Woman arrested for leaving child "unattended"

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337012,00.html

My opinion? This is pure, rampant stupidity on the part of the police.

I agree this is total nonsense. I'm sick of this idea that the state needs to raise our children, that the state has to take all responsibility. how about getting back to the freedom and liberty we used to have in this country. one that requires we take responsibility for ourselves instead of the state doing it for us and not giving us a choice.


In my mind htis sends the message that the state own your children not you. we are rushing towards a situation where you can be thrown into jail for any random thing you might do as part of your normal day even if you've done no wrong at all. we currently have more people in prison than any other country in the world.

You know, we had an incident in a Walmart parking zone. This was when they were making the place bigger. My mom got confused, and slowly turned to another parking row. All of a sudden, this officer behind us had his loud alarm on. You'd think we had been speeding. He pulled us over for not having a turn signal on and then charged my mother for not wearing a seat belt. She was just trying to find a place to park in the confusing parking zone.

Anyway, yes I think it's wrong to leave a child in a car alone in any circumstance but this sounds stupid. It sounds like a $ thing. I don't know how police get away with some of the things they do. In my opinion that went too far, a fine would've probably been fine. A year in jail under her circumstance is going far pass the line. Just goes to show you that some of these authority figures enjoy abusing their power. Again, I don't know how they get away with some of the stuff they do.

I don't know , there was a woman who ran up to the door of a supermarket in my hometown and a tweaker stole her car with her infant in it. Luckily and oddly, the thief dropped off the child in safe place, though he still was charged with kidnapping. 30 feet away is too far to me to call it safe. Putting her in jail wouldn't help but she should have some consequence.

If we're concerned about the kid's welfare, how in the world is throwing the mother in jail supposed to help in this case?

How would a thief have stolen her car, since it was locked and the alarm system armed? Modern alarm systems disable the car's ignition. And if he just wanted to kidnap the child, how is he going to conveniently break through the tough glass of her car enough to lift the child out? To say nothing of the surrounding people hearing the alarm blaring away and looking over all the while. Would he risk it?

To me, what took place is analogous to putting your sleeping child in his bedroom at home, and then walking into the other room. Like she said, it was sleeting outside at the time: Should she have risked slipping and falling while carrying her baby? Just look at the circumstances of this paricular case, and you'll see that this is not another one of those mothers who is reckless and irresponsible like we hear about too often in the news. THOSE mothers make me angry. But this woman was doing something totally safe.

Locking your car and walking away is different than putting your child to bed and going to a different room. The latter assumes that you've locked your doors to your house so you're still in essence "with your child".

I don't know anything about "modern alarms" disabling ignitions. I do know that car alarms go off all the time and no one ever notices and cars are still stolen.
I shared the story because the mother in that case said the same basic thing-she was "right there". That woman wasn't charged with neglect but her child could have been killed.

However, I agree when it said as long as she could see the car, a few yards away, it was fine. Also if a tweaker stole her car from that distance and within that time, then there is a high chance that he would have stole the car with her still inside anyway. It would have made better sense for the police officer to have politely reminded the mother not to leave her child unattended before going in the store, if they thought she was going in the store. Then the mother could have simply told them that they were just donating some money and were going right back. I understand the police caring for children, but this is way to far. Where is common sense?

Your child can always be killed, whether he's in your arms or not. All safety is relative, so it just comes down to where the law decides to draw the line, not "right" and "wrong".

Well, now I know what they meant when the article said this is "contraversial." Obviously, it is!

I thought no one could see it differently than I do, but I was wrong.

The police went too far.. They should have only gave her a warning.

Have to remember that, it'd make a good threat...

Yes, I think that would have sufficed.

And yet there have been reports of children being kidnapped right out of their bedrooms while their parents were sleeping the next room. And whether or not that woman's behaviour was irresponsible, the "consequences" were way, way over the top.

That's revolting. I'm with you, Ragtime. The odds are higher that a small child would be mowed down in a crosswalk while holding her mother's hand, than in this situation. It's magical thinking, to believe that ceasing to touch the vehicle where one's child is located will automatically (and dramatically) increase the chances of disaster.

Thanks for that referrence, gwen, and I think you've accurately applied it. Although I hadn't heard that term before, it was exactly what I was thinking of regarding the logic of the police person in this case. Mistaking seemingness for proven fact.

Another example of magical thinking which I think is interesting is when someone wagers that a certain outcome will occur -- an outcome influenced by unknowable variables -- and then when the outcome matches their prediction, they confidently say, "I knew it!", and seem to even believe that they somehow knew it even when they weren't sure, and when there was no way it could have been known.

Sometimes, they'll procede to argue that the very fact that the outcome matched their prediction proves they had absolute knowledge it would occur that way. They then develop a false confidence in their forecasting ability. So, I make sure to remind myself, when an outcome matches my predictions, that I did not know it, I just happened to be correct in that one case. That helps keep me on the same page with my true abilities.

When Pat Robertson admits that not all of his predictions come true, but says that more of them come true than do not come true, it's obvious that he is not actually predicting anything. In the Bible, the accuracy rate necessary to be called a prophet of God was 100%. It says plainly that if one of their predictions doesn't come true, don't trust them as a prophet of God; such are "false prophets". I would ask Robertson, "Well then, why don't all of you predictions come true if you're hearing from God?"

How VERY true. BTW I'd be careful who you decided to make that kind of threat to.
Signed Reika, "Mother of a dead 19 year old"