Anonymous wrote:If you knew how many homeless sex offenders live in DTSS (and can't even get into the emergency shelter) you'd probably be shocked. When it's cold outside and the outreach workers look for the unsheltered, parking garages are the first place they look.

Did you go outside yesterday?

Anonymous wrote:If you knew how many homeless sex offenders live in DTSS (and can't even get into the emergency shelter) you'd probably be shocked. When it's cold outside and the outreach workers look for the unsheltered, parking garages are the first place they look.

I haven't been in DTSS lately, but DH used to live there, and I used to spend a lot of time there. I wouldn't be shocked. However, there were always lots of people (non-homeless people) around, and I suspect there are even more people around now. Isn't that the case?

If you knew how many homeless sex offenders live in DTSS (and can't even get into the emergency shelter) you'd probably be shocked. When it's cold outside and the outreach workers look for the unsheltered, parking garages are the first place they look.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe the Post published a column about this that only quotes the parents. They are hardly the most reliable narrators at this stage.

Kids roam all the time in MoCo without being picked up by police. I posted earlier about dozens of kids biking and walking up and down my very busy street every day; no parents and no one blinks an eye. These two kids have now repeatedly - at least 3 times - been in situations where random strangers have felt they were at risk.

There is no problem with kids being "free range" in this area; the issue is this family, and while I don't quite understand it, it doesn't sound to me that CPS is unwarranted here. Did anyone notice that in the police report, the kids were not found in a park - they were found in a parking garage. Enough with the rants against the police state. It's just not applicable here.

The police report does not say that the kids were found in a parking garage.

And if you are seeing crowds of middle-class kids in middle-class neighborhoods out and about on their own, with no parents, and no one blinks and eye, well, where do you live? It sounds like a nice neighborhood that I might want to move to.

Poolesville.

Anonymous wrote:The police report contradicts the parents story in many ways. Including timeline, location of kids being picked up, etc. sounds like cop saw them and knew the homeless guy scoping them and didn't feel comfortable letting them be on their way alone there. Once in his custody, he had to turn them over to CPs. He doesn't have discretion to do otherwise. I'm sure he'd have preferred to avoid this ridiculous media circus. CPs processed and released the kids to the parents. CPS doesn't want our kids. The don't have the time or money to take on cases frivolously. The investigation is ongoing. Surely bureaucrats screw up sometimes, but you BIg Brother conspiracists are way off in lala land.

No, doesn't contradict the parents timeline. I don't actually know where they live, and I'm not going to Google-stalk them and find out. I assume they were on their way home, and it seems they chose a reasonable road to walk along, i.e., not Colesville.

Now you're telling me a homeless person was scoping them out -- something that happens in urban areas. But downtown SS isn't urban, so what was a homeless person doing there?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the law that dictates what age a kid must be before being left alone or caring for another child. And the police know what the law is, so that's why the cop picked up the kids and called CPS.

You see, we have laws that set age requirements to drive, drink, smoke, etc. And you can't break those laws just because you think your kid is mature enough to handle it. Same thing applies here.

But the worst part is that the parents knew better than to do this since CPS investigated them and told them explicitly not to do this...yet they did. My seven year old heard this story on the news and asked me WHY the parents let the kids go to the park if they knew they could get in trouble. So my seven year old gets it, while those parents obviously do not.

Which law is that? Can you post a link, please?

Also, is it possible that your seven-year-old, being a seven-year-old, doesn't have a complete understanding of the situation?

http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/webmga/frmStatutesText.aspx?article=gfl§ion=5-801&ext=html&session=2015RS&tab=subject5F

I am still trying to figure out the history of the law and why it passed.was it actually debated, did the legislature think through the consequences etc. As far as I can tell my,albeit limited, Internet search is that Maryland is one of the few states to actually spell out an age. Seems to me the police and CPS are May be painted into a corner with this one, but of course I don't know if they really have leeway in this case law me this once it becomes this publicized.

http://www6.montgomerycountymd.gov/content/frs-safe/resources/parents/childcare.asp

How about this?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the law that dictates what age a kid must be before being left alone or caring for another child. And the police know what the law is, so that's why the cop picked up the kids and called CPS.

You see, we have laws that set age requirements to drive, drink, smoke, etc. And you can't break those laws just because you think your kid is mature enough to handle it. Same thing applies here.

But the worst part is that the parents knew better than to do this since CPS investigated them and told them explicitly not to do this...yet they did. My seven year old heard this story on the news and asked me WHY the parents let the kids go to the park if they knew they could get in trouble. So my seven year old gets it, while those parents obviously do not.

Which law is that? Can you post a link, please?

Also, is it possible that your seven-year-old, being a seven-year-old, doesn't have a complete understanding of the situation?

But according to you should be roaming the county unsupervised.

Well, yes, I don't think that a person must have a complete understanding of county and state government in theory and practice in order to be capable of walking to and from the park safely on a Sunday afternoon.

The police report contradicts the parents story in many ways. Including timeline, location of kids being picked up, etc. sounds like cop saw them and knew the homeless guy scoping them and didn't feel comfortable letting them be on their way alone there. Once in his custody, he had to turn them over to CPs. He doesn't have discretion to do otherwise. I'm sure he'd have preferred to avoid this ridiculous media circus. CPs processed and released the kids to the parents. CPS doesn't want our kids. The don't have the time or money to take on cases frivolously. The investigation is ongoing. Surely bureaucrats screw up sometimes, but you BIg Brother conspiracists are way off in lala land.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's the law that dictates what age a kid must be before being left alone or caring for another child. And the police know what the law is, so that's why the cop picked up the kids and called CPS.

You see, we have laws that set age requirements to drive, drink, smoke, etc. And you can't break those laws just because you think your kid is mature enough to handle it. Same thing applies here.

But the worst part is that the parents knew better than to do this since CPS investigated them and told them explicitly not to do this...yet they did. My seven year old heard this story on the news and asked me WHY the parents let the kids go to the park if they knew they could get in trouble. So my seven year old gets it, while those parents obviously do not.

Which law is that? Can you post a link, please?

Also, is it possible that your seven-year-old, being a seven-year-old, doesn't have a complete understanding of the situation?

But according to you should be roaming the county unsupervised.

Anonymous wrote:It's the law that dictates what age a kid must be before being left alone or caring for another child. And the police know what the law is, so that's why the cop picked up the kids and called CPS.

You see, we have laws that set age requirements to drive, drink, smoke, etc. And you can't break those laws just because you think your kid is mature enough to handle it. Same thing applies here.

But the worst part is that the parents knew better than to do this since CPS investigated them and told them explicitly not to do this...yet they did. My seven year old heard this story on the news and asked me WHY the parents let the kids go to the park if they knew they could get in trouble. So my seven year old gets it, while those parents obviously do not.

Which law is that? Can you post a link, please?

Also, is it possible that your seven-year-old, being a seven-year-old, doesn't have a complete understanding of the situation?

Anonymous wrote:I hope they sue the shit out of MoCo and the state of MD and win big.

They won't win.

It's the law that dictates what age a kid must be before being left alone or caring for another child. And the police know what the law is, so that's why the cop picked up the kids and called CPS.

You see, we have laws that set age requirements to drive, drink, smoke, etc. And you can't break those laws just because you think your kid is mature enough to handle it. Same thing applies here.

But the worst part is that the parents knew better than to do this since CPS investigated them and told them explicitly not to do this...yet they did. My seven year old heard this story on the news and asked me WHY the parents let the kids go to the park if they knew they could get in trouble. So my seven year old gets it, while those parents obviously do not.

Anonymous wrote:

I don't disagree with what you typed, but it doesn't change the fact that even if there are a half as many child molesters looking for kids playing outside, the fact that there are a quarter as many kids playing outside means that the risk to those children goes up. That doesn't mean that there aren't other factors at play that are reducing the risks. After all, just that those factors have been counteracted by our tendency, as a society, to have our kids spend more time inside than they did in the 1970's.

If you quadruple a very, very small risk, what you get is a very, very small risk.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't know. I don't know these parents. And I'm not investigating them. All we hear is their side of the story. I do know they keep doing something they know puts their kids at the center of controversy, so that does make me wonder about their judgment.

They keep letting their white children walk unescorted, in a urban environment. They could do this if the kids weren't white; or if they lived in a suburb. But white kids aren't allowed to walk on city streets alone.

I actually think it's the opposite. If they weren't white, the media wouldn't be particularly interested, and CPS might well have kept the kids.

Fenton and Easley is not an "urban environment".

Well, it's not suburban. It is downtown SS. What is it, if not urban?

There's a new trend for neighborhoods to label themselves "Downtown" or "Town Center", but if you're the Downtown part of a suburb, you're still part of a suburb. Downtown Silver Spring, Downtown Bethesda, Reston Town Center, Rockville Town Center . . . none of these are urban areas. They are part of the suburbs.