Reply to Free-range kids picked up AGAIN by police

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

You're simply wrong.  Maryland's law refers to children in dwellings or cars.  It does not prohibit children being in the care of other children younger than 12 for the purposes of walking to school, walking to the park, playing in your yard, or playing in the park.  Thank goodness.[/quote]

No, I'm not wrong. I'm not going to look up the law again for you, but I posted it yesterday.  MD law has a specific section on kids at home alone. It has another section generally prohibiting "child neglect," including unattended children.  This section is directly applicable to children in public places unattended.  MD administrative guidelines further define "unattended child" to include a child younger than 8 being supervised by a child younger than 12.  This could be in ANY location.  So yes, MD laws and regs very much apply here.

Just think about it:  do you really think there is NO MD law about unattended children in public places?  So for instance, [b]I could send my 6 year old to hang out in front of a Baltimore strip club at midnight on a Friday[/b]?[/quote]

That would be child neglect.

In contrast, a ten-year-old and a six-year-old walking home from the park on a Sunday afternoon is not child neglect. If that's what the laws say, then the laws are not only stupid (according to me) but unconstitutional (according to the libertarians).[/quote]

Laws are of general application and then you apply the facts to them.  That's just the way the law works, in general. The facts are usually the most important part of the case.

So in this case, there is a general law that could apply to children unaccompanied in public.  One extreme is the Baltimore strip club at midnight, which we all agree is neglectful.  The other extreme would be, say, turning your back on your kids for a second in the grocery store, which we all agree is NOT neglectful.  In between is a lot of highly fact dependent grey area.  In this case, multiple reasonable observers thought these kids looked at risk because of the area they were in and what they were doing.  You're making a huge factual assumption when you say they were just "walking home from the park on Sunday afternoon."  The crux of the matter is what WERE they doing?  Were they walking safely home, or were they at risk?  That is what this is all about -- the facts, not the law.  You saying "they were just taking a walk" in fact ignores that the entire issue is what WERE they doing, and how?

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