Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since when has two kids walking anywhere count as neglect? I walked to school with a sibling and home alone after half day kindergarten. I was 5yrs old. Why are we acting like this is dangerous? I think if the parents feel they can do this and the kids are okay doing it, it should be no one else's business. How sad is it that CPS is involved in something so trivial.

Here are the responses you will get to your question:

1. Five-year-olds have never walked places by themselves.
2. Your parents were neglectful and lazy.
3. The world is more dangerous now because [reasons].
4. We didn't used to have car seats, but now we do.
5. What if a parent thought it was ok to sell a 12-year-old for sex?

Lol. Seriously cracking up. Thanks for the laughs.

Anonymous wrote:After listening to the 911 call, I'm less sanguine about the whole free range thing. There was an adult male following these kids for like 30 minutes and the kids didn't notice? That really freaks me out that my kids wouldn't notice if a predator was stalking them and waiting until they got into an area without good visibility. It seems to me that these kids were not as well prepared to protect themselves as their parents would have you believe.

Yes, I agree -- the 911 caller was basically stalking them.

What if it had been a real stalker?

1. It wasn't.
2. They were walking home along populated, public streets in broad daylight.
3. Kidnappings of children by strangers are very, very, very, very, very, very, very rare.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/14/theres-never-been-a-safer-time-to-be-a-kid-in-america/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep hearing about the "law". What law was broken?

This has been explained ad nauseum. Maryland generally prohobits child neglect, which includes leaving children unattended. The state agency further defines unattended, for screening purposes, to include a child under 8 left in the care of a child under 12. Whether this is actually neglect in this case has not been determined yet, but it is 100% clear that the police and cps acted correctly when they picked the kids up to investigate.

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.

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, I could send my 6 year old to hang out in front of a Baltimore strip club at midnight on a Friday?

Anonymous wrote:
No, when the police receive a report of neglect, they are mandatory reporters and have to call CPS. They did not have the option, legally, to ignore the report and just send the kids home. When it turned out this family had an open file, CPS was likewise obliged to do an investigation. The kids were returned in 5 hours, which is a wholly reasonable time period.

But the police didn't receive a report of neglect. They received a report of two kids walking along without a parent.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a legal perspective, Ilya Somin has written a piece on the Eugene Volokh's blog.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/16/how-the-constitution-protects-free-range-parents/

I really hate it when I agree with the libertarians. Damn you, CPS!

Excellent piece.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep hearing about the "law". What law was broken?

This has been explained ad nauseum. Maryland generally prohobits child neglect, which includes leaving children unattended. The state agency further defines unattended, for screening purposes, to include a child under 8 left in the care of a child under 12. Whether this is actually neglect in this case has not been determined yet, but it is 100% clear that the police and cps acted correctly when they picked the kids up to investigate.

No, that's not clear either. The police could have taken the kids home.

No, when the police receive a report of neglect, they are mandatory reporters and have to call CPS. They did not have the option, legally, to ignore the report and just send the kids home. When it turned out this family had an open file, CPS was likewise obliged to do an investigation. The kids were returned in 5 hours, which is a wholly reasonable time period.

After listening to the 911 call, I'm less sanguine about the whole free range thing. There was an adult male following these kids for like 30 minutes and the kids didn't notice? That really freaks me out that my kids wouldn't notice if a predator was stalking them and waiting until they got into an area without good visibility. It seems to me that these kids were not as well prepared to protect themselves as their parents would have you believe.

Anonymous wrote:


Because the parents are known to the system and refuse to comply with a safety plan for the kids. They already had an agreement and refused to follow it. The parents set this up to sue and win. It is not about the kids or their needs and all about the parents. They are failing to provide proper supervision to their kids. That is neglect. It does not matter where. If the kids were playing hard and walking a mile they should have water on them.

OMG, you are ridiculous. Do you completely and utterly fail to understand that reasonable people can disagree about what constitutes proper supervision, and plenty of us here on DCUM think it is perfectly adequate to have an older sibling watch a younger sibling (10 and 6) at a familiar park within a mile from their home? And that plenty of reasonable, responsible parents think it is not only NOT neglect, but proactively POSITIVE to allow siblings to walk home together from said park?

Also, how do you know the kids were "playing hard"? They can certainly exist on a playground for two hours without water. Holy lord. We didn't even have plastic water bottles in the 1970's and somehow we survived while playing hard without hydrating every 15 minutes.

These kids were NOT neglected simply because they are allowed to walk home alone. The only real danger they have encountered on their adventures is essentially being kidnapped by the police and CPS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a legal perspective, Ilya Somin has written a piece on the Eugene Volokh's blog.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/16/how-the-constitution-protects-free-range-parents/

I really hate it when I agree with the libertarians. Damn you, CPS!

LOL

Even libertarians are right sometimes.

Anonymous wrote:From a legal perspective, Ilya Somin has written a piece on the Eugene Volokh's blog.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/16/how-the-constitution-protects-free-range-parents/

I really hate it when I agree with the libertarians. Damn you, CPS!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

How do you know he didn't talk to the kids and conclude that further investigation was needed in order to know if the kids were okay?

http://www.mymcmedia.org/police-and-cps-investigate-possible-child-neglect-in-silver-spring/

"Police said the officer began by identifying the children and notifying his supervisors."

That doesn't answer my question at all.

If the press release doesn't say that the officer talked to the kids and concluded that further investigation was needed in order to know if the kids were okay, I will assume the officer didn't do it.

From a legal perspective, Ilya Somin has written a piece on the Eugene Volokh's blog.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/16/how-the-constitution-protects-free-range-parents/

Anonymous wrote:Who knows, for some reason the dog walker thought the kids were endangered and called the police.
The kids do have a very disheveled, unkempt look to them, so maybe that was why he/she called the police.

This right here is why I call such cowards Brown Shirts. Dog Boy could just as easily walked the kids home and seen to it they went inside safely. Disheveled and unkempt? The horror!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

How do you know he didn't talk to the kids and conclude that further investigation was needed in order to know if the kids were okay?

http://www.mymcmedia.org/police-and-cps-investigate-possible-child-neglect-in-silver-spring/

"Police said the officer began by identifying the children and notifying his supervisors."

That doesn't answer my question at all.

Anonymous wrote:Who knows, for some reason the dog walker thought the kids were endangered and called the police.
The kids do have a very disheveled, unkempt look to them, so maybe that was why he/she called the police.

Obviously the dog walker thought the kids were endangered, because otherwise the dog walker would not have called 911.

I guess the moral is that, if you want your children to be able to walk home from the park without somebody calling 911, you first have to give them a haircut, brush their hair, wash and iron their clothes, and make sure the clothes match.