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Anonymous wrote:My reading is this is CPS's faulty mostly. The cop's hands were tied. They got a call from a complainant, so they have to respond. Then, since it's a child welfare call, he has to report it to CPS. Then, he has to wait on CPS to tell him waht to do. All the hours of delay seem to be because CPS was trying to figure out what to do.

It all happened late on Sunday. Nobody in the office.

Which means CPS isn't designed to do their job well. I doubt children are only abused and in need of help M-F 9-5. Sounds like the CPS on-call person wasn't answering their phone.

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Anonymous wrote:And that's precisely why we have laws setting appropriate age limits, pp...so lazy parents can't unilaterally decide that their 7 year old is mature enough to stay home alone or handle a trip to 7-11 to buy mom some smokes.

I'll be sure to tell my mother that she was lazy when she let me walk to school by myself in first grade. Every other parent in the neighborhood was lazy too, I guess.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My reading is this is CPS's faulty mostly. The cop's hands were tied. They got a call from a complainant, so they have to respond. Then, since it's a child welfare call, he has to report it to CPS. Then, he has to wait on CPS to tell him waht to do. All the hours of delay seem to be because CPS was trying to figure out what to do.

It all happened late on Sunday. Nobody in the office.

Anonymous wrote:My reading is this is CPS's faulty mostly. The cop's hands were tied. They got a call from a complainant, so they have to respond. Then, since it's a child welfare call, he has to report it to CPS. Then, he has to wait on CPS to tell him waht to do. All the hours of delay seem to be because CPS was trying to figure out what to do.

Anonymous wrote:This will cost the county a ton of money. This is harassment.

Anonymous wrote:These parents seem hell bent on scarring their kids. If they are so ideologically committed to being free range, then they need to move to a neighborhood where it is appropriate and acccepted. Downtown Silver Spring does not meet that description. If these kods were in a quiet neighborhood or in a nearby park with a lot of othet friends and neighbors, or even just taking a short walk to school, that would be fine. But alone in a metro downtown? Not ok. That might be appropriate starting at 13, but not a 10 and 6 year old.

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.

CPS does NOT have the right to tell the parents not to not break the law. This is beyond their scope and I can't believe more parents on DCUM aren't completely freaked out about the county interfering in this family's affairs.

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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.

Is there a parking garage? Urban.

Anonymous wrote:The message the actions of CPS sends to parents is that children cannot play outside. My kids ride bikes all the time in our neighborhood without my supervision. They go exploring and build forts in the wooded area close by. My son even broke both of his arms while riding his bike. He walked home, we went to emergency room, he was fine. It builds character, self sufficenty, strong kids.

Anonymous wrote:

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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.

Anonymous wrote:I think it probably has something to do with the fact that they are breaking the law...despite having been investigated by CPS and told not to do this.

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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.

Which street in Poolesville is "very busy"? Also, how many children who go to Poolesville ES and live in walking distance walk to school by themselves?