been world-changing for me in terms of balance and getting time to focus on myself and fulfill my own dreams in terms of travel, hobbies, bucket list, etc. In our case there was never any extended family who would ever take the kids, which is another thing that’s becoming more common. So basically from Day 1 until off to college you are providing full-time child rearing, which can be quite the crucible.
• COGlory 4y ago
  This makes my blood boil. It's obvious that Killingly cops are just bored assholes on complete power trips. In general, centralization of power leads to unequal society. There should be quick and immediate recourse against police officers acting like this. No police officer should feel safe or beyond swift reproach when making comments like the ones in this article, yet there is absolutely no justice available for those affected. Even in a best-case scenario where charges are dropped a few days later, this is the psychological equivalent of a home invasion, and attempted kidnapping of their children. Dropping charges is not justice. Those officers should lose their jobs (but won't, because Killingly, like all of the 'Quiet Corner' is a complete boys club), and everyone involved in the decision tree should be heavily scrutinized. The town should issue a public apology. And whoever may or may not have called 911 should be publicly berated. This is unacceptable. This is Eastern bloc level authoritarianism. Police are out of control. No police officer in the country should feel comfortable making those threats. They are out of control
  • CoastalCoder 4y ago
    > This makes my blood boil. It's obvious that Killingly cops are just bored assholes on complete power trips. Without talking to them, I'm not sure that's a fair conclusion. Regardless, IMHO the real culprit is vagueness / ambiguity in the applicable laws. Which means the legislators are at fault. And in a democracy, ultimately the voters.
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      Sorry, but no. Common sense is enough to realize that this is a ridiculous situation, no matter what the law says. You can't lay the acts of specific police officers at the door of legislators and voters. And if their concerns were real rather than just a pretext for a powertrip they'd keep an eye out instead of making it impossible for children to lead a normal life.
      • CoastalCoder 4y ago
        > You can't lay the acts of specific police officers at the door of legislators and voters. I'm not. In this situation, there were (at least) two necessary conditions for the arrest to happen: (1) The law was written in a way that led the police to believe a crime had occurred. (2) The police chose to perform the arrest. If either of those conditions weren't true, then I don't think this incident would have happened. It's entirely possible that the police exercised lousy judgment in this case. I'm simply reserving judgment until I hear their side of the story. I brought up (2) for several reasons. First, I think it's BS to create politically sticky situations for police, and then skapegoat them things turn out badly. (Imagine the news coverage if they didn't arrest the parents in a situation like this, and then the kids were abducted.) Second, I don't see how, in a democratic form of government, citizens can avoid responsibility for the state of their laws. If the laws are outside their control, it's not a democracy.
• stirlo 4y ago
  The insane part is that those police officers and neighbours likely grew up in a community where they were able to have the freedom to go outside unsupervised. They all survived to adulthood and are now trying to snatch away those freedoms from the young. Disgraceful.
  • aceazzameen 4y ago
    "Because it's not like it used to be," is the excuse I hear. Meanwhile crime is lower than it was 30+ years ago, or whatever generation these cops grew up in.
    • jehb 4y ago
      Fear is the mind-killer.
      • ceejayoz 4y ago
        Yep, and police training deliberately cultivates it. https://www.insider.com/bulletproof-dave-grossman-police-trainer-teaching-officers-how-to-kill-2020-6 https://www.insider.com/bulletproof-dave-grossman-police-tra... > His overly aggressive style prepares law enforcement officers for a job under siege, where they're front line troops who are "at war" with the streets. Officers need to be prepared to battle the communities they're told to protect, Grossman has said. And ideally in Grossman's eyes, officers need to learn to kill less hesitantly.
        • jehb 4y ago
          Yep. What I left unstated, which I now realize the lack of leaves my comment ambiguous, was "and that's why they use it."
        • derelicta 4y ago
          "But why do ppl hate cops??"
        • mrguyorama 4y ago
• ElfinTrousers 4y ago
  > "They told us that it wasn't safe for kids to walk down the street, that there are registered sex offenders all over town that could take them, that drug dealers were going to give them drugs, and that it was 'a different world now,'" It's even worse. There are paranoid conspiracy theorists roaming the streets of Killingly, armed to the teeth. You can recognize them by the blue uniforms.
  • ElfinTrousers 4y ago
    Also, sorry to reply to my own comment, but "drug dealers are going to give your kids drugs" is a trope dating back to the "Just Say No" days of the 1980s. It was bullshit then, and it's bullshit now. Kids have no money, and they have no idea that drugs are supposed to be kept discreet, so they're likely to tell the first authority figure they see.
  • confidantlake 4y ago
    Absolutely. The problem is the sane individuals don't become police. The ones convinced the quiet suburb is an evil dangerous place in need of constant vigilance do.
• dsq 4y ago
  These kind of stories coming out of the US make me feel like I'm reading something insane and Kafkaesque. I therefore want to be skeptical at first. Does anyone have direct, first hand experiences of this kind? Not from the media. First hand or someone you personally know.
  • ceejayoz 4y ago
    > Does anyone have direct, first hand experiences of this kind? Not from the media. First hand or someone you personally know. Yes; a family member's friend is currently dealing with potential prosecution for briefly leaving their kid in the car.
    • throwawaysleep 4y ago
      Kids can cook unsupervised in cars, so that makes sense.
      • ceejayoz 4y ago
        Kids can die walking unsupervised to Dunkin, too. Five minutes in a car during mild weather isn't going to cook a kid; cops should use their broad discretion and some common sense in both scenarios.
  • philliphaydon 4y ago
    Not related to kids but while living in Singapore. My friend and I lived in a 2 bedroom apartment block, most apartments have a gate on them, and in 2 years we had over a dozen visits from neighbours and police because different families were ringing up our neighbours or the police to tell them our door was open (even tho the gate was closed and locked, we just wanted fresh air). While living in Australia I used to have our front desk remind me to not leave the door open on the deck because “your annoying neighbour keeps calling us to say you left the door open while you were at work”. I don’t know why people can be so… annoying like that. Like they just sit in their window looking for things to complain about.
    • 4y ago
• jefftk 4y ago
  My kids are 7 and 9 and walk to the corner store together (Somerville MA). They also walk to and from school, the park, and to friends' houses. The more kids do this the more normal it will seem to others, and we can slowly get society's sense of how old you need to be to walk places back to somewhere reasonable.
  • 0_____0 4y ago
    Somerville is basically as perfect a city as I've seen in the US for walking, for anyone! And thus the perfect beachhead to take back childhood independence.
  • stephencanon 4y ago
    Similar up here in Hanover NH. All the neighborhood kids just walk where they want to, and it’s totally fine.
  • lawkwok 4y ago
    Unfortunately, city design alters people's perceptions of where it is acceptable to walk. I moved from walkable Vancouver to car-centric Mississippi, and I already look at people with suspicion when they are walking on the road in the middle of nowhere. I wonder where their car is and why they are walking there. > This was in Killingly, Connecticut, a suburban town in the northeast part of the state. The Rivers' lived near an elementary school, library, state police barracks, sidewalks, crosswalks, many Victorian-style homes, and the aforementioned donut shop. The kids gathered $7, and off they went. Street View shows that the town looks quite walkable especially for suburban America. It just boggles my mind that people would consider calling the police on a 7 and 9 year old for walking on those streets.
    • notRobot 4y ago
      > I already look at people with suspicion when they are walking on the road in the middle of nowhere. I wonder where their car is and why they are walking there. ... but why? How does it possibly matter?
      • 4y ago
• drunkenmagician 4y ago
  The death of common sense, not 100% dead yet, but terminal with untreatable stage 4 cancer
• ejb999 4y ago
  >>"They told us that it wasn't safe for kids to walk down the street, that there are registered sex offenders all over town that could take them, that drug dealers were going to give them drugs, and that it was 'a different world now,'" says Rivers. So, of course, you arrest the parents and leave the sex-offenders and drug dealers roaming the street. Makes perfect sense.
  • eftychis 4y ago
    It is easier to arrest the parents of course. The other classes might fight back and have lawyers. (End of sarcasm towards these "cops.")
  • JackC 4y ago
    There's one more layer, though: making you believe the streets aren't safe and we're not arresting enough people is the actual point of all this. America already locks up four times as many people as most countries, to little purpose besides control and profit.
    • seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      > to little purpose besides control and profit. It only takes a few times getting mugged, being subject to a car smash and grab, or being porch pirated to go from "we lock too many people up!" to "why aren't we locking these crazy people up?". We are obviously messing up somewhere else before we throw people in jail.
      • Aeolun 4y ago
        Locking more people up only helps if you lock the right people up. Otherwise you might as well randomly pick them off the streets (but maybe that’s already what is happening).
        • seanmcdirmid 4y ago
          It is kind of obvious that the guy who beat an Amazon employee in Beltown with a bat should be in jail right now, but they are considering releasing him [1]. You can walk out of a Target with a 65" TV and get bail with outstanding warrants [2]. I don't think Seattle is locking anyone up right now, to be honest, unless murder is involved. [1] https://mynorthwest.com/3777835/rantz-brutal-bat-attack-suspect-could-be-released-before-trial/ https://mynorthwest.com/3777835/rantz-brutal-bat-attack-susp... [2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10447987/Prolific-shoplifter-steals-70inch-TV-22nd-Target-theft-released-judge.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10447987/Prolific-s...
• eftychis 4y ago
  a) don't talk without a lawyer (including to the child services...) b) the road to hell is the high speed interstate of "I am just doing my job." A lot of us have bad experiences and the history books are also filled. Let's stop these recurring mistakes. (Edit.) P.S. Here is one of those lawyer articles about why not to talk to... CPS https://mayerlegal.com/f/dont-talk-to-cps https://mayerlegal.com/f/dont-talk-to-cps (Who knows, the way things go in a few years one will need a lawyer to pay their water bill...)
• tantalor 4y ago
  Article is about events 4 years ago, with tiny update buried towards the end. Lazy journalism.
  • Finnucane 4y ago
    It's Reason, so that's basically assumed.
• locococo 4y ago
  It is interesting that parents are not granted the autonomy to make these decisions by the law. If the police have such a great concern about the safety in the neighborhood to the degree that children can't be outside someone has failed at their job. Arresting people for letting their kids walk outside just to spread fear is shameful.
• alkonaut 4y ago
  If police really believe kids shouldn't walk alone outside, they should perhaps ask themselves who is doing a bad job: parents or themselves.
• Scubabear68 4y ago
  A few years ago at a baseball tournament my son’s team did phenomenally well, and ended up beating a really great team from out of state. A few days later we get a knock on the door from our state’s version of DCF. Someone had complained that they didn’t like the way my wife had walked our daughter to the bathroom. After an interview the state worker said it sounded like retaliation for our son and his team doing so well, and all but hinted it was an opposing team’s parent who called in the complaint. Sadly the law says they have to investigate every complaint, no matter how trivial, so we had to go through a couple interviews and they apparently interviewed others as well. Just annoying for us, but other workers have told us about horror stories (our kids are adopted and we got to know that arm of the agency well). Obviously these agencies are vital, but they need well balanced laws and regulations and some common sense injected into them so stupid complaints don’t end up sucking up resources and potentially disrupting lives for nothing.
  • williamcotton 4y ago
    The problem with trying to punish people for false complaints is that disincentives to reporting child abuse is probably not worth the annoyances. By the time it transitions from a mere annoyance (having to talk to someone from the CPS for an hour and that's it) to something much more impactful (someone producing enough fraudulent evidence that you are arrested and put on trial) they've moved away from merely abusing a reporting system and into full-blown felonious behavior that will not be ignored! Kudos to my wife for explaining this to me after she told how a coworker teacher of hers was being harassed by a parent who had called CPS in retaliation for some nonsensical disagreement about (is there a pattern here?) kids on a school sports team. I was angry! I wanted that parent to be punished! But my wife is right. Cue Will Ferrell yelling at kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=junIx1T8A5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=junIx1T8A5I
    • williamcotton 4y ago
      Are the downvotes for the SNL skit? Or?
      • 4y ago
• raldi 4y ago
  At the very least, there need to be clear laws about when you can legally let your kid walk outside.
  • tohnjitor 4y ago
    There does not need to be a law about this.
    • raldi 4y ago
      If the police are empowered to arrest you and child services is empowered to take action against your family, there needs to be a clear declaration of safe harbor.
      • karaterobot 4y ago
        We don't want there to be a whitelist of things we are allowed to do, with anything not on that list assumed to be against the law. That's a bad direction to go down. The right response to this situation would be to apologize to the parents, and punish the police and social worker who overstepped their authority.
        • raldi 4y ago
          So make a list of things we're not allowed to do.
          • karaterobot 4y ago
            We have quite a few. Applying them correctly and equitably is a challenge, which is what leads to situations like this one. But, it's miles better than the alternative.
            • raldi 4y ago
              I think the overwhelming majority believes it's okay for 17yo children to roam free but not 17mo toddlers. Even if the gray area in between can't be made zero-width, I'd like it to be smaller.
• pavlov 4y ago
  > “She tried to dispute what the police were saying, and one of them asked if she watched the news.” American local TV is mostly mind poison. A lot of stations are owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, a corporation with an extreme right-wing agenda. Europeans with their tame national broadcasters have no idea how insane a large part of American TV is with its obsession on local crime.
  • vidarh 4y ago
    I used to fly over to the US for work a lot, and even though I was usually in California, and got what I presume is a rather mild version of what you might run into elsewhere, seeing US TV was always a bizarre experience. It was like entering another dimension where every minor little thing was amplified ten times over. Makes it seem even more bizarre that Americans aren't out in the streets rioting on a much more regular basis.
    • lizzardbraind 4y ago
      When everything is presented as a crisis, you get inured to it and nothing, no matter how dire, feels like a really emergency.
  • derelicta 4y ago
    Let's be honest its a terribly lucrative business model that is spreading. Look at BFM TV, or worse, CNews, in France and tell me whats the difference between those and FoxNews?
• gregwtmtno 4y ago
  Any reasonable person can see that there's much greater danger in allowing a child to ride in a car on a highway--which no doubt would be considered perfectly acceptable by these police. Look at this visualization of cause of death by age: https://wisqars.cdc.gov/data/lcd/home https://wisqars.cdc.gov/data/lcd/home. For those kids, the number one cause of death is "unintentional injury," the biggest component of which is motor vehicle crashes. Unfortunately, these police wield incredible power in our legal system, and, as a lawyer, I don't see any easy fix. It makes me sad that I'll be raising my child in this kind of environment.
• pxue 4y ago
  What does the richest do in this situation? Surely some must feel the need for their kids to venture out on their own, or do they live in a neighborhood where these types of policing doesn't happen?
  • Overtonwindow 4y ago
    A large, wealthy estate is sort of like a neighborhood. Brad Pitt built a skate park in his backyard for his children.
    • anileated 4y ago
      Yeah, it’s not even a question regarding the richest, but change it to upper middle class families with busy and reasonably wealthy parents living somewhere in dense urban NYC downtown and it’s interesting how they go about it.
      • Karawebnetwork 4y ago
        Gated neighbourhoods and at some level suburbs that are simply unwalkable for everyone.
      • woodruffw 4y ago
        This is how I grew up (well, not wealthy, but a dense, residential neighborhood in Manhattan): it was perfectly normal for me to walk around and take the subway alone by the time I was 8 or so. I don’t remember ever being stopped by anyone, police or otherwise. This was in the early-mid 2000s, and my perception is that it hasn’t changed much in the city.
• dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  You know where this problem is? In the mirror. The kind of people who think it's reasonable to call the cops over a nothing-burger like this are simply a part the extremist long tail that is a product of middle/upper middle class culture that condones and encourages bucking everything to some external party whenever possible. When you exist in a bubble where everyone is patting each other on the back for calling the city over disputes that should at least be initially handled between neighbors, reporting petty business disputes to the state AG, calling a plumber to replace a toilet flapper, getting engineered drawings for a garden shed, etc, etc, it should come as no surprise that some people take this sort of responsibility to think for yourself outsourcing too far and call the cops on some kids walking down the street. Of course dispatch and the police were behaving like idiots here too but they are clearly serving a community where responding to frivolous calls like this is the norm because if this one case was so outside of their normal purview it wouldn't have been handled the way it was. And the DCF part, well that fact pattern just looks like a boring old case of bureaucratic incentives and ass covering. They were fishing for something to make the rest of the fact pattern look less unreasonable. And then when they found it they jumped right to some sort of remediable action so they could say "there, we did something, case closed".
• nashashmi 4y ago
  > The DCF caseworker visited the family twice and interviewed everyone about their complete history. > "She was looking for problems," says Rivers.
• Overtonwindow 4y ago
  When I was six years old, my best friend and I rode our bicycle 2 miles to RadioShack. On the way back, his grandmother found us and said go home! So we did. No one got arrested. Your parents should start suing. The people who are reporting this kind of crap. Custodial interference, I don't know I'm not a lawyer, but maybe a lawsuit will teach people to mind their own business.
• preinheimer 4y ago
  In Canada we had something of a long running case against a father who let his kids ride the bus on their own: https://globalnews.ca/video/7151336/court-rules-against-b-c-ministry-in-kids-on-bus-case/ https://globalnews.ca/video/7151336/court-rules-against-b-c-... People used to talk about "The Popsicle Index"[1] which is the percentage of families in an area comfortable with letting an elementary school aged child walk to the nearest store and buy a popsicle on their own. These days parents don't get to make that decision, the entire community makes it for them. Any dissenting opinion can result in losing your kids. [1] https://home.solari.com/the-popsicle-index/ https://home.solari.com/the-popsicle-index/
• exabrial 4y ago
  This just sounds like taxes are way too high in that area. Cut them by 75% and we’ll see if the government has anything stupid to do after that.
  • pjc50 4y ago
    "Defund the police"?
    • exabrial 4y ago
      Defund the everything.
• manojlds 4y ago
  So the police were sure there were culprits around and their focus is on harassing the parents rather than make the place safe?
• colpabar 4y ago
  Rivers tried to explain to the caseworker that the police had overreacted, but the caseworker maintained that the parents had somehow jeopardized their kids safety. When Rivers revealed that she had received therapy for depression some years before, the caseworker weaponized this information—and insisted she return to therapy. Fuck the police, but if these are the social workers I keep hearing about who are supposed to make everything better, we’re never going to have competent policing in america. What the fuck is it with government employees and trying to ruin people’s lives over nothing?
  • tboyd47 4y ago
    It's because they aren't accountable to anyone.
    • giantg2 4y ago
      Also, most of what they do is under threat of authority, not actual authority. For the most part, they need a court order to enter your home, question your children without your permission, etc. Hopefully if more people realize they have the right to say no, then the worker will be a little more reasonable. Right now they know that everyone they meet bends to their threats and nobody challenges them, so they are emboldened.
      • nullc 4y ago
        Demanding that court order can work out extremely poorly for you.
        • giantg2 4y ago
          It goes one of two ways. One is that they don't have probable cause that abuse has occurred and nothing happens. Police dropping the charges seem to support this for this scenario. The other is that they do get the order and you have the same situation of visits and questions.
          • 4y ago
• MarvinYork 4y ago
  As a European "The Land of the Free" is the funniest contradiction I've ever seen. As a teenager and young adult I loved to visit the US (NYC & LA) and everything seemed amazing. These days, I avoid the USA like I avoid North Korea and Russia. Of course, we have also huge problems here, but we seem to be more aware of them. And that helps immensely to bring about improvements.
  • foobarian 4y ago
    That label was invented hundreds of years ago when the unincorporated land here was larger than continental Europe. But it's a different story now, the gas has expanded to fill all available space and there is no more freedom.
• rsaarsoo 4y ago
  At the same time in Japan: parents are not pleased when the toddler they sent to do shopping forgets to buy some of the requested items. https://slate.com/business/2022/04/old-enough-netflix-do-japanese-parents-really-send-toddlers-on-errands.html https://slate.com/business/2022/04/old-enough-netflix-do-jap...
  • spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Toddlers do not do this in Japan. People deeply misunderstand this show. It's carefully monitored and setup. The kids don't know it. They are genuinely doing the things on their own. But it's not like the parents then rely on the kids to go do those things independently after the show. They are more independent at a young age. But you don't see toddlers walking around Japan unattended to shops.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • Aeolun 4y ago
      To be fair, when I send my 4 year old to the closest shop, my concerns have absolutely nothing to do with the safety of the environment (e.g. actions of others), and everything with how much I trust him not to be an idiot. If we had a shop only two streets over it would be doable at that age.
      • ajmurmann 4y ago
        Is traffic an issue at that age?
        • Aeolun 4y ago
          He has a tendency to get excited and jump onto the street without checking if any cars are coming.
    • ensignavenger 4y ago
      The article says this much too. While I never saw any actual toddlers running errands on their own in Japan, I did see children 5-6 years old doing it.
• VyseofArcadia 4y ago
  My mom has a funny story about how my grandfather surprisingly didn't get arrested. Back in West Germany, they had lived across from a bar, and every night my grandfather would send my mom and her older sister across the street to get some beer for him. Then they moved to Ohio and rented an apartment down the block from the bar. And my grandfather sent two little girls who didn't speak any English to the bar for some beer. Well, they came back with cops, who then had to fetch a neighbor who spoke more English than my grandparents to translate and explain the whole situation. The cops then left with a, "don't do that again" and that was the end of it. The mind boggles at how quickly Opa would have been behind bars in 2023.
  • TrueGeek 4y ago
    In Southern California in the late 80s / early 90s I had a few friends that were regularly sent to the corner store for cigarettes. They had to bring a note, but otherwise the store seemed to think this was normal.
  • confidantlake 4y ago
    Nice story! My father did the same thing as a kid, going to the bar to get beer for his father.
  • Symbiote 4y ago
    I was in a small village pub in England one Boxing Day. A man at the table next to ours handed a £10 note to his sons, who were about 8-10 years old. They went to the bar and asked for two Fantas or something like that. The bartender said "I can't serve you, you need to be 16". Silence fell. It was a small room, and we'd all heard the boys ask. The old man at the end of the bar said, "You'll serve the boys, John, or else you won't be seeing me in here again." The boys got their Fantas. (Checking the law now, the boys were clearly accompanied, and I see no reason the bartender shouldn't have served them. I think it may have been forbidden before 2003, when the rules distinguished between children "at the bar" or not, rather than the current rules which distinguish between accompanied and unaccompanied children. But even then, the bartender would have been applying a 'rough city bar' approach to a posh village pub.)
• wtcactus 4y ago
  The all story is a scary tale about the state's intromission on people's lives. But this part is a constant reminder of how misandric present society is: "...the officers proceeded to charge Rivers' husband with risk of injury to a minor. They charged Rivers separately for the same thing. Then they arrested her husband and took him away."
• neilv 4y ago
  First, I don't take anything in Reason magazine at face value, because the pieces I've seen have always seemed published for appeal and to convey a "we are the people of 'reason'" image, rather than the issue itself. That said, assuming at least partial truth to this article, I hope the kids didn't see their parent arrested, and weren't interrogated by anyone. I'd find a really gentle Mr. Rogers-type counselor to help talk with them about it.
  • jefftk 4y ago
    Reason, like most outlets, is mostly untrustworthy in what they choose to cover: they're not going to put time into writing a piece about something that happened unless they can tie it back to their preferred policies. But, like most outlets, what they write about each particular instance is technically true and usually not misleading.
• francisofascii 4y ago
  If you ever had to volunteer at a school, and have to go through all the trainings, you can see how this nonsense can happen. The message is when you see something even remotely suspicious, report it. And all reports have to be followed up on. Because God forbid something bad happens to a kid, you will be blamed for not reporting or following up on something.
• lumb63 4y ago
  I grew up in Connecticut. Killingly is not an unsafe area by any stretch of the imagination. It’s quaint by all my measures. This is absurd. I’d have been very quick to retort to the officers, upon being informed that there were sex offenders all throughout the neighborhood, that it was their job to fix that and they failed.
  • throwawaysleep 4y ago
    Police have no power to put convicted sex offenders back in jail. > Indeed, they pressed the Rivers to search the sex offender registry to learn which of their neighbors were on it.
• bdw5204 4y ago
  There are 2 possibilities here: 1) The police have no real criminals to arrest but need to do something to justify their existence. So they're harassing people over things that not only aren't crimes but are examples of good parenting that teaches kids to be independent. In this case, "defund the police" would genuinely be justified as they're clearly overfunded. 2) The police are refusing to do their job and arrest real criminals. Instead, they are harassing people over things that aren't crimes because those things are "unsafe" due to the refusal of police to do their job. In this case, the police need to be reformed so that they do what they're supposed to do. Either way, the police should stick to arresting murderers, rapists and thieves to protect the fundamental freedom of decent people who respect the rights of others to use a public street whenever they want without fear of becoming a victim of violent criminals or of the police. Since this is literally why the government exists according to social contract theory (which the US was founded upon), the refusal of the government's police to do their job or the choice of the government's police to oppress others out of boredom is a breach of the social contract that makes said government illegitimate and no better morally than a street gang or mafia. Even if the laws are vague, enforcing a vague law in a way that is clearly evil and oppressive is unacceptable because the core principle of the American legal system is that our fundamental rights are the supreme law and supersede any laws that infringe upon them. The right to walk on a public street is clearly protected by the 9th Amendment as it is so obviously a basic right that there was no need for the 1st Congress to enumerate it. Thus infringing on such a right in the name of "safety" is flagrantly unconstitutional.
• baidifnaoxi 4y ago
  Cases like this are all too common across the country.
• taylodl 4y ago
  Some of those who work forces, are the same that burn crosses Every American should understand that the police are not your friends. They exist to "protect and serve" those in power, and you're not that person. That's what being a police state is all about. A seven and nine year-old walking together to Dunkin' Donuts resulting the in the arrest of their father is a symptom of our police state. The fact that neighbors can "sic the law" on one another and the fact that "swatting" has become a verb is a symptom of our police state. Getting back to this story and adding my own "get off my lawn" anecdote, when I was a kid every kid in the neighborhood walked to school. Even the five year-old kindergartners, like I was at one time. Oh sure my mom walked me the first couple of times to ensure I knew the route and that was it. Some kids had to walk two miles! We didn't even get a break for inclement weather! We had to walk in rain, snow and ice. We also had to cross a four-lane arterial thoroughfare! The horrors! And all this was in a big city! In all those years not a single kid was grabbed.
  • rootusrootus 4y ago
    > Every American should understand that the police are not your friends. But they should also understand that policy are rarely the enemy, either, and treating them as such will result in a worse outcome on average. Don't let the evening news distort reality so much. Also, in the interest of sharing anecdotal get off my lawn moments, all the kids in my neighborhood walk to school too, in 2023. All weather, all the time, safely, nobody calls the cops, nobody gets grabbed, it's fine. The world is in fact objectively safer than it was when I was growing up in the 80s. There's a good reason I don't routinely watch the news or read partisan political media.
    • MSFT_Edging 4y ago
      The point of "police are not your friends", is you can't know which cop has a chip on their shoulder until its too late and you're three teeth short of a smile. The nature of policing and the logic behind "ACAB" is that because police don't keep their peers in line, you cannot trust any cop. "One bad apple" has been corrupted just like "Pick yourself up by your bootstraps". The former cuts off "spoils the bunch", the latter being a satire for something obviously impossible.
• wonderwonder 4y ago
  They did not endanger their kids, the illegally dared to argue with the police. That level of arrogance is not tolerated by our betters in the elevated class of police officers. If they had simply apologized, thanked the officers and perhaps knelt before them there would have been no problem. /S This is what happens when you create an insane concept like qualified immunity and give it to people that have absolute power. Society treats cops like they are a special privileged class so they act like it and treat everyone else like serfs. I let my 11 year old ride his bike to 7-11 the other day for the first time. I can't imagine how I would react if the gestapo showed up telling me I was a bad parent and endangering my child. I would absolutely sue if they arrested me for it, especially after threatening my wife as in the article and then dropping charges.
• rootusrootus 4y ago
  This particular incident has been recycled often enough that it actually makes me feel a little better about policing when I read it again. I keep wondering 'oh shit, is this becoming a thing now?' and then I see 'no, it's the same one as last time.'
• acegopher 4y ago
  Not claiming it's not true, but according to the article, the author is "president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence and resilience, and founder of the Free-Range Kids movement". So could the story have been embellished or made up to push a narrative and stir upset and outrage to get exposure? There doesn't seem to be any authoritative third-party evidence (public records) supporting this story.
  • trgn 4y ago
    If you want to make the connection, the less accusative, more simple interpretation is that because of their activism with Let Grow, they have the energy and commitment to actually push this story. Most people would just eat the humiliation and harassment to avoid more trouble.
    • acegopher 4y ago
      The burden of proof isn't on the reader, it's on the writer.
  • suddenclarity 4y ago
    I was sceptical reading it but I found the smoking gun to be the following: "she waited three years to let her go for another walk unsupervised". So not only is it anonymised with no information from police/social, but it's supposedly also a several years old case which makes it nearly impossible to verify. But I guess it will get people going.
• woodruffw 4y ago
  I’ll note this every time this kind of story comes up: it’s good and correct to direct ire at the police here, but it’s also not the end of the story. The story also continues through America’s isolationist and atavistic car culture: you simply don’t see this kind of bloodthirst for “protecting children” in countries (or even areas within the US) with sensible urban design and correspondingly shifted expectations about the public. This should not be read as an excuse, but as an analysis of how we prevent these kinds of absurd individual violations at their root: the police in so many parts of the US derive power from the latent fear of strangers that comes with car-dependent living. Remove that source of fear and power, and the public becomes less tolerant of state kidnappings.
  • dfxm12 4y ago
    "Think of the children" is an excuse used to pass too much poor legislation, not just relating to cars, but also infosec. It's one of the Four horsemen of the infocalypse! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
  • trgn 4y ago
    This is really it. I'd go a step further, which technologists will fail to accept, since it's essentially an animistic argument. Cars, very specifically, the actual physical _thing_ are evil technology. In absolute terms, in absence of their application. Americans don't recognize it as such. We see it just as a tool. It is not. Cars have their own force field and it has changed our minds, our bodies, our relationships to other, our dispositions. Once americans recognize it as such, we can see change. It's not impossible. From my visits to Europe, the difference is already night and day in so many places compared to just 10-15 years ago. If they can, we can. But it will be such a hard slog.
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      Excellently put! I've been reading a collection of Tom Wolfe's journalism from the 1960s[1], and it's fascinating to see how the car has warped from a liberating force (in the sense of propelling countercultures and shrinking the rural divide) to a domineering one (in terms of suburban fear culture and dependence). These phenomena could be seen as incompatible on face value, but they're really just two phases in the same arc: the children of these articles' subjects grew up in a culture that confuses the mechanism of liberation (the car) with liberation itself, and built systems to enshrine it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kandy-Kolored_Tangerine-Flake_Streamline_Baby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kandy-Kolored_Tangerine-Fl...
• hosh 4y ago
  This is why we have this: https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60624/young-adults-are-struggling-with-their-mental-health-is-more-childhood-independence-the-answer https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60624/young-adults-are-strugg... Instead of this: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/616928895/how-to-get-your-kids-to-do-chores-without-resenting-it https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288... For whatever reason, our society has confused well-being with safety. Those are not one and the same. There will be a time when an adult has to assess risks and opportunity, and make choices. There are things in one’s life where they have to face the unknown and decide actions without having safety nets. A life cowering from the possibilities is small, with the illusion of safety. And that’s for navigating one’s own life. What happens when these risk-adverse kids are raising their own kids? What happen when these kids are the adults who have to vote and make decisions on things that affect the whole society?
• mjw_byrne 4y ago
  "If she talks to me again, I'm going to arrest you both and take away your kids" That part, at least, sounds like a power trip to me.
• shanebellone 4y ago
  Finally, Connecticut made it on HN. Go Nutmeggers.
• EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  "Arrested for child endangerment", and the mug shot will stay in his record forever. Also fingerprints and possibly DNA record in the database forever.
• sircastor 4y ago
  This sort of thing is on every American parent’s radar. There’s a mild concern that some overeager police officer, or concerned citizen is going to decide that you’re not parenting correctly. At the top of the list of things to avoid is being noticed by the state. I understand why child protection services exist, but it freaks me out that someone can arbitrarily decide that my wife and I aren’t good enough parents and take my kids.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bleepblipbloop 4y ago
  It's a good thing they were white, otherwise, the cops would probably have shot the parents for resisting
• kloch 4y ago
  When I was a kid in the 70's/80's we weren't just allowed to play outside unsupervised until dark - we were required to! There was an arrangement where the older neighborhood kids would look after the younger ones.
• throwawaysleep 4y ago
  I am really curious if we had an up or down vote whether people would pass a law saying that everyone 12 and under must be supervised. I think it would pass. I certainly wasn't permitted to walk anywhere by myself at that age, nor were any of the non-immigrant friends that I know. My sister wasn't permitted to do that until around 15.
  • gregw2 4y ago
    As a boy in the early 80s age 10 in an American suburb, I rode my bike to school one mile and back. It was fairly safe. I also walked half a mile to a school bus stop when I was 12 and waited there (on a pretty busy street - not sure if that makes it safer or more dangerous but I would guess actually safer.) I don't think the risks were high then, nor are they now. But the culture of what is considered acceptable for your kids to do by themselves outside the home is definitely way different. If I had to pick one factor that is different and driving the difference, I think it's that the society now keeps (public) databases of where sexual offenders live so the awareness of the threat is much more concrete, even if it is not particularly elevated. We are over-managing/weighting what we can measure. But also feeding the changing dynamic is bureaucracy and funding and legislation reflecting both the wealth and fears of our society -- today I learned) Child Protective Services wasn't really created until certain 1974 federal funding was given to the states, and other legislation around this didn't come till the 1988 Child Abuse Prevention, Adoption, and Family Services Act.
• someonewhocar3s 4y ago
  [dead]
• gnicholas 4y ago
  I saw this article the other day and thought it was odd that it doesn't mention how far away the Dunkin is. It does say the cops picked up the kids two blocks from their house, but it doesn't say how far the destination was. Seems kind of relevant, and it's usually mentioned in Reason pieces like this. Does anyone know the details of the distance or route?
• phkahler 4y ago
  "They told us that it wasn't safe for kids to walk down the street, that there are registered sex offenders all over town that could take them, that drug dealers were going to give them drugs, and that it was 'a different world now,'" Isn't it your job to protect people from all that?
• epolanski 4y ago
  Every time I read something about the United States, I am so happy to have been born on the other side of the Atlantic ocean.
• fsh 4y ago
  Fun fact: The German foreign office warns about these kind of laws on its travel information page for the USA. Most European parents would not expect this to be a problem.
• jeffwask 4y ago
  Interesting way for the local PD to say they are incompetent. Sorry, but the streets aren't safe for your children but here are two cruisers full of cops to explain parenting to you.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• srj 4y ago
  I used to walk or ride my bike to Dunkin Donuts at that age and it's likely farther than the one in this story. I imagine the officers are DCF workers will bear no accountability for this.
• freedude 4y ago
  It reminded me of when I was about 9 my younger brother and I were allowed to ride our bikes from our house 3.5 miles to the corner store, crossing under the freeway. We went many times during the summer. For several years. We read comic books, bought candy and soda pop and had a great time. My folks were are conservative and taught us the value of hard work. I did plenty of it growing up. It is how we had the money for the comic books and junk food. During that time period I also remember hearing of someone who was murdered and the body was dumped in a ditch on a road about a mile away as the crow flies. There were rapists nearby and children stolen only a few miles away in the next town. I am sure my mom was worried and perhaps my dad too. I remember my dad looking at my little brother once and asking him what do you do if someone tries to take you? He said, "I fight and scream as loud as I can!" He would do it too. He was a scrapper. There is a reason my dad asked him and not me. He knew the response he would get. My parents are conservative Christians. They knew they couldn't protect us everywhere, all the time. I am sure they were praying about it often as we spread our wings and gradually flew out of the nest.
• roboscides 4y ago
  This comment thread is what happens when politics is allowed on HN, just utter trash. I wish dang was a competent moderator.
• MarkusWandel 4y ago
  These aren't real numbers. But as someone over a certain age, I always say that during my childhood, you had about a 99.99 chance of surviving it to adulthood (discounting unpreventable causes such as inherited defects). And I know of at least one child who did perish in an incident which back then was a mere tragedy, but might today be considered criminal negligence (lack of supervision) by adults. I believe that today's society, at least in North America, has added at least one nine to this statistic. Wonderful! For every 100,000 kids born, nine deaths prevented. That's a measurable success. But the reduction in "childhood experience" - the free roaming - for example, when as kids we received - and this dates me - our first 3-channel CB walkie talkies, with all their glorious 100mW of transmit power, 3 channel switch but only one set of crystals installed (channel 14) - it was completely natural that we'd fan out all over the countryside, testing the range - including a relay on a hilltop when we found that schoolmates had compatible walkie-talkies too. But more seriously. Kids that can socialize unsupervised learn by experience how social structures are established, how to act responsibly and the consequences of not doing so and so forth, and also that the majority of people are good, nice folks who'll let you use your phone or have a glass of water or whatever. Now, instead, it's drilled into them that the world is a bad place and safety is at home with your gadgets.
• asah 4y ago
  Setting aside the outrage-inducing headline, in fact there's numerous registered sex offenders in that town: https://www.city-data.com/so/so-Killingly-Connecticut.html https://www.city-data.com/so/so-Killingly-Connecticut.html https://www.city-data.com/so/so-Danielson-Connecticut.html https://www.city-data.com/so/so-Danielson-Connecticut.html and there does seem to be a substantial amount of violent crime: https://crimegrade.org/violent-crime-east-killingly-ct/ https://crimegrade.org/violent-crime-east-killingly-ct/ https://www.google.com/search?q=crime+map+killingly+ct https://www.google.com/search?q=crime+map+killingly+ct I have no comment about whether the arrest or social worker were appropriate in this situation - we're only hearing one side.
  • thwayunion 4y ago
    I've been to Killingly several times and find it completely non-credible that it's unsafe for kids to walk there. The raw number of sex offenders / violent crime rates don't tell us much about the safety of a kid walking in a particular neighborhood at a particular point in time. Additionally, I'm not sure how arresting a kid's parents is supposed to make anyone safer...
    • aidenn0 4y ago
      Indeed. I had a friend in college from Gary, Indiana which at the time was perennially near the top of the homicides per-capita lists. He said that he learned at a young age which neighborhoods to avoid and felt generally safe in the "good parts" of town.
  • standardUser 4y ago
    We're hearing the side of the parents. They live there. It's their kids. What other side do you need to hear?
  • mdp2021 4y ago
    So the inhabitants lose the right to go for a walk? Enforced by the same who did not manage to prevent the circumstances?
  • educaysean 4y ago
• fencepost 4y ago
  Time for some local press coverage on the topic of "why is Killingly so dangerous for children?" with plenty of "the department denied this when asked, but multiple officers spoke to us off the record about the dangers of the town and advised never leaving children unsupervised."
• Waterluvian 4y ago
  America needs a party representing the public interest of ensuring small government. Stop centralizing parental authority.
• CalRobert 4y ago
  Yet again this video on how there is something deeply, horrifyingly wrong with raising kids in American suburbs is apt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw Visited Utrecht in December and visiting Freiburg in April to decide where to live.
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I grew up in Africa. We had some of the deadliest snakes in the world, slithering through our backyard (mambas, gaboon vipers, cobras, etc. -Nigeria, in the 60s), and we had brown scorpions, scuttling around the schoolyard, in Morocco. I have had the … pleasure … of a rabies vaccination series, because of rabid rodents. I used to pass a police fort, with a .50 caliber machine gun pointed at me (Uganda, in the early 70s -fun times), on my way to the candy store. Coming to the US was a bit of a culture shock.
• schwarzrules 4y ago
  Just going to state the obvious: this wouldn't have happened if they were walking to starbucks. blatant classism.
• tootie 4y ago
  This kinda reeks of /r/thathappened. Why is this posted 4 years after the fact with no sources? It's just a personal story being relayed by an advocacy group. I see kids roaming the streets of NYC and even riding the subway unsupervised and nobody says anything. This is either an isolated case or being reported by biased party who is omitting a lot of salient details to avoid looking bad.
• agotterer 4y ago
  There’s a great book called The Coddling of the American Mind. It talks about play grounds safety, cancel culture, and many of the topics covered in this article and thread. It tried to use data to back up its claims and identify the causes for America’s shifting mindset. One interesting takeaway from the book was how the creation of the Americas Most Wanted tv show may be responsible for some of todays parental fears. However, statistically this is the safest time to be an American child. I recommend the book to everyone, but especially parents.
• hpen 4y ago
  To all those who believe that "one bad apples spoils the bunch", I do question what your proposed solution to that is.
• air7 4y ago
  Whenever I hear a story about a police encounter that went sour (which is often) I have to remind myself that this is probably pure sensationalism. In the US about 30 million adults have a police initialed encounter per year[1]. It seems obvious to me that the vast, vast majority of these encounters end in the way common-sense would dictate, and that only very few have the shocking, blood-boiling finale that can make you angry enough to demand reform. But equally obvious is that these are the exact stories that are attention grabbing and therefor news worthy (at least in the click-through sense). I remind myself of this prevalence perception skewing effect that the news has whenever I read it and I try to actively resist it. This reminds me of an 20yo comedy skit (that probably wouldn't be made today) by Chris Rock called "How not to get your ass kicked by the police!" which seems to say the same thing. [2] Of course I might be mistaken. I wonder if people here have data to prove otherwise? --- [1] https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cbpp18st.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cbpp18st.pdf [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8
  • orf 4y ago
    15% of the population having a police initiated encounter per year is ridiculously high.
• indigodaddy 4y ago
  Absolute insanity
• libpcap 4y ago
  Meanwhile in Japan...
• wkat4242 4y ago
  If the cops come over and tell me "it's a different world now" and the streets are not safe for kids I'll ask them what they're doing about it because they're obviously neglecting their duties :P Yes I'm sure I'd find myself in the back of a squad car like this dad. But it's worth it
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• paxys 4y ago
  In Feb 2019. Why is this coming up now?
• mdp2021 4y ago
  "Your job is to keep streets safe, you claim to be unable to, and your idea is to lock people out of danger".
• truesy 4y ago
  These comments are mainly condemning the police. While they are definitely at fault here, so is society in the US as a whole. It's become pretty common in the states to not allow children to go outside without supervision. You just don't see kids biking down the road alone anymore. These cops have taken it too far, and made up reasons to arrest the parents, but in general the idea of children having any sort of freedom or responsibility is pretty much dead in this country.
  • mikotodomo 4y ago
    What the hell?? I bike to school every day. Our bike rack has like 100 bikes each morning, I can't even count. > It's become pretty common in the states to not allow children to go outside without supervision. You can, just don't send them through the forest and city for hours alone, when they're literally 8.
• kunalgupta 4y ago
  In my hometown of Easton, CT, the cops were the sex offenders on my block. I never reported it. The first half of this story makes me wonder how common that is in CT.
• terminatornet 4y ago
  cops are terrified babies and credulous morons who will believe anything
• bastardoperator 4y ago
  What a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. If we want to fix policing in the US we need to do three things immediately: 1. Revoke qualified immunity 2. Educational requirements beyond a HS diploma 3. Internal Affairs should not be managed by the people they're investigating, it should be a citizen led committee that has no involvement with the department but can fire officers at will pending an actual investigation.
  • aidenn0 4y ago
    Revoking qualified immunity just seems like the wrong solution. It seems impossible for a police officer to do their job for 20 years without once having a situation where the preponderance of the evidence could suggest that there are grounds for damages.
    • bastardoperator 4y ago
      Sorry, it's not. We need to hold police to higher standards, not the lowest. If these people can't do the job make way for people that can. Look at airline pilots. We hold them to the highest of standards and because of that air travel is safe. Police are seemingly drunk with power, which enables the situations we're seeing now. The Tyre Nichols murder highlights just how above the law these people see themselves as being.
      • aidenn0 4y ago
        > If these people can't do the job make way for people that can Because more qualified people are lining up to become cops? Making it easier to sue cops is going to make it harder to find qualified people who are willing to join departments, not easier. > The Tyre Nichols murder highlights just how above the law these people see themselves as being. And it looks like they are about to find out just how not above-the-law they really are. 20 years ago I might have agreed with revoking qualified immunity, because AGs weren't willing to indict and juries weren't willing to convict cops. I am cautiously optimistic that we have turned a corner here, and if the trend continues the culture will have to shift.
• luxuryballs 4y ago
  Those cops are lucky they didn’t pick the wrong family to mess with.
• mdp2021 4y ago
  Real time coincidences: an article just came out on the FT: > "US police receive less training than plumbers" https://www.ft.com/content/0ec78d2e-9a3b-403b-9d5a-fc68c2804e1f https://www.ft.com/content/0ec78d2e-9a3b-403b-9d5a-fc68c2804... Edit: that was the RSS title; the webpage title is "US police: is a lack of training behind the violence? // Officers require fewer hours to qualify than plumbers and cosmetologists". Which again elicits a reaction in the lines of: "suspicion of that correlation being causal is the farthest from novel".
• vxNsr 4y ago
  The most worrisome part of about this is the amount of power we give young clueless social workers who usually have never actually parented a child. Many of whom have never been in real relationships. All their knowledge comes from college classes dealing in theory. Same exact thing can be said about teachers. There should be very serious pushback against allowing people like that near any levers of power.
• bg4 4y ago
  My sister had the police called when her school age kids were playing/riding scooters in her front yard and driveway. In that case though, the police were just as confused as she was.
• jsz0 4y ago
  I live near this area and am very familiar with the exact DD location in question. Obviously arresting the parents was a huge overreaction but the one thing I will say in defense of the police is the roads in this area are not pedestrian friendly at all. Portions of the road in question are 4 lanes including highway on/off ramps and dozens of businesses driveways and parking lots. Sections of the road have sidewalks that abruptly end and turn into guardrails forcing people to walk on the shoulder 1ft away from traffic moving at 45-60mph. I rarely see people walking these roads and as a result drivers are certainly less likely to be watching out for pedestrians. If I had kid I would not let them walk these roads. I would be on very high alert walking them myself as an adult.
  • COGlory 4y ago
    I lived in Killingly for some years. You probably are thinking of the wrong Dunkin. The article states they live near the Troop D barracks, so it's not the Dunkins in Killingly Commons, and the Dunkin closest to the troop D barracks is not on a difficult road at all. It's quite possible the children did not have to cross any main roads to get there. If it's the Dunkins in Killingly Commons, I'd agree, that's tough to get to on foot and that intersection is awful.
    • spoils19 4y ago
      Is it an Eastern bloc level intersection?
      • dang 4y ago
        You've crossed into harassing that other user. This is not ok. Even supposing that they posted something lame, that's just how internet forums work. What you're doing here is aggressive and uncool, so please stop. Edit: you've been abusing this site in enough other places as well that I think we have to ban the account. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34750115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34750115.
• 1970-01-01 4y ago
  >She tried to dispute what the police were saying, and one of them asked if she watched the news. In 2023, you shut-up and close the door when the cops are done talking. That's the response they deserve. Anything else is used against you.
• yakubin 4y ago
  Reading the headline, I naively thought it was about teaching them unhealthy eating habits. Yet the content is even more bizarre.
• mcguire 4y ago
  "Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence and resilience, and founder of the Free-Range Kids movement."
• MrRiddle 4y ago
  [dead]
• insane_dreamer 4y ago
  As a parent, the overreach by child protective services and the like is terrifying.
• zebnyc 4y ago
  As a parent, I feel for them and this is definitely a situation where cops overstepped their bounds. To play devil's advocate: I am wondering if we have created a system where the cost of being wrong is too high. Imagine what would happen if the police didn't investigate and something had gone wrong? Or look at Gabby Petito's parents who are trying to sue the Moab police.
  • tflinton 4y ago
    Yeah, I do think we’ve overstepped on what we expect police to do for us. It might also correlate with the seemingly endless stories of police overstep and abuse.
• tflinton 4y ago
  The amount of power CPS has in our state is somewhat unbelievable. A friend documented on instagram how during an X-ray of their daughters arm (as she had complained about a dull pain) that they found that she had at one point fractured it. She was 4 when she finally verbalized the discomfort but the injury was probably when she was 2. Her parents explained they didn’t know how it happened and like most parents of 2 years old know it’s sometimes impossible to know why your child is upset unless you see them injured. CPS came later that evening and took both of their kids. The parents being Mormon had no drug or substance abuse issues, but her mom mentioned she was on antidepressants and the state decided to put them into a 1-year foster care for both of their kids until she an complete a mandated psych review.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• m3kw9 4y ago
  Lmao at the risk of the road collapsing to middle earth, you won’t be allowed out, that’s self endangerment
• mordae 4y ago
  Have you watched Old Enough yet? https://www.netflix.com/title/81506279 https://www.netflix.com/title/81506279
• 93po 4y ago
  Another great example of why you should never talk to the police. They would have been fine if they just didn't talk to them.
• yieldcrv 4y ago
  > When Rivers revealed that she had received therapy for depression some years before, the caseworker weaponized this information—and insisted she return to therapy. Why are we "normalizing therapy" if nothing has changed about it being used against you?
• snozolli 4y ago
  I found out later from my husband that after I went inside, the arresting officer said to him, 'If she talks to me again, I'm going to arrest you both and take away your kids.'" Any cop who threatens retaliatory arrest because his feelings are hurt should be severely reprimanded, then fired and barred from police work if the behavior continues. Same goes for airport security who casually threaten to add passengers to the no-fly list if they push back. Retaliatory abuse of power isn't acceptable.
  • user3939382 4y ago
    It’s a crime to threaten to hurt someone with a weapon, I don’t see how this is any different. The culture of zero accountability for law enforcement is a symptom of a government that is systemically corrupt and has thrown out even the pretense of consent of the governed.
• ape4 4y ago
  I guess the cops have never seen Old Enough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Enough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Enough!
• ianmcgowan 4y ago
  There's a lot of criticism in this post of CPS (not just in the US), with comments like "they do more harm than good", etc. As someone who was fostered and ultimately adopted, I want to reject the characterization that CPS is a useless organization - they are typically made up of underpaid people who genuinely care about the welfare of children. Before dismissing them think about what kind of organization would you create to handle the distressingly common scenario of a drunk/drugged parent doing terrible things to themselves and their children in the middle of the night. CPS shows up in this case and takes care of the children. That is a routine event that doesn't make the news, it probably happened in your city last night. An insane response like TFA describes cannot be defended, but that is not the typical case at all.
• rpmisms 4y ago
  Surprise surprise, the cops are on a power trip again. You want to avoid this? Good luck. Your best bet is to move to the middle of nowhere where there are 4 police officers and they mainly care about joyriders. My young (5-10 y/o) in-laws can walk around town with no worries, since the cops know who they are, and it's a tiny town. One of the few artifacts of normal life left in this country. Oh yeah, and "Posted" signs carry force of law here, unbreakable by police or even federal agents without a warrant. They also know better than to try.
  • GaryNumanVevo 4y ago
    In my experience growing up in a tiny town <3000 people, it's a lot worse.
• GaryNumanVevo 4y ago
  Literal police state. My elderly parents recently had police in their upper middle class neighborhood start POUNDING on their door at 3am. What was the cause? Had they caught someone breaking into their house? Was their house on fire? No. They had left their garage door open over night, and the "kind" police officers decided to nearly give my father a heart attack to let him know that leaving open your garage door could draw in a "criminal element" I don't want to live anywhere where police can feel "empowered" to terrorize regular people because of "crime" that may or may not be happening.
• vogt 4y ago
  Heh. I grew up in a town nearly identical to the one mentioned in the article (not far, either - probably only a 45 minute drive). My bus stop was like a half mile/three quarters of a mile away so in the mornings my dad would drop me off on his way into work. One morning I realized we made it too late, and I had missed the bus. On the walk home I got approached by a police officer who pulled up next to me. Thankfully, we had some history as he was my DARE officer in fifth grade. He told me 3 different people called the police about a 15 year old walking by himself with a bag and large jacket on. People can never resist being busybodies.
• maerF0x0 4y ago
  > Then mom, dad, and the kids faced a barrage of questions In America, you should essentially never speak to the police w/o a lawyer[1] > They told us that it wasn't safe for kids to walk down the street Isn't that stark admittance that the police themselves are the ones failing in this scenario? PS: highly recommend reaons's reporting, I find them quite interesting not just covering the same run of the mill topics. PPS: I'm sure they should arrest all of Japan for being complicit in the making of this show (jk) https://www.netflix.com/title/81506279 https://www.netflix.com/title/81506279 [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO7z4cHrcuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO7z4cHrcuY
• Willish42 4y ago
  This is really bad and I'm generally a pretty politically minded person, but is there a policy for what is and isn't discussed on hacker news? This one seems completely unrelated to technology. I don't mind talking about politics in circles such as this but it seems a bit arbitrary that this particular news story blew up on HN. Does anybody know / could speculate why?
  • timerol 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. No comment on the applicability to the current article
• chung8123 4y ago
  Somewhat similar to this story: https://www.iheart.com/content/2022-11-18-texas-mom-wrongfully-arrested-for-making-8-year-old-son-walk-home-alone/ https://www.iheart.com/content/2022-11-18-texas-mom-wrongful...
• localhost3000 4y ago
  Grew up in a small town in Connecticut and roamed around all the time as a ~9 year old. Used to go fishing with my friends at the various rivers and streams around town. No cell phones, be home before dark. Doors were never locked. It was a great way to grow up.
• miguelazo 4y ago
  Sounds like these cops have been spending way too much time on social media-- sex offenders lurking around every corner. Glad to see that "free range" parenting movement has taken root the last few years.
• babyshake 4y ago
  On an actuarial basis, how likely are children of this age group walking to a store in the suburbs likely to be a) approached by sex offenders trying to abuse them and b) either kidnapped or abused by strangers after being approached? My hunch is that being exposed to a small amount of anecdata warps our perception of these types of problems, and police are not immune from this type of bias. Although I could also be wrong on this hunch.
  • therealdrag0 4y ago
    Isn’t the vast vast vast amount of abuse from people who know the victim, including when it’s kids? Aka I agree with your hunch. Most of this is boogie man panics.
• animitronix 4y ago
  Burn all the police stations to the ground
• trogdor 4y ago
  This author has a history of bending the truth. Last time around, we were told the story of Heather Wallace, a Waco, Texas woman who was arrested after her child walked home. That Reason.com article stated that Wallace’s child, Aiden, had “agreed to walk home,” after which Wallace was arrested for child engagement. I am a reporter and I cover crime. I was skeptical of that story, so I contacted the McClennan County Clerk of Court, and I paid for a copy of Ms. Wallace’s indictment. It stated that Wallace had forced her crying child to walk home — on the shoulder of a busy highway. I have no doubt that Heather Wallace told the article’s author (who runs an advocacy organization…) that her son Aiden wanted to walk home, but that is not what Aiden had told the police. Wallace pleaded guilty. Government overreach can be a serious problem, but I would be very hesitant to draw that conclusion from any story by this author. Particularly this one, since you can’t independently verify the facts. If you are going to credibly report stories about crime, you can’t anonymize the names of people who were allegedly arrested. That is not journalism. It’s storytelling.
• reportgunner 4y ago
  Why is this even on hacker news.