Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town | Hacker News Reader

Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town

reason.com

218 pointsbryan0197 comments

I don’t know what is up with the USA and its obsession that kids cannot have autonomy. I think many of us grew up where our parents didn’t know our location at all times. My parents used to tell me to be home by a certain time, but I used to roam the neighborhood, go get candy at the gas station, explore the forest.

Maybe it is a sign of the eroding social trust in the USA where people do not believe that others in the community are decent people as well. It kind of makes sense if you never actually go out into the community and meet others. The USA lifestyle is you drive everywhere in your big SUV, all interactions are transactional, you don’t talk to your neighbours and instead watch netflix and binge social media where you are sold the idea that everything is horrible and the world is a bad place.

It's not equally distributed. In Boston, MA area kids have as much autonomy as their parents wish to give them AFAIK. It's not uncommon to see 10 year olds in my town nearby they are doing all sorts of biz around town on their own.

Literally any very low income area of any larger city in the US is the same. You see kids all the time walking around without adults. If they're very young (like 6 or whatever) they're typically an older kid, sometimes like around 10 to 12, but again this happens everywhere.

It's only middle class neighborhoods and above where people start to have strong reactions to this in a "won't somebody think of the children!!!" sort of way

I think a lot of it has to do with constant fear mongering on the news and its effect after 40+ years of it. Also the phenomenon of (I forgot what it's called) but where people are afraid of flying but not driving because they see constant news coverage of crashed planes.

Fear and rage drives higher engagement which results in more ad revenue.

Suburban paranoia and it it bleeds it leads.

Dateline used to be on NBC 1x per week...

Now there's a cable channel that's literally Dateline 24 x 7 x 365...

> I don’t know what is up with the USA and its obsession that kids cannot have autonomy.

This is a news story and a controversy because it's a weird thing that happened.

The US is a big place. Societal norms and law enforcement practices vary widely from location to location. This appears to be one sheriff pushing a personal agenda.

It's not just one sheriff, it's:

- the busybody who called the cops in the first place

- the sheriff

- the Assistant District Attorney

- the Department of Family and Child Services

The latter 3 all know it’s wrong, but also don’t to be liable at all.

There's an old saying about how difficult it is to convince someone differently when their paycheck depends on it...

If it were one sheriff, the person driving by in their SUV wouldn't have called the cops. This is a wider phenomenon than you're letting on here

There are other stories like this, so the issue is at the least a common attack vector for law enforcement officials pushing agendas.

This appears to be one sheriff pushing a personal agenda.

Unfortunately it's not - there's a whole "child safety" department behind them, ready with a "safety plan" and even an app that they're going force the poor kid to install. This kind of stuff doesn't happen without the coordination of external bodies, and decades of societal shift in favor of this kind of control-oriented parenting (and blind faith in technical solutions toward this end), also at institutional levels:

  A few days later, DFCS presented Patterson with a "safety plan" for her to sign. It would require her to delegate a "safety person" to be a "knowing participant and guardian" and watch over the children whenever she leaves home. The plan would also require Patterson to download an app onto her son's phone allowing for his location to be monitored. (The day when it will be illegal not to track one's kids is rapidly approaching.)

Against this backdrop - it's quite likely the Sheriff wasn't pushing her own agenda at all, but simply following the procedures provided by her department.

I don't know if that's true. the assistant DA refused to drop the charge, and the compromise that they offered was some CPS-based safety plan.

but the ADA who owns the case could drop the charge tomorrow and it all goes away.

and Sheriffs don't prosecute or dismiss charges, they simply take them to the DAs and supply evidence. someone called them and said there was a kid walking alone and they looked abused, and the sheriff took it to the courts and DAs.

> This is a news story and a controversy because it's a weird thing that happened.

This kind of thing has been going on for decades now, e.g.

Florida mom arrested after allowing 7-year-old son to walk to park alone (2014): https://fox4kc.com/news/florida-mom-arrested-after-allowing-...

Maryland family under investigation for letting their kids walk home alone (2015): https://www.fox43.com/article/news/local/contests/maryland-f...

11-Year-Old Boy Played in His Yard. CPS Took Him, Felony Charge for Parents (2015): https://reason.com/2015/06/11/11-year-old-boy-played-in-his-...

Mom Arrested for Letting Child, 10, Shop Alone at Lego Store (2017): https://www.freerangekids.com/mom-arrested-for-letting-child...

And the parent's statement is still true:

>This is a news story and a controversy because it's a weird thing that happened.

How often do you read a news story that says "sun rose in the morning"? The news doesn't report it if it's a normal, non-controversial thing.

That's not to say that this proves anything one way or the other - just that the existence of n=5 cases where this happened over 10 years is not proof of a wider phenomenon.

It's proof that there's a legal framework that allows this abuse, let alone promotes it, and that it's leading to real-world harm.

How high should N be before we care to plug such legal holes?

That Assanges are rare doesn't mean there shouldn't be outcries about it.

See, the USA has 350 million people, and fifty states with materially different local norms. With this scale and amount of variety, "one in a million" freak incidents ought to be registered all the time. But, being freak incidents, they get amplified and thus seem to represent the entire country in the eyes of distant observers, foreigners, or just people from far enough away within the US.

Ironically, this is the same mechanism that magnifies every freak incident in daily life and gives it disproportionate news coverage. It's sometimes useful to draw attention to a rare problem, but more often it's just to pump up the audience's emotions and thus drive up "engagement" (views, coincident ad impressions, contextual ad clicks). This magnification, if not dampened by some rational thought, leads to people, including officials, mortally afraid that "anything could happen" with an unattended child on the street, and over-reacting; jail time for a parent is definitely worse for a kid that walking alone on the streets for some time.

But again, talking about "the USA lifestyle" is about as productive as speaking about "the European cuisine". The lifestyle is highly varied; I myself is not a fan of transactional suburban SUV lifestyle, hence mine, and that of my neighbors, is vastly different.

This mechanism is the source of fear for foreigners who believe they will be the victims of a mass shooting if they visit the USA.

> With this scale and amount of variety, "one in a million" freak incidents ought to be registered all the time.

I’m not sure “one in a million” and “freak incident” is the right mental model with this case.

What is noteworthy that a whole series of people, most of them professionals, thought an unatended child walking is noteworthy and they should do something about it. The busybody who thought they should report it, then the sherif who thought they should respond to that report then further thought they should do something about it and then further thought to go back and arrest the parrent, then the other officer who didn’t say “hey what are you doing, are you ok?”, then the child protection services who recommended the tracking app, and then the prosecutor who provides the legal muscle to back this insanity.

Yes it might be a one in a million freak event that all these people assembled themselves into a conga line of crazyness. But they had these beliefs even before the boy started walking. How many others have similar ideas to them? You think these 5 are the only ones?

I agree that the idea that streets are dangerous for kids before 12 is not very sane, and much more widespread than I would like it to be. It depends though; now the police in NYC is efficient, and the crime level reasonably low, but 20 years ago the situation was different. IDK how things are in Georgia.

What I refer to as a "freak accident" is the jail time. I would expect issuing an official warning at most.

The problem is that this state of mind is that of the voters. It's not imposed by some oppressive authoritarian ruler, it's self-inflicted. Democracy, sadly, makes the unwholesome traits in people as visible as the most virtuous traits. E.g. Switzerland, the poster child of the most real democracy on this planet, only gave women voting rights in 1950s-70s, completely democratically.

It’s not an obsession with “USA” but with government agencies. The police but also child protective services (called different things in different locations) create these kind of sham protections. It ends up creating a chilling effect by scaring parents into acting differently and depriving their children of much needed independence that is critical to their development. But worse, when a parent gets into trouble for it, they end up being shamed and humiliated in ways that really affect their happiness and psychology. Imagine if you are told that some person from a random agency, usually of low intelligence and low empathy, will come check in on your children every week and humiliate you by forcing you to report to them. It is an inhumane deprivation of parental rights, but also an excess of government. As a taxpayer, I absolutely hate that we waste money on this type of thing when we’re in debt.

Probably it is not (only) eroding trust but eroding nerves with the overbearing sense that someone must look over everything and protect for anything and everything, including themselves, in other words meddle with each other's lives to the level of forcing them against their will.

In other hand despite the US has never been the role model of safety or courteousness towards each other yet the seemingly increasing trend of gun and drug related violence could cause short circuit in the head of those overloaded, especially when they are responsible and scrutinised by a litigious society for any and every tiny mishap with inflated theoretical consequences that should have been precluded with tenths of seconds reaction time and infallible divination.

I don't know if you can can say the entire USA has an "obsession" with preventing children from being autonomous based on this one incident. That's too much of a generalization. There are obviously people who do think that way. But there are also a lot who do not, including the mother, who said "I was not panicking as I know the roads and know he is mature enough to walk there without incident."

This situation is ridiculous, of course. But the USA is huge, and you can probably find pretty much any or every attitude and approach to life here.

It's not based on this incident, it's based on this incident happening and on the fact that there are laws making this possible, plus zero checks on the people doing it. Nobody saying "this is insane, stop it". This was voted in, in theory, by the majority of the US population.

Oh, and of course that they're doing it. After all, they're not doing this of their own volition. They're paid by the government. In other words, by the majority of the US population.

Well, the mother who was arrested doesn't agree with the policy. I wouldn't be surprised if she is saying it's insane, and it should be stopped. She got a lawyer to help push back against the charges.

This was voted in, in theory, by the majority of the US population.

The laws vary state by state, and probably by region within states. So this seems to be a law in Fannin County, Georgia. It might not even apply to all of Georgia, much less the entire country. It certainly does not apply in the city I live in. It might apply in other parts of the state I live in.

And it would not have been put to the entire country for a vote.

yep, we're old fogies now. at age 9 my best friend and i would ride our bikes about 5 miles to the beach. no cell phones. no arrests. no problems. we'd ride our gas-powered scooters to the gas station for slushies. we too played in the woods.

i don't understand what changed or why kids today can't do anything on their own. it does not seem good for their development, which in turn does not seem good for the future of our country.

i'm in my mid 30s now, and I remember as soon as i was old enough to ride a bike well, i would ride it over a mile away from home all by myself, probably around age 7 or 8. i got lost one time and was really flustered, starting crying, knocked on a literal random door, and a very nice old lady let me use her phone to call my mom, who was slightly embarrassed, lol. this was in a large city in texas for context.

another random andecdote: my older brother, probably 11 or 12 at the time, got in a lot of trouble with my mom and they had a big fight. my mom just straight up kicked him out of the house with no shoes, and literally walked barefoot over several miles to his friend's house.

reflecting on that gives me a lot of introspection to the nature of the parenting i received.

It could be that mass perception of crime levels is higher than it actually is (statistics say it has only gotten better over the years), possibly due to the number of negative media stories produced all day every day.

Keep in mind that the "majority of people" are not informed skeptics like you and me, they can barely use a computer and largely believe what biased mass media tells them to believe.

At least that's how I feel about it, you don't have to agree.

I feel the same. Constatnt agenda of fear in news slowly changes our trust in society, even though statistically criminality lowering.

I was kid in 90’s which was quite crazy in our country. I went to school with mine parents just once - first day. I cannot imagine mine kids with same approach today.

There’s elements at play where adults with childhood neglect and/or sexual trauma sublimate their understandably strong emotions into current safety initiatives for children.

People pile on with their ideas, like some sort of perverse “yes, and …” improv exercise. Nobody disagrees because “won’t somebody think of the children”.

Other folks in power blindly see it as their sole duty, without context, to implement and execute said initiatives which creates a positive feedback loop with no relief.

USA is actually way more dangerous than Europe.

Can you provide a source for that claim? Mine says the total crime rate in Europe is actually much higher:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-crime-rates...

Have you considered that the US has giant vehicles and a critical lack of sidewalks and other pedestrian coded cat infrastructure?

I think the problem with the US is slow eroding of the rights of youth. We're not treating them as young adults who are fully capable of making their own decisions one day. Instead we're treating them as incapable infants until they leave the nest.

The movie industry is a good example of this. If you're a child in certain places in the US, you'll grow up with violence around you (in real life). There was a movie "The Eighth Grade" that got an "R" rating not because of the violence, but because of the language. PG-13 was in 2018 limited to one "fuck" per film.

https://www.themarysue.com/eighth-grade-is-rated-r/

The US isn't even treating adults like young adults. Everyone is an infant these days. There was a YouTube video about the 10 commandments that said "Thou shall not kill" and it was demonetized because it "involved violence" and never corrected even once YouTube knew the problem. There is a list of thousands of words you cannot say or talk about without getting your channel banned or demonetized. YouTube is not alone in this either, its everywhere. Banks, PayPal, Patreon, they are all blackballing people. In fact most of the large tech companies use the same third party moderation and will end up banning the same person across all channels at once if you end up on their shit list.

When I was five years old I would walk along a path and take a bridge across a river to visit my friend to play board games. By the time I was nine I was bicycling forty-five minutes to school on a 80 km/h road. The level of paranoia that's infected people around keeping kids near their parents is insane.

Yes, but.

For all of the happy survivor stories like yours (and mine), the reality is that the rate of child accidental deaths has steadily decreases over the past few decades as parents (and society) became more protective. That isn't to say I agree with over-parenting and eliminating independence -- I don't -- but there needs to be rationality applied as well as personal values.

I expect we would discover that almost all of that is improvements in car safety though.

And farm rules.

In Central European cities kids will walk unsupervised to school from age 5, even today in 2024. Parents are even actively discouraged from taking children to school. If what you suggest is true, then statistically we should see Swiss children dying at a higher rate than American children?

Rationality says let the kid out. I was wandering around Chicago from age 10. Stuff happened, I survived. Kids can decide to wuss out on their own.

Yes, but. It's not "happy survivor stories", as if 20% of all children died on their way to school thirty years ago. It's overwhelmingly normal stories, and child deaths were always exceedingly rare.

Yes, while childhood suicide, depression and obesity rates have all been increasing. If you look at all the factors, I'm not sure there's a net benefit.

Edit: I decided to look up the CDC statistics to see if there is any net benefit, but total childhood mortality rates have been increasing in the US. Measuring accidental deaths is extremely flawed, if that were a good target then we should keep all children indoors. No bike riding, no swimming, no tree climbing, just keep them inside on a screen all day long and accidental deaths will continue to drop.

Don't forget that there are a lot fewer kids today.

One only need to look at how a single kid is parented vs four.

I had a hilarious example at the park where the single child had constant supervision while the fourth kid of the same age was left alone to do whatever until she hurt herself and started crying. In between she ate dirt, sand, jumped in a puddle, threw stones at the local wild life, ate the single kids snacks, and finally fell off a ladder and busted her nose.

It's not that parents in the 70s were hands off, it's that they had their hands full and couldn't do any more.

Why single out "more protective" as if it were a relevant factor? Surely that's a personal value, without a strong rational justification.

It's also decreased as the amount of environmental lead has decreased.

It's also decreased as the number of computer screens has increased.

It's also decreased as sugar consumption has increased. (Are parents actually being protective as they feed more sugar to their kids?)

As has our consumption of GMOs.

It's also decreased as government-mandated product, automobile, and housing safety standards have increased (which is different from parents becoming more protective!).

A rational response would be to hold off on highlighting any specific correlation until establishing that it's more meaningful than other alternatives.

> the reality is that the rate of child accidental deaths has steadily decreases over the past few decades as parents (and society) became more protective

While accidental deaths are down, I wouldn’t be so quick to conclude this is because of parents/ becoming more protective so much as society collectively implementing regulations and safety standards that target specific things that are known to be highly dangerous. The list of these targeted changes is extremely long, but some top mentions:

- Safer car and booster seats. Cribs, toys, and other household items.

- Advances in healthcare and access to vaccinations.

- Better education for caregivers around drowning prevention, safe sleeping practices, etc.

- Childproofed products like wall outlets, cabinet locks, baby gates, etc.

- Stricter rules and education on smoke and carbon monoxide detection.

- Road safety initiatives ranging from seatbelt and child restraints laws to anti-DUI programs.

- Improved consumer protections and communication of product recalls.

And the list goes on.

> 80 km/h road

Non-American detected

Please use Google Street View on the roads coming in to Mineral Bluffs, Ga, USA. No bike lines, and we're not even keen on emergency shoulder for cars and trucks!

Please use Google street view in any small town around the world and notice the prevalence of foot traffic. Even on roads with no shoulder, bike lane, sidewalk or similar. I've walked to school since I was 6 on roads not too dissimilar.

No, use the one for Mineral Bluffs:

1. Study the width of the oversize vehicle here[1].

2. Study the lack of shoulder next to this guard rail[2].

No parent in their right mind is going to be comfortable letting a six year-old walk that, in any decade. And no municipality is going to let school buses drop kids at arbitrary parts of that highway, unless the driver is dumping them into a residential side-street.

I'm glad you survived walking on streets like this when you were six, but that's not relevant to these highways being dangerous places for regular (or irregular) foot traffic.

1: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.9150284,-84.2767414,3a,75y,2...

2: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.91672,-84.2760891,3a,75y,317...

That would definitely not been unusual in Germany in the 80s. Actually many rural German roads didn't even have that small shoulder, you really had to walk either on the street or on the grass. Kids learned how to handle this. There are even popular children's songs from that decade about how to do this, which is to walk on the left side of the road (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La129TFxCGE).

Nor in the US in the 90s. I don't know where this kid was, but we'd walk in the grass on the other side of the ditch, not practically on the street.

I had to recheck those to make sure my Maps app wasn't loading the wrong thing.

Those appear to be normal streets like those kids all over the world walk on the side of?

Gonna have to disagree with you. Most car-centric (even small) towns I have seen do NOT have a prevalence of foot traffic.

> She (the Sheriff) kept mentioning how he could have been run over, or kidnapped or 'anything' could have happened,

This is weird. Is the crime so bad in the town? Even the good-for-nothing cops in my (developing) country do not come up with such nonsense.

Apparently not knowing where your kid is IS the crime. Which is rampant in the countryside, RAMPANT!

Rampant across Europe/Japan/South America/... why would anyone not let their kids outside exploring/walking/exercising?

Many cops in the US have a massive superiority complex

Yeah, but wouldn't the sheriff making the comment be own goaling the situation. Wouldn't her scenarios imply that she's shite at her job so that crimes like these are prevalent?

Teaches the kids what the cops are about.

No no, you see, the tremendous crime rate in the city is why voters should support giving the sheriff loads more unchecked power, and loads more money to buy MRAPs and AR-15s.

After witnessing the past decade, do you think even immediate logical contraditions matter in the least? Especially for the kind of people that think that society should be some kind of authority hierarchy, which is essentially a prerequisite of being a cop?

It's precisely that lack of awareness on their part that makes Cartman's "respect my authority" funny or any other trope as well like Tackelberry from Police Academy work (for the old farts) or Farva from Super Troopers (for those slightly less old).

This is American policing, I've been pulled over or even detained for just walking several times. I think it's a combination of power tripping, nothing better to do with large police forces and many vehicles, and a fundamental distrust of any transport that isn't a car. And of course the legal and moral framework that allows for random abuses of rights and an overall acceptance of a papers-please force.

Hate to ask but are you a person of color? My brown friends have been pulled over and stopped while just walking around many more times than me (plain white dude). I have been pulled over one time in my life and never so much as had more more than a “hi how are you doing?”from a cop on the street.

FWIW I had my car get totaled while I was a freshman in college and walked to it the day after. Cops stopped me 3 times on approx a 6mi walk, wouldn't leave me the fuck alone until I pulled out ID. I'm white and this was in NJ, we are not a stop and identify state. Apparently teen walking down the road with a backpack in middle of day is suspicious.

This was around 17 years ago, cant imagine how ridiculous it is now.

>cant imagine how ridiculous it is now. It can get worse.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42102609

There is no crime actually mentioned. What are the charges?

>If the state does prosecute, Patterson could face a reckless conduct charge, a $1,000 fine, and a year in jail.

From the article, apparently it's "reckless conduct"

That sounds very ambiguous. Is installing Windows XP on an internet connected PC considered reckless? Is it driving a vintage car?

Sounds about right, it's one of those charges like "obstructing justice" that is so broad the cops can throw it out when there wasn't any real crime

Would that actually hold up in court?

IANAL but I doubt it. There are school districts in GA that require kids to walk up to a mile and a half each way before bussing in mandated. Additionally, no jury of your rural peers would ever agree with those charges. I am stunned myself at the lunacy. I live in a rural area and given the size of their property I assume they do as well. My next door neighbor lives almost a mile from us. Granted I don't live in GA but I can't imagine any rural sheriff being re-elected on a platform that kids can't be trusted to walk to their neighbors house or to their little town.

Thank you, I missed that. Man, it'd be interesting to see what a jury would say. What's your peer group doing?

The busybodies don't realize that they are themselves a threat to kids' wellbeing. Nine times out of ten kids are better off with bad parents than with no parents.

Instead, the sheriff is going to come handcuff mom and ~kidnap~ arrest her, in front of the kids. That shouldn't harm them at all, right?

There's something missing about this story somewhere.

interesting, given that kids in Atlanta GA are REQUIRED to walk to and from school if they live a mile away.

They need to justify their military-level gear. If the city is nice and calm, they won’t get armored vehicles.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-parentsusas-fight-for-bri... - "Support ParentsUSA's Fight for Brit's Parental Rights"

I would but PayPal banned me for life for taking payments for the sale of CBD oil in the early days of my CBD oil startup

Update: I kicked in $50 anyway. This story really infuriated me and I felt strongly enough to fill it out manually.

I rarely donate, but couldn’t resist for this one. Thanks for link!

When I was 8? I think, I used to take a bus to go get a VHS tape from the local rental shop. It's important for kids to have autonomy. In Japan, its pretty common to send even younger kids out on errands.

When I was growing up in the 70s, it was totally normal for a dad to give their under 10 year old kid some money and send them to the corner store to buy a pack of cigarettes for dad.

My Japanese friend told me his parents would send him to the store for beer at age 5. (He would successfully return with beer)

I gather things are different now over there...

Where is “over there”?

Japan namely. While I cannot say whether or not a store would sell beer to a 5 year old, no longer can anyone just buy beer or cigarettes (and more) from vending machines.

If you are asking the part of Japan - Tokushima.

I believe a common joke is about a protective parent sending a child on an errand and then following along to see if the child does okay.

Japan has a lot less crime than the US.

They even made a whole TV show about it!

To me at least, a cop arguing that it's not safe to walk around town, is a cop saying they have failed to do their job.

If our towns have actually become so dangerous recently, and that's not what the statistics say, then it seems like there's a whole other discussion we need to have. I don't think the world is more dangerous though, I think the average American has become more isolated and fearful over the past 25 years.

The cop was the danger.

A lot of folks talking about the "10-year-old" part but the more pervasive problem in America is the "walking" part. In many areas of America there is zero infrastructure for pedestrians. Anyone walking is viewed as suspicious because surely no sane person would subject themselves to the danger of walking on these streets. Heaven forbid you are young, brown skinned, or wearing unique clothing - then the act of walking is probable cause. Literally.

I was working on a contract job in Houston and stayed at a hotel a mile from their office. First day was a nice morning so I decided to walk. It was ridiculous to navigate 8+ lane wide intersections. It was loud and not exactly a nice walk, but not unsafe and at least it was better than driving. By the time I got to the office, I realized that the security gate only opened for cars - I wasn't able to trip the sensor to even get the com working! A security guard came out to accost me and immediately treated me like a criminal. He couldn't comprehend why I was traveling on foot and refused to release me until my client came down to rescue me. My client's response, shocked in a scolding tone - "WHY did you walk?". I am apparently insane for wanting fresh air and a little morning exercise.

I walked once to a client's site in PA. It was about 1.5 miles from the center of the small town and the hotel were I stayed. The walk was quite nice, until I got to the block where the client's site was.

The intersection had "no ped-X-ing" signs on all four sides. The road widened so it was 6 lanes across. And there was no pedestrian entrance, so I needed to walk up to the guarded gate entrance for cars.

The guard was a bit confused, but I think what helped was he likely did not grow up in car-centric US, based on his Caribbean accent.

The building itself had bike rakes by the entrances. Completely unused.

When I was 9 back in 1991, we lived in the Keflavik Navy Station, and my 12 year old sister and I would ride our bikes all over the base. We'd frequently ride to the youth center which was over a mile from our apartment.

The next year, we moved back to Virginia Beach, and I'd frequently ride my bike by myself to the video rental store about 3/4 a mile away.

Are kidnappings really more common now than then? Aren't most kidnappings actually done by close relatives? I knew not to trust strangers.

What really bothers me is how the generation that grew up with the least supervision is now the generation that's calling the cops for children being unsupervised, while also wearing their lack of supervision as a badge of honor.

That is really ironic how many scold parents for being helicopter parents whilst saying kids today are weak because they didn't do shit they themselves did.

But, it could also be an age-old thing where people who were neglected as kids has some kind of savior complex. The Swedish character Pippi Longstocking in the TV series (probably also in the books from 1945) was hounded by a "nanny" character that wanted to put her into a childrens home since she was living on her own, so perhaps these occurrences aren't new.

So what we see here are the very real ramifications of a media-driven crime hysteria. The deputy noted that the child could be "kidnapped". You will see claims like "800,000 children are kidnapped every year". The media loves to drum up fear. The vast majority of these cases are custody disputes. Actual cases of children being kidnapped by strangers? Fewer than 100 per year, probably a lot fewer [1].

This is a small rural town. That makes it less likely just because there are fewer strangers. Not that there aren't dangers from known people and family members but that's a risk regardless. It really has nothing to do with walking a mile down a road. This isn't a major road either. The article notes it has a 25mph speed limit.

Compre that to firearm-related deaths, which are in the thousands [2]

One side note for any non-American: you may expect there to be sidewalks on roads. For most roads in the US, this is not the case. There might be a shoulder. There might not. There often won't even be a curb. So you're walking on uneven ground. So you could get hit by a car but this isn't a high speed road.

Common sense should rule here. Like don't the police have better things to do? And the DA? Or DCFS?

[1]: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/child-abductions-str...

[2]: https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/the-impact-of-...

The child was kidnapped, by the police.

Sucks. More than the system it's the silly woman who called the cops. Instead of helping the child she did a great disservice to him and his entire family.

I had a similar hiccup when I first came to US when our apt neighbor called cops because my 1 year old was screaming. Crazy, I know.

This country thrives on fear - health, insurance, legal, weapons - the biggest money making industries in US all feed on fear economy.

That seems too much even for this. What did the cops said? Children are screaming all the time with tantrums

The fundamental dynamic underlying all of this is that there are absolutely zero downsides or repercussions for the professional bureaucrats persecuting their victims in this way. At the very least, the civil damages of legal expenses, emotional pain and suffering for the mother plus her four kids, physical harm from being held in poor jails, straight up wasted time, etc should be coming out of the budgets of the organizations perpetrating these attacks. Instead, in the worst case they simply get told "no" after a long arduous battle on the part of the parents (that the bureaucrats even get paid to engage in!), and are free to try again. This creates absolutely zero incentive to exercise judgement whether to actually persecute individual cases. Essentially, sovereign immunity being applied to every penny-ante government employee strikes again.

""A few days later, DFCS presented Patterson with a "safety plan" for her to sign. It would require her to delegate a "safety person" to be a "knowing participant and guardian" and watch over the children whenever she leaves home. The plan would also require Patterson to download an app onto her son's phone allowing for his location to be monitored. (The day when it will be illegal not to track one's kids is rapidly approaching.)""

I'm liberal Democrat. But sometimes I think maybe we should just have a beer watch the world burn.

In a town of 370 people, I'm surprised the driver didn't know the kid, his family for three or four generations, where he lived, and maybe even what he had for breakfast.

Does anybody else get a feeling that this is fake? Reason is the only source (other news outlets just link to this article), there is no comment from the DA or the sheriff nor any documents or mention of official documentation that could corroborate the story. And the GoFundMe has very little info

She shows up int the "Fannin County Sheriff’s Office Arrest Report 10/28 – 11/3/2024," as Inmate 2512, charged with "Reckless Codnict," the charge in het article. (https://fannin.fetchyournews.com/2024/11/05/fannin-county-sh...)

Thanks for verifying

I think this part is being underappreciated too:

> It would require her to delegate a "safety person" to be a "knowing participant and guardian" and watch over the children whenever she leaves home.

I was 11 when I started "babysitting" my 9 and 6yo siblings, and 12 when I started babysitting other people's kids. I took a Red Cross training course, got certified, and that was that. Heck, there was a whole series of kids books, The Babysitters Club, about kids who were just 12-13.

Is it no longer normal to leave younger children in the care of older children when parents go out? Even beyond whether a pre-teen should be fine walking to and from town, they need supervision at home whenever mom leaves??

Here in Copenhagen, Denmark (I'm American), it is very common for kids at around 8 to start walking or biking to school and we are in a (somewhat) big city. Even taking the metro at 9/10 by themselves is quite common.

There's something extremely sick about the modern attitudes to children in the US (and maybe elsewhere). These people are fucking crazy. They can't imagine a world where children actually exist out in the real world and live their life like every other country instead of only in supervised jail schools. Anything approaching affection or concern for other children is seen with suspicion as if its pedophilia. Everyone hates babies or children existing or making noise in public, we don't accomodate parents or children in any way, while watching population growth collapse. Boomers who lament never having grandchildren are called monsters. We are completely losing the fucking plot on the most important responsibility of humanity. There is nothing without children, no future, only immigration which will eventually run dry or extinction. None of these attitudes towards children exist in other places, it doesn't have to be this way.

And (to complete that picture) as soon as they turn 18, they get the boot to the street to fend for themselves!

That is definitely trending downwards by the number of 20-somethings still living at home with parents (for any number of valid reasons).

you might have gotten the boot at 18 but many get a job or go to college and still live at home. where are you getting your numbers from?

Ah! Thank you for your question.

It was an addition to the previous post, although it might still happen here and there.

Don’t let the internet fool you. I’m a 39yo man and I see none of those problems in real life.

I coach kids sports, tons of kids in our neighborhood, take my kids to places, etc. It’s all good.

I heard that 4 or 5 US states have passed laws to broadly protect parents who let their kids range around.

Which states are these?

https://letgrow.org/states/

Town of only 370 people only a mile away?

There is no way this sherrif did not know both the kid and the mom at least indirectly, and no way MOST kids in the area don't travel a mile on their own routinely, many every day, and no way this sherriff is not aware of this norm, and this is some personal and/or brown/yellow-people bs.

Maybe or maybe not driven by the sherrif directly but like a neighbor wants the property they live on or something. This has "make someone go away" (for whatever reason) smell. Though they are just as guilty for being willing to perform even if it was someone else's direction.

Like when a business just mysteriously can't get a normal permit in a tiny town where the entire staff of the department is Frank, the brother in law of the guy that owns half the town or the competing business across town, or their personal house near by and they just don't want the view. All impossible to prove and no one to complain to to even try.

I grew up in a comparative metropolis of ZOMG SIX THOUSAND(1) people and kids younger than 11 routinely travelled a hell of a lot further than a single mile by themselves, in the US. This is not crazy or dangerous or abnormal in the slightest in such a setting. In fact it's practically unavoidable in that setting. But Hey we were white and in the north-east version of rural instead of Mexipino-looking in the south-east version of rural.

(I seem to remember a figure more like 10-12k when I was there, but the census figures on wikipedia and say just under 6k for that time frame. Maybe these rural people avoid cooperating with the census, maybe the figure I heard included more of the general area than strictly the borders of the town, maybe I just never heard any such figure since we are talking late 70s and me only 7 to 12.)

This kind of incident is a microcosm of everything that's going wrong in the western world

That particular bit of insanity is mostly restricted to the US. Other western countries still allow children to roam free for now

Fortunately for the rest of the Western world, I don't think most of it has to deal with the artificial community concern about children walking on their own that the US experiences.

What’s wild is this is happening in Georgia.

*happening in Georgia to white people

When I hear about police getting involved simply because a person is out walking, the story almost always turns out to be about somewhere in the south.

Well, Maryland is indeed south of the Mason-Dixon line, but Montgomery County is pretty generic mid-Atlantic suburban, and the first "free range kids" story I remember hearing was from Silver Spring.

The county referenced in the article is in Georgia. I'm not surprised that it's happening all over though. When I was younger, a neighbor called the police about a suspicious man in a hoodie wandering through a backyard. The suspicious person turned out to be me leaving through my parents' back gate to go on a walk.

> A few days later, DFCS presented Patterson with a "safety plan" for her to sign. It would require her to delegate a "safety person" to be a "knowing participant and guardian" and watch over the children whenever she leaves home. The plan would also require Patterson to download an app onto her son's phone allowing for his location to be monitored.

Monitored by whom? This is insane.

It's wild to me that the fact that he has his own phone isn't considered security enough. Surely by 10 or 11 years old, the kid knows how to call for help if he needs it.

Wasn't that many years ago, children didn't have phones when away from the house...

Wasn't that many years that not even every household had any phones.

And the police wonder why no one trusts them or there are movements to defund them.

Thankfully, it sounds like the child's mother won't be required to go to prison for a year - as long as she agrees to always have someone physically watch her son, and additionally surveil her son 24/7 using an app installed on their phone.

I wonder how many people these days think that they're going too light on her, and are thirsting for stricter penalties?

The damage for the kid is also considerable. I mean, he learns that he needs to be surveilled 24/7.

Yeah, the requirement for 24/7 surveillance to avoid being sent to a foster home - or something - kinda sucks

There are a few components to this that I can see being frustrating. One is that many people here likely had a more free roam childhood and this kind of behaviour from law enforcement and society in general is quite peculiar and off-putting. Being socially outcast because I let my child walk to the store is one thing. Being actually arrested and threatening to remove the parent of a child in the name of their safety is another.

Another part is the data / justification for this behaviour. From 1999 to 2010 at least, it seems that motor vehicle accidents are the number one cause of teenagers dying. Then it's homicide and suicide. Homicides are mostly committed by people the person knows. I don't have a full complete data set here but ~85% of homicides against youth are committed by family members or people that know the family. Not strangers. It's not to say you should't protect your kids from strangers, just that... walking to the store isn't that.

At 10 the state insists to protect you against being hit by a car on dangerous roads, at 15 it gives you a license so you you can drive one along the very same roads!

Education in Georgia must be excellent if they make responsible driver out of kids not to be left unsupervised in only 5 years.

Although to be honest, 5 years as a child / teen feel like an eternity! :)

Ignoring the ridiculous trajectory the world (well mostly the USA) has taken here and just assume it is a necessity to always be able to GPS locate your kids: Kids are smarter than some of the involved parties here seem to think. And they also value their freedom (maybe because the want to do something forbidden, but also just "because"). So, if you force install tracking apps on kids phones, what will happen? They will get creative. Maybe they will just leave their phone at home, maybe they find more involved strategies to fake their location, but they will find ways. Now in a real emergency, they can't call for help. Good job. See also: Simpsons Episode 422 "Lost Verizon" from 2008.

I wouldn't sign the safety plan either.

it was roughly a mile into town, a 15-20 minute walk for an 11-year old. we're going into winter but as long as this kid is wearing a coat I wouldn't be too worried.

"She kept mentioning how he could have been run over"

Seems like it would be a good idea to catch the people who are running over kids, instead of forcing them to spend their childhood in a virtual prison.

Maybe we should consider changing out National anthem's lyrics from "home of the free" to "home of the safe"? Would rhyme better with "brave", too.

Too soon to make this joke. Wait a couple years. He’ll have it fixed and you won’t need to ever vote again.

An interesting map: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_02/playgraphicDM1406...

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children...

Imagine being concerned for the well being of a stranger kid, and then a minute later decide to thoroughly destroy his life for the nearest years. Unbelievable.

I only just read the article linked below, before checking HN. The contrast between the two is just jarring. O' what money can buy, freedom in the land of the free, for those with the resources to purchase it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-13/donald-trump-moves-to...

Absolutely nuts!

Why, when I was a kid we ranged through the city, adjacent forests, rivers, lakes, streams, and over peoples' fences without provocation from anyone except other roving gangs of boys (upon whose detection a dirt-clod battle was likely to ensue). We caught large snakes and brought 'em home as "pets" (always rejected). We were unstoppable in our curiosity about what lay over the next 500 yards.

Aaaaargh! Get offa my lawn!

This story is crazy because 10 years old is so old! That’s 5th grade! It’s almost old enough to baby sit small children!

This makes me think of that show from Japan where parents send their 5-year-olds to go grocery shopping on their own.

And reminds me of the many times friends and I rode our bikes 5 miles along the highway to the next town so we could play video games at an arcade. Growing up in the 80’s was very different from now.

I was traveling by local buses in the first grade in an Indian city of 25M people. Today my (well off) siblings in NY won't let their kids out of their sight for even 1 second.

America wonders how they produce these safe space snowflakes and this is absolutely the attitude that causes it.

Phoning the sheriff first before offering to give the kid a ride? What's wrong with people?

Please, we drill into kids heads to not get into cars with strangers.

"When America’s missing children are featured in popular culture, it is usually the cases of stereotypical kidnappings, which happen to be very rare. […] The third NISMART study found that approximately 105 stereotypical kidnappings occur every year in the United States (Wolak et al. 2016). That is still 105 too many. The general public may estimate a much higher number of this type of case, based on how often they are portrayed in ﬁction. […]

The rare kidnapping cases may be the most known of missing children cases, but are the smallest category in number. Looking at the broader nature of the missing child problem and considering the full spectrum of the missing, including endangered runaways, children taken by family members, lost and injured children, children thrown out of their homes, and children separated from their families by natural disasters and catastrophes, the number of families having a missing person increases exponentially. In 2018, there were 424,066 new reports of missing children entered into the National Crime Information Center, the computerized index of missing persons and criminal justice information (NCIC 1984, para. 1), which works out to about 1,162 new cases of missing children every day (NCMEC 2019c, para. 4). […]

Despite what many people believe, a child can be in real danger when abducted by a family member. Family abductions are cases in which a family member absconds with the child, preventing the other parent from knowing the child’s location."

quoted from: Handbook of Interpersonal Violence and Abuse Across the Lifespan https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-89999-2

Regardless of the danger or not of getting in a strangers car (and in comparison to getting into a known person's car), children are taught to not do it.

Unless you summoned that stranger with an app on your phone, then it's totally fine.

I mean, yeah? There's a qualitative difference between your Uber driver showing up to the specified location where you're waiting and someone who could be an Uber driver stopping you while you're walking down the road to offer a ride.

The person could simply have asked the child if they were OK or they need help, if they maybe need a phone to call their parents. Their attitude was more like seeing a stray animal out in the wild and calling animal control. They are fucking insane, there's no excuse.

I agree the situation is nutty.

Neighbor jailed for offering to give child, "a ride."

Probably not a neighbor but reporter jailed for soliciting a minor

Less than a mile means no ride needed.

> It was dinnertime on October 30, 2024

The day before Americans let their kids run around the streets unsupervised, knocking on strangers doors and eating food provided by strangers?

What a strange set of standards.

The worse thing about this article is that the child statistically is far more likely to be harmed by law enforcement, than by a passing motorist.

Isn't it equally bad in Canada? That said... stories like these are incomprehensible for the European mind.

Maybe, but, I've never heard of any cases like this.

Granted, I'm only 32, have only lived in Canada for 32 years, and haven't checked to see how common it is for parents to be sent to prison for things like this.

My 10 year old walks home from school with a few friends regularly and stops in at the local library. I haven't been arrested yet.

https://archive.md/WXM06

Is there a place in the United States where letting your children walk to school on their own is legal?

I believe it's implicitly legal everywhere in the US.

I routinely see kids catching the city bus to school unaccompanied by adults, and now and then I see them walking on their own.

My main concern in this area would be the drivers, who drive negligently, and often too fast.

That prosecutor should be disbarred.

This is utterly absurd. I really hope the mother sues and wins a lot of money. DFCS is like most government agencies: They will never, and can never, admit when they are wrong because it undermines their authority.

In the land of the freedom

Soft. I was 10+ miles away from home on a bike when I was 8.

370 people, wtf how the hell it turned out like this

Good old USA of course. There was another body cam footage of an eldery woman who was arrested for merely walking along the road.

I don't blame anyone in the story, this is yet another symptom of the US sprawl, car centric culture, and capitalism that leaves people desperate without any safety net.

Take care of people's basic needs and you might see crime drop.

Meh. Were it not for [reason.com] I have come to assume this kind of nanny-state behavior in Australia and the UK; certainly not in a place like rural Georgia.

>Take care of people's basic needs and you might see crime drop.

I would replace needs with 'rights' (what ever that might mean)

"Why aren't people having kids?"

Too big of a liability and not enough ROI, or negative ROI from what I've seen with others who have children. How does having a child help me diversify my portfolio? All I see is a bad risk.

If you see children like that, you're not ready (some people will never be ready, it's ok).

If you see a comment like that only at literal face value, you're not ready for a lot of things, and it's not ok.

This is a huge reason for me. I don't want to explain to someone that the world used to be free, but now everything is limited and "locked down" because safety.

in the woke hellscape of NYC you will see ten year olds riding the subway home from school all the time (the MTA explicitly recommends age 8 as the cutoff age for riding alone, although 12 is the more in-practice age).

IANAL but this stuff interests me -- looks like Mom was charged with 16-5-60(b) [1]

"A person who causes bodily harm to or endangers the bodily safety of another person by consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk that his or her act or omission will cause harm or endanger the safety of the other person and the disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care which a reasonable person would exercise in the situation is guilty of a misdemeanor."

So either this little half-horse town is a serious stepford hellscape, or Mom eats a grand or two (yay for the GoFundMe) to get a competent lawyer to brush this nonsense away. If they succeed in pressing this case that Mom endangered her child, then I hope the reaction is the installation of guardrails and sidewalks all over that town, such that its budget simply implodes.

Just ridiculous. The whole apparatus at work here makes me sad, and there are layers of impersonal failure and risk aversion at work here. It's very cold, and frankly, the kids watching mom get cuffed in their home means any purported damage we're trying to shield the kids from -- is already done.

The government here needs the adult supervision, not the 10 year old.

[1] https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-16/chapter-5/arti...

> A woman who saw him walking alongside the road—speed limit: 25 in some places, 35 in others—asked him if he was OK. He said yes.

> Nevertheless, she called the police.

Yeah, but which road was this?

From Street View for Mineral Bluff, Ga:

1. Murphy Highway-- no sidewalks, a lot of parts with no shoulder whatsoever, no protection for a walker even on parts with small shoulder

2. Mineral Bluff Highway-- somehow even less shoulder than Murphy Highway. I see a guardrail that would force a pedestrian to walk about a foot away from traffic

3. Railroad Road-- I'd guessing this road has lower volume traffic. But it's still extremely hostile to pedestrians-- only shoulder is either deep grass or a large ditch that's unwalkable. So the kid would have been forced to walk directly in the road for most of this

#1 and #2, woman absolutely did the right thing calling police.

#3? If low volume, meh. Still dangerous, though.

my mom was taken into "adult protection custody" , for jwalking, this is happening now, and she is held in the hospital in bridgewater ns, on.the locked ward and has now had her cell phone taken for obsessivly calling and trying to be released she does have alzhiemrs but canadas constituion specifies that people are allowed to take there own risks

held incomunicado for her own saftey I got banned from the hospital grounds for "acting up", no threats or foul language

the only reason trump got voted in, is because you have to bring your own pen to write in putin and nobody thought of that in time

If she's meandering through traffic and doesn't know where she is, that's absolutely a case for taking her in. If she got hit by a car you could just as easy blame the government for "inaction".

I'd be more inclined to blame the driver of the car...

The Venn diagram of people who think it's ok to treat parents like this and people who vote "for liberty" is a circle.

Could you please explain why you believe this to be the case? One of the major advocates of 'free-range parenting' (and who allowed her child to ride the New York Subway unaccompanied) is a frequent contributor to a leading libertarian magazine (Reason). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenore_Skenazy

Who is actually the author of the present article in that exact magazine's website.

As drawn by you? Or are you saying that people who value freedom are the ones supporting nanny state policies?

There is a wide gap between the people who understand what freedom means and value it and the ones loudly proclaiming freedom. "Reason" may actually fall into the secondary category. The way this works is by undermining the rule of regulations by finding the most ridiculous example of excess (note how the author of the article wastes no effort on finding examples where sanity prevailed stoking emotions of the reader against this extreme but rare overreach). It is important to realize the total absence of regulation promoted implicitly often leads to rule setting by the strongest and most ruthless.

Edit: The author is truly specialized on such stories as can be seen here: https://reason.com/people/lenore-skenazy/

While I agree there’s some ironic amount of overlap, you ruined your point going full circle.

I was thinking it's the generation of people who have been normalized to "lockdowns" in school, who think the solution to everything is to make a new law, and expect the government to feed, teach, and care for their children. How can a stray child find its way alone, without a government chaperone?

You mean two, disconnected circles.

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