Having said that, This story is a really good example of how tough it is for some parents and how hostile society is to parenting.
On the other hand, for the person in the parking lot to film the child in the car and call police, but not make any contact with the child or wait by the car, borders on malice. Police and prosecutors should investigate but heavily discount such pseudo-testimony because it is deliberately presented without context.
If the mother (to stay with the original article) would've fallen unconscious or dead in the supermarket, nevermind that both options would have some consequences for the family, the kid would've been fine.
Calling the cops was fine. Creepy the way it was described, but okay.
Cops arriving was fine. That's their job.
"Huh? The "abandoned" kid is gone already? Let's trace the car and take out our frustration on .. the mother?" wasn't fine. That was just braindead. The correct movie quote variation would've been "Nothing happened, move along".
Theoretical "But here's how the kid could've died" arguments are .. weird. And countless.
The decision is not yours, not ours. It's the parent's. Like everything else about the daily life of the kid. That argument contains no value. Of course there are reasons that one might not do that. Loop/Recur to line 1.
there's a middle ground between the state as inflexible guardian and complete parental sovereignty.
The state has laws and agencies to interfere and check (Disclaimer: I've no clue about the US of A here, but I assume it's not too far off from what I know). But that's not related to the action(s) we discuss. Are we missing a part of the picture? Certainly. Is the partial picture scary? Yes.
The adversaries in the story didn't act to protect the kid. They acted in a completely crazy fashion. There's so many things wrong with this story, I cannot even begin to imagine how someone would defend the side of the cops here..
One (out of far too many) questions: If this mother is utterly incapable, if a lawyer actually can make the point that she might lose her kid if she's not complying: Why does it take 10 month to proceed? I'd say that someone with a little ambition can kill a kid in less time than that...
There's not One. Single. Point. in that article that makes sense, on the side of law enforcement. Zero. The only potential reason to discuss why this might not be so far removed from reality that everyone involved should be ordered to take a drug test is that the article might be lying. If that is not the case ... there is no case.
I've said repeatedly that I don't think there was any point in bringing a prosecution. since you don't live in the US maybe you don't appreciate that the police and the public prosecutor are completely separate entities. The police didn't do anything abnormal in this case.
I don't live in the US, but I often get the impression that in the US, they're less separate than in other countries.
Leaving a child in a locked car is a bad idea, even when it's totally safe, and even with a window cracked. (In fact, leaving a car window open when you're not there is also a bad idea, though a few minutes probably won't hurt.) Honestly, in that situation, it's better to leave the car door open, so the child can get out when necessary. If you don't trust the child to make that decision, don't leave it alone.
Also, the returning parent is unlikely to be grateful to the comments of "I was just making sure your left alone child was not dying".
One could say 'why not let the matter drop, the Mom came back and so everything was OK' but that's a classic example of hindsight bias. From the police POV, a child was left alone in a vehicle that was later driven off by someone else. When they followed up, it turned out that the person who drove off was not the owner of the vehicle (which belonged to the child's grandparents). They have to at least consider the possibility of malfeasance.
No "someone else", but the very same woman: leaving the car, returning back to the car. The same woman, not someone else. Unless the good samaritan has deceptively shown just the last part and told the police he (or she) saw a different person leaving the car with the child inside.
The issue here is not car theft, driving license not matching the car owner, or whatever. It was instead a good samaritan evaluating as criminal/dangerous the fact that a mom left his son alone in the car for few minutes. And decided (when she came back) to call the police to...? Check if the child was fine? Whatever.
It takes few minutes to check if the car was stolen and/or the owner knows that someone else is driving it.
I agree that people should report early and report often; and allow experts to make decisions. Sadly, reporting early and often just swamps people who are already far too busy dealing with children who are being abused, or it dumps reports with police who take action when they don't need to do anything more than have a chat.
Are we going to turn this into a 'You need to be careful about talking to a child' debate? If you cannot address/talk to a child, things are worse OUTSIDE of that car.
In a sensible world she would have been able to call out to some car-park lurker "hey I'm just going to grab something from the store, can you just wave at my kid through this window"; or she could just run in and grab something and people seeing her run in and then out would not call the police; or etc etc.
Society has decided that men wanting to work with children are creepy (try finding pre-schools with male workers and early years schools with male teachers), and this extends to the damaging concept of "stranger danger" where someone waiting by the car to check the child is safe is not going to be seen as a welcome bit of support for a busy harassed mother but will be seen as a creepy threat.
It's all part of the same weird system of protecting children without regard to what actual risk is.
Still, leaving the child alone leaves them open to more risk than taking them out of the car.
This parent was not buying anything important - just headphones for a child - and they took the wasy options by i) taking child to shops and ii) not taking child out of car.
I don't criticise other people's parenting because I am particularly lucky with my son but the idea of leaving my nearly-four-yo son unaccompanied (out of eyesight) fills me with cold fear.
Again, the problem here isn't that they left their son for a few minutes in a car, it is that society is pretty hostile to parents and parenting, simultaneously being quick to judge and slow to offer any real support.
So a child in an immobile tested-safe metal box with ventilation, locked and alarmed, is more at risk than being outside the car? I'd like to understand how you came to that reasoning.
The thing is:
1) You do. The post says "She was lazy"¹. That's criticizing.
2) Your pov is noted and fine. You're probably a good parent. But what works for you isn't transferable to other parents and kids. And those parents will make decisions that wouldn't work/make sense for you and your kid. I love that my not-yet-two son disappears and plays in hidden corners. He's probably longer out of my (and my wife's) sight than the boy in that car was, albeit in our apartment. Cold fear sounds nasty. I understand that to a point, but for this particular parent that wouldn't work/would be unhealthy.
We're different. Projecting one's idea about child care is different from laws about child care.
1: Blame reading comprehension skills on my English teacher
Basically, until you are 18, you belong to your parents and have zero rights, treated as a child by society. It's funny how we all forget this once we turn into adults.
Look at vaccinations. (Vaccinations are good; I had no hesitation having my child immunised; I'd like schools to require immunisations for pupils; etc). The early days of the vaccination scandal were not presented as a bit of scientific research, it was "you, as a parent, are harming your child by vaccinating them" (and that's still what the nutjobs are saying). Now that we know that Wakefield is a crook we tend not to say "you were duped by a crook who had financial interests in misleading you so let's help you get your child immunised", we say "you're a nutjob and a bad parent".
Look at HN where parents feel guilt about work life balance for one example of how hard it is to be a parent in a rich first world country.
Look at the number of people on HN who (ignoring law) say they would hesitate to employ women because of the risk of maternity leave.
The fact that "having a child" has to be written into legislation as a protected status shows that status of parents was seen as needing protection.