"... for letting kids play in park alone"
"I can't believe we are going through this again," said Danielle Meitiv of Silver Spring, Maryland, in a local television interview. "I can't believe they kept the kids for hours. It's 10:30 at night. They've been missing since six o'clock."What do you think? Neglectful parents? or overboard controlling paranoid government?
Meitiv and her husband dropped their children off at a park at 4:00 p.m. ET Sunday and told them to return home two hours later. When the kids didn't return by about 6:30 p.m., they started looking for them and grew concerned.
The Meitiv family's lawyer said the family would be issuing a statement, through their attorney, later Monday or early Tuesday.
"I will say it's alarming and disturbing that their children could be literally a few blocks from home and the police pick them up under the guise of telling the children that they will take them home but then take them to a detention center and all the while never call the parents or let them know what's going on," said attorney Matthew Dowd.
12 comments:
What do you think? Neglectful parents? or overboard controlling paranoid government?
I think there might be a few other ways of looking at it.
Hard to tell w/o more info. Were the kids dropped off to play at Needle Park? Pending that, default in favor of the people over the government and against overbearing nannyish presumptions about what is best for the children. First order of business should have been to contact the parents but that apparently wasn't done.
Over controlling government. You can question whether it is a good idea to leave children that age in a park. But if the cops are going to intervene, then they should (at a minimum) notify the parents immediately (if they have means to do so). It appears these kids were capable of telling the cops who their parents were.
An overboard controlling paranoid government that has been challenged by commoners and will assert its authority by any means necessary.
This is clearly and absurdly government overreach. I've read this story about this family before. They were made to sign a document on threat of having their parental rights striped by CPS if they didn't sign saying they wouldn't do this again.
It's kidnapping under color of authority.
They were safer at the park than with the cops. Cops get shot at, they chase cars at high speed. This is child endangerment.
What do you think? Neglectful parents? or overboard controlling paranoid government?
Rabel said...
An overboard controlling paranoid government that has been challenged by commoners and will assert its authority by any means necessary.
bagoh20 said...
It's kidnapping under color of authority.
Agree with both of you. Had this been the practice in my youth, my parents would have done life + 10.
Good G-d, government run amok. By age 7 or 8 the kids on my block rambled around for several blocks, even miles...worst case, every Saturday afternoon we all trooped, as a group, but otherwise alone, to the Radio City movie theater on 9 mile road, in Ferndale, across the line of 8 Mile Road (old Base Line Road) from Detroit where we lived. It was where all the kids gathered who had the two bits to enter....usually from mowing lawns or other yard stuff for neighbors. Sometimes we shared with those who were short.
By age 9 or 10 I was hoping street cars at Seven Mile Road (the turn about was at State Fair Street) to venture in to "downtown" to see movies at the old Palms Theater which were always cowboy westerns or war movies, with cartoons for fillers.
Be home by dark was the rule...and we abided it (usually :-) We knew what was dangerous and all of us could run like panicked deer. Today I wobble along but usually with the same lack of fear.
Today our world has changed, and not for anything better. I am not sure we can recover what once was a grand place. Was it that we grew up in two wars and knew that self sufficiency was important? Don't know...those were good days otherwise except for those who lost fathers, and even then we included them in our adventures. We understood. And we shared. Nobody robbed anyone.
Pre-puberty, I was up before my parents, and gone from view most of the day. They usually had no idea where I was, and that was a good thing, because I was often doing things they would never have allowed. The only rule was come home when the street lights come on.
After puberty, there was no way to keep me under control. I made my own money, and they liked the freedom of us kids being self-sufficient. What a strange concept today: your kids can actually breath properly and stay alive without you there.
There was the unspoken but thoroughly understood rule to not embarrass your family. I respected that.
People often say that parents give you your values, but I don't think so. I think we get them primarily from our culture: movies, TV, etc through stories of right and wrong. I know I did. I did get my work ethic - and my party ethic - from my parents who did both to the best they could, and never sacrifice one for the other.
Ten years old is 5th grade. (The older child is ten.) That's plenty old enough to walk to school, to the store, to the park. When I was a boy, I walked three blocks to school well before that. I knew lots of adults in the neighborhood, all along the way to the park or the store. And I knew just how far away I was allowed to go on my own.
Unless there are significant facts left out, I vote for over interfering govt.
I agree with Father Fox. My kids walked/biked alone to elementary school from 3rd grade on. No ill effects.
The important questions are the ages of the kids, the reputation/relative safety of the park, and the martial/parental status of the authorities involved. In general, I have found the childless and those not used to children to be the most over-weaning and paranoid. They are so often full of the most bullshit parental advice.
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