10-year-old walked less than a mile to a dollar store, prompting a passerby to call police, who arrested his mom for reckless conduct.

Yeah. Literally a smart kid. Quick thinking.

I used to walk to my elementary school (roughly ages 5-10) which was a mile away. Lots of kids in my town walked to school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Etan_Patz

This was the case that really changed the way kids were treated in the US.

Before this, it was normal for kids to travel great distances on their own.

Why is this kid walking, he should have a car. This is the USA, we don't walk here.

It's all nuts, but I'm okay with the idea of, hey, there's a young kid, can we check on him. Cop rolls up, you okay kid? Yes. Cool, have a day. The idea that this would escalate beyond there is insanity.

Suburban trash culture

The War on Drugs isn't about helping people stop using. It's about feeding the prison industry and all the parasites that bleed parolees dry.

What bullshit. I was told by CPS in Oklahoma after my boys had to move in with me after their mom had a mental health crisis and couldn't stay with her anymore. The guy had to check out our house make sure it was suitable. He told me that if kid can make food in the microwave that at 10 they can be home alone.

Also, say what you want about Oklahoma, but my kids been walking to the store by themselves since they were 8 and 6. I am sick of the fucking nanny state motherfuckers. Like that mother years ago in Florida her kids playing in THEIR front yard. She goes to jail because she wasn't watching them. By the way that woman was white so its not all a race thing. This has been a slow build for the fascist police state.

We need to fucking change the fucking laws and make cities and small towns safe for our kids to walk in. Not to mention that kids are safer now then when I was a child. At least my kids have phones. I have Life 360 on all their devices. Hell when I was a kid they had to run ads at 10pm asking "Do you know where your kids are?" Because parents didn't pay attention to what we were doing. Shit I roam the whole town of Sulphur Springs Texas and not once did anyone stop and ask what we were doing. And trust me their were times that I was up to no good. Plus you were more likely to be snatched up then compared to now.

My kids walk the streets and sometimes might be outside past dark. And we have shit for sidewalks. They don't even have sidewalks leading to the schools. But every school year tons of little kids are walking to school. It's up to the drivers to pay attention. Example there is a Daylight Donuts right across the street from the school. Also a red light. You have to be careful because these kids are dumb and will just start crossing the road not looking at all. I at least told my kids. The cemetery is full of people who had the right away.

I am sick of nosey people that won't let kids be kids. I like to blame boomers but they're Genxers that have that mentality to.

i dont get why

Because control. It's all about control.

If i do t know it it must be bad. Ic i dont control it it must ve dangerous. Its like an elemental kernel level xenophobia.

realized he wasn’t experiencing withdrawal and dropped that. Well, now he has to prove that he will have detectable amounts in his system for up to a year, and then they’re going to MAKE him go back on suboxone to keep his son.

If they're going to do tests, why not just check for the presence of illegal drugs?

We need to allow children to immediately and easily emancipate themselves from their parents and go live in their own apartment w caregivers via assisted living.

He’s not allowed to have his girlfriend around them

Wait what? That's a thing?

When we were kids and we’d discuss what we wanted to be when we grew up, his answer was, “my mom’s murderer.”

😨

Also also also America "We think crime is way up even though its at record lows and a leading cause of death here is automobile accidents"

Shhh don't tell them, they need to cling to the notion that guns are the leading cause of death for kids age 0-19 even though that covid era study took place only in 5 cities known for their HUGE gang problems while less people were driving because of lockdowns. Their way they can scream about guns online for easy virtual treats, if they knew the truth they'd have to scream about cars which (outside of here) is a harder sell and they'll get less internet treats, nobody will even call them a good boy for having the correct opinion!

Wow people are just seeing pedophiles everywhere and missing the places they actually are.

I got raped by my mom and people in my group when i did therapy were mostly raped at home or with family.
The walk outside is the safest part of growing up for people at actual risk.

Find another thing to latch onto.

Let's not overblown the issue... The kid is more likely to be murdered by a car and driver getting away than molested.

It seems a lot of times kids are molested parents are in on it or too stupid to see it. Randos molesting kids seems to be rare. It is people in positions of authority who do it most of the time.

As disgusting as that is.

This being a “problem” is straight up removed.

It's the criminalization of any sort of poverty.

The problem is that we'll spend an extra billion on police to save a grand on social services.

We literally roamed the neighborhoods in feral packs on bikes

Granted I was 100% almost kidnapped once but still

I was walking to school since grade 1, I was 6. We checked it out with my parents beforehand, did some test walks iirc, and none of it was along American style stroads. But it was more than a mile. Twice every day.

By the time I was 13 or so my mom didn't know where I was more than 50% of the time. And I think at 13 my hormones probably made me do dumber shit than when I was 10.

When I was a kid people still described things as removed

/s

They do. This story is just because backward ass red state. In my neighborhood there are kids playing around all the time.

America wasn't like this until 2000s that's when it started

Same. Walked and took buses to school from around 6-7 years of age in the late 90s. My parents were divorced, so I also commuted a lot between their places as a child.

Perfectly normal thing that all the other kids were also doing. I remember one mom being a bit afraid for her daughter, so I was asked to take the bus and walk together with her, but that’s it.

I walked to middle and high school cuz it started too early for my folks. People getting in the car to drive a block will never cease to amaze me

My theory is that it's paranoia born out of how the media handles crime, and how isolating suburbia is.

I mean on weekends or during the summer I was told to get out of the house, be with friends, have fun and told to be home either for dinner or by the time the street lights came on and if I wasn’t going to be home in time then to find a phone and call my parents and let them know. Hell I could be like miles/Kilometers from home at any given moment. I could be in a friends house and their parents offered me dinner.

Sounds like what most kids were doing from 300BC up to 1980AD

When I was in primary school in the early 90s we used to get offered a lift by the local milkman who often used to be on the way past when we were walking home.

There'd be at least 4 of us. We'd throw our school bags in to the gap between his insulated box on the tray (full of milk) and the head board of the cab, then jump up and hold on the headboard so our legs would hold the bags in place. Off we'd go down the main road - heads sticking over the cab, wind in our hair - hitting 60kph with nothing between us and falling out but the fact we were holding on to the headboard.

I see front page news blasting parents for their kid sticking their head out a sunroof in a carpark and I'm like... man, our folks would have been arrested back in the day.

I hate today, I hate yesterday, I hate tomorrow.

Sixty-year-old American here. Same for me, but I only remember walking with the other kids. There was a group of us, and we picked up other kids on the way to school. I didn't ask questions, that's just how we did it.

Almost 50 years ago I started riding my bike to school, 1.4 miles away, at 7 years old. I had a cross a relatively busy road but there was a light and crosswalk. I was a little younger than probably most parents would allow that much freedom but it certainly wasn't anything people would consider criminal. The fact that the mother in this article got arrested and charged is crazy to me.

47 year old American. When I was 10-11 I would ride my bike multiple miles to a friend’s house and back, including a section along a busy highway. As a parent, I had my kids walk a little over a mile to their elementary school starting at ages 6 and 8.

I'm with you on this one, the situation would be almost comical, if it weren't so pathetic. When I was really young (Grades 1-3), busybodies in my neighbourhood petitioned for buses to be started because of 'hazardous traffic' caused by the expansion of a nearby arterial route. The irony being that the road which was being rebuilt (widened) was not in between the neighbourhood and school, but on the the very far bordering edge, and would not be crossed by any students on their way to school.

So it was that I, and dozens of others, started getting bussed 5 blocks to school 'for safety reasons'. I now know people whose houses border the field adjacent to the school at which their children attend, who drive them to the front doors every single day.

Because in this case it seems they got "results" and now there are several children without a mom around because the state doesn't want you raising your kids to be capable of being independent

Seriously, I regularly did 12 miles round-trip on my bike down roads with no sidewalk or bike lane at 12 to see my friend who lived in the bad part of town. I guess my parents would be felons by today's standards.

Edit: hi again! I'm not stalking you, I promise!

• conditions apply

Never has been

Never has been

Independence of any level is discouraged in the surveillance society we've built.

Your second point is really difficult for me as a parent with a new kid. Feels like we "know" so much more about serial killers / bad things that happen to kids that we're terrified of letting them do anything.

Of course in this case it would have been trivially solved by the city just adding sidewalks, but that feels like another point here.

It's not dangerous, as long as you manage to evade the police.

Did you not read the article? Yes, it's in America. It happened in Blue Ridge, Georgia.

Because pigs are not held accountable for their conduct.

Big the state can abuse you for no reason and there is nothing you can do about it.

so by that logic, less free range children, the more safe children will be? hence the police were correct to arrest this mother?

How is prison treating you?

Your comment confused me a bit as I first understood "took the bus" as in "drove it".

They were under 21 so it's gotta be a rifle at the very least.

(Local gun laws in my neck of the woods say you gotta be 21 to get a handgun)

Highest prison rate outside of russia, still calls itself free.

I grew up in a small town, by the time i was 6 or 7 i did groceries with my bike. When i was 10 we went pretty much everywhere by bus, bike, inline skates or by foot. The next city was like 10km away where we would traverse all the time. My mom should be in Auschwitz i guess.

People still do this.

Ah, after reading the headline I was like "Again?"

Then whip him on the public square.

The onlooker called the police because they observed a child walking alone along a rural highway with no shoulder or sidewalk. There's plenty of very reportable reasons for a child to be walking alone along the highway and plenty of perfectly normal reasons for that to happen

Honestly the police and prosecutor are the only ones who are in the wrong. The police should have simply stopped by the boy to make sure all was well, give them a ride home if possible, and notify the parents so they can take it from there. Charging the parent with Reckless Conduct for this incident is absolutely bonkers