When I first read about some parents allowing their kids to be “free range”, I had a hard time wrapping my brain around the amount of harassment they were getting, because being “free range” in the mid-00s sounded like what nearly all prior generations (older Gen Y and older) operated under as kids, but just now some kind of anomaly instead of the bog-standard norm.
As someone that is Gen X and grew up in a very rural area, and who spent most of their free (summer/weekend) days almost completely unsupervised, starting somewhere around 8 years old, I find it wild that the cops are now called on seeing such things…I realize things change - I’d say it’s generally for the better these days, TBH. The views on safety back then for everyone, including children, were pretty much shit.
But still, you think there should be some kind of balance…
Liability Hot Potato
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Caller doesn’t want to accept liability just in case Something Happens to the kids.
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Call-taker doesn’t want to accept liability just in case Something Happens to the kids.
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Comm. Center supervisor doesn’t want to accept liability just in case Something Happens to the kids.
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Dispatcher doesn’t want to accept liability just in case Something Happens to the kids.
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Patrol supervisor doesn’t want to accept liability just in case Something Happens to the kids.
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Patrol LEOs don’t want to accept liability just in case Something Happens to the kids.
The end product of this bureaucratic nightmare is harassment-by-proxy, where the cops show up to tell a lady kids aren’t supposed to play outside and everyone gets to go home not feeling like they were responsible for the insanity.
- Ex-cop, occasionally insisted on not responding to ridiculous calls that got cancelled when I pressed the issue, was eventually fired
How is it liability for people minding their fucking business and not calling the cops when seeing other’s people children playing? Like is USA so dystopian that you need a permit to let your kids play so you can prove it to random strangers so they don’t call the police? The rest of the chain I could understand, but the neighbour calling the fucking police for no reason at all without any consequences is bonkers to me.
I’m European and lived in 2 countries here, and in both the caller would be in trouble for making weird and unnecessary calls to the police, apart from being seen as a weirdo by everyone. Like, how much are you spying on kids playing (or anyone else for that matter) to determine that they are in danger? how paranoid are you that you perceive normal behaviour as dangerous? maybe you are the danger to those kids and society if you are really looking that hard and being so paranoid. Also, mind your fucking business, go back to watching fox news and stop looking through the window. These people being tolerated (or encouraged) without any consequences is bonkers to me, at the very least they should be shamed or even billed if repeatedly done.
I can’t tell if you’re angrily asking me or angrily asking them.
Seems fairly obvious to me, but I’ll break down what I suspect their thoughts are for #1:
“Oh I couldn’t let something happen to little Timmy! What if he hurt himself or got kidnapped?”
Sorry sounded that way, where I’m from we use swear words often to emphasize ideas, but not because we are angry just for emphasis, many times I forget in some places swear words are only “angry words” and they carry way more weight.
My surprise was regarding a society that is so comfortable calling police on neighbours for reasons it doesn’t make sense, like, children playing outside could feel “dangerous” to you (as in the reporter) but it shouldn’t condition how the parent raise their children if they think is safe. It feels to me so weird that: people impose their morals/values to others and they don’t go and talk with the parents first instead of calling the police.
Sorry sounded that way, where I’m from we use swear words often to emphasize ideas, but not because we are angry just for emphasis, many times I forget in some places swear words are only “angry words” and they carry way more weight.
That’s more or less the same in my area, but you have to remember that text does not convey tone, so your comment could have been read either way; I’ve had plenty of people across the internet mistake my “So-and-So does X because Y” as defending So-and-So.
My surprise was regarding a society that is so comfortable calling police on neighbours for reasons it doesn’t make sense, like, children playing outside could feel “dangerous” to you (as in the reporter) but it shouldn’t condition how the parent raise their children if they think is safe. It feels to me so weird that: people impose their morals/values to others and they don’t go and talk with the parents first instead of calling the police.
Maybe it’s just in my city/state/country, but usually if you go politely confront someone in a way that could come across as judgement, they will double-down and get verbally or physically hostile.
So people don’t bother, and call in the Professional Confronters. There’s no penalty for being incorrect when calling the police, so it’s a no-brainer for many.
ACAB, cuz the good ones get harassed and fired.
or the good ones get killed by their coworkers (and then someone minority or lgbtq+ person gets framed for the murder).
5 seconds before a good one gets fired, they’re a bastard? What about 5 days? 5 months?
What about someone with all the good intent in their heart 5 minutes before they put on a badge? The second it touches their uniform they instantly become a bastard?
Your ridiculous position melts the second you think about it critically.
Conform or get shit canned. You should know better than me.
So you ignored my entire comment because you can’t think critically about this issue?
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The combination of not giving kids independence then complaining how teens and young adults are dependant on their parents is diabolical.
I often look at the independence that kids and teens are given in other countries and wish that I could have been given that sort of a childhood. I seriously think I wouldn’t be as socially inept as I am today if I had that.
We just expect to drop them off at college or into the work force having given them zero skills to be independent.
There are plenty of parents that just kick out their kids and drop all support the day they turn 18. It is truly horrific how cruel they are.
In the 70s, every kid in the he area knew every other kid. The mother’s all knew each other or at least had phone numbers. Weekends and summers we would go play all day, sometimes in 1 house. The whole neighborhood looked out for all of us. If a mother needed to find a kid, just start calling the list of mothers. Regardless,when the streetlights came on, that was the signal to go home.
No one questioned it. That’s the way it was. We would play football in the streets and move aside for cars. We would drink from the garden hose. Every kid played… There was even one kid missing a leg who used a fake limb, we let him at football with the rest of us (granted he played line), but he was one of us.
Miss those days
Hey. That’s the way it is where i live in Norway.
Just depends on where you live
Same. We were out all day, no one knew where we were. No cell phones. Go home by dark for supper.
There are really no spaces for kids or teens do anything anymore which is crazy. Then if they are playing outside it is also an issue.
I’m neither and still feel this way
Its always a neighbor who hates kids. More to the point they can’t stand kids playing and having fun. I’ve had calls from the city on a few occasions for fixing my own car in my driveway. I know who is doing it. Its a elderly woman with a mid forties autistic son who is at her beck and call. I fear for that hateful young man when she passes. I had the hood off my car fixing something close to the firewall and he stood in front of my driveway with a really cheap fiip phone taking photos. I started to call the police but figured it wouldn’t result in anything useful.
Kids playing outside and people working on their car lowers the property value for the neighborhood. So many of these shitty aspects of suburban life are rooted in NIMBY-types who have a hatred of anything that would dare threaten the value of their property.
Kids these days never play outside!
Holy shit is that a kid outside? Better call the fucking cops.
There is a better and healthier way; it’s called Europe - where the children enjoy the freedom to be children.
Many actual cities are like that in the US too. You only hear about the shitty suburbs.
I want to know if all these calls were from different people or from the same busybody. If the latter, then the real police involvement ought to be going after that person for harassment.
Bet money kids and mom are POC as well.
from the article it sounds like the same person…who they suspected had even been following them. I’d say a restraining order. cuz only a creep would take that much interest in a 7 yr old like that.
You could know. It’s only one click away.
No, I fucking can’t. As I already said, I did read the article and it wasn’t actually clear whether all four calls were from completely distinct groups of people.
Caller #1 was “a woman.”
Caller #2 was “a woman… and another man.”
Caller #3 was “some pickleball players.”
Caller #4 was completely undescribed.
For all we know, it could’ve been the same woman in all four cases: maybe she’s with a man sometimes, and maybe she plays pickleball. It isn’t specific enough to rule that out.
I’m getting kinda tired of assholes making stupid assumptions about whether I read the article or not and getting them wrong.
I would encourage you to read the article, often you’ll find additional information there. It was different people or groups of people every time.
I did read the article. It didn’t say it was the same person, but it didn’t say every call was from a different person, either.
True story. I took a city bus to the library, by myself, when I was 6 years old. This trip included a transfer.
Still here 63 years later …I was recently talking ro someone about the gokd ole days.
When i was a kid, my friend and i would take a bus from Canada to the US to go hang out at the hockey arena to get autographs on our hockey cards.
We took a bus.
Went through customs. (All we needed back then was a birth certificate.)
Walked through a notoriously bad area to get to the arena.
Hung out for hours.
And returned home safely.
We were 10.
Yep, quite relatable!
Matilda?
60 here. Parents used to send my brother and alone on the subway to go to the museum. I was 5 and he was 9.
My mom took me to school for kindergarten, after that I walked. But, I didn’t walk alone, I walked with a group of kids of different ages. It wasn’t organized, it just happened. I’d wait for the kids to pass my house, and join them, a few friends from first grade would be mixed in. The group would grow as we got closer to the school, by the time we got to the crosswalk there were probably fifteen to twenty of us.
This was the early 70s in suburbia, all the kids in the neighborhood at least knew of each other because everyone was outside all summer long, and of course we went to school together. The school was right in the middle of the neighborhood, and only four blocks from my house.
For as much as people bash suburbia, I have fond memories of growing up there. Ultimately I think most of our woes as society stem from capitalism, we just don’t see it. It’s not that car culture allowed for sprawl, it’s that capitalism required us to drive into the city every day to make a living, to earn slave wages. Work from home, or from smaller, distributed locations has been viable for 80 years, apart from factories that make complicated products, but they want us all together for the same reason they don’t want us working from home now. It’s greed, hubris, and their deep desire to be worshiped by their worker bees. They want to stand on a platform, hands on hips looking over their mini-fiefdom, and admire what “they’ve” accomplished.
Bala Cynwyd
Makes sense. Philly suburbs are full of busybodies. Usually they’re complaining about having moved next to a farm.
I did such a double take at this place name, I assumed I’d misread it and the piece was actually talking about Wales! Are Welsh place names common in the eastern US? Would love to hear the local pronunciation, I was rubbish at Welsh place names until I’d actually lived in the country. The good news is it’s way more phonetic than English, the bad news is some of the alphabet encodes sounds which straight up don’t exist in English.
Can’t imagine any children getting this kind of grief in the original Bala, it’s a very small town in Eryri national park (commonly known as Snowdonia in English) set in a very beautiful landscape. I wouldn’t have spent a minute indoors if I’d grown up there, I’d have been out on Llyn Tegid / Bala Lake from the moment school ended.
In PA the Welsh are a minor immigrant population, known for having owned a bunch of coal mines that later immigrants labored in.
That’s interesting, Wales was fairly prolific around the world on that front. Donetsk in Ukraine was founded by a Welshman for example.
🔘 I would like to know more
Well, it’s the Philly suburbs. Anyone salty about having moved too close to a farm just has to wait about two years. The farm will be bulldozed and either converted into more shoddily built duplexes that are too close together, or a strip mall. Problem solved!
Yes I am aware that people are, in fact, the worst
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The audacity of children being children. Fuck them kids
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