Young children also walk to the elementary schools near me. When I’m at the park with my kids, it’s common to see other very young kids show up alone on their bikes or on foot to play in the park. This is in the US.

I think international readers see these headlines and assume the entire US is like this, but the reason the story is a headline is because it’s a dumb sentence. This is going to get appealed.

The US is a big country. The state this happened in has a similar population to the entire country of Switzerland. Laws and cultural norms vary across the country, but this story is unusual even for the location it happened in. That’s why it’s a news story.

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YeGoblynQueenne 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

As an international reader I'm missing some context here. Isn't a gated community supposed to be singularly safe? With private guards (like the guy who took the kid to his mom) patrolling and no strangers allowed in etc? Why did the guard tell the kid that "bad people" might take him? Where would those bad people come from? It really all does sound very weird.

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stephencanon 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Gated communities, by their nature, attract and encourage the sort of busybodies who think that everyone needs to be protected from everything.

	▲	mrguyorama 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		More like the busybodies who have never experienced an adverse event in their life and are utterly ignorant of recent history and think some news coverage means the entire country is in terrifying threat of pedophiles grabbing kids off the street. These were the same people who insisted in the 90s that we teach every kid about stranger danger while the actual causes of that kind of stuff, which has always been overwhelmingly someone known to the family, is ignored. The same people who insisted you were going to be constantly bombarded with offers of free drugs which had of course been spiked to kill you, or that your halloween candy would definitely be poison because one time a weird uncle harmed their family that way, or that "Rainbow Parties" are a real thing that anyone should have ever cared about. These people are insanely credulous, and live in perpetual fear of whatever Nancy Grace insists is coming to kill them tomorrow.
	▲	xaxbxcxdxe 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Every guardian has the perverse incentive to make thev world (to at least appear) unsave to justify its existence and increase the upsale.

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breakpointalpha 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Presumably the guard is supposed to keep the "bad people" out, so that kids can be safe.

Instead, the Mom is placed on probation for seven years and will have monthly visits from CPS.

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stormbeard 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes. That's why this is so dumb.

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account42 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I think international readers see these headlines and assume the entire US is like this, but the reason the story is a headline is because it’s a dumb sentence. This is going to get appealed.

That would still be pretty bad though. An absurd sentence like this should not end with the sentence being reverted but in changes that prevent it in the future, e.g. by updating laws or disciplining those that did not apply them correctly. This isn't just one person fucking up this is the security guard fucking up, the police fucking up, CPS fucking up and then the judge fucking up.

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jawilson2 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For sure. My youngest, who was 13 years old over the summer so a bit older, went on a few 25+mile bike rides on a nearby bike trail. He was gone for several hours, we just made sure he had plenty of water, sunscreen, and a reasonably full phone battery. This is in northern Chicago suburbs, Lake County. He absolutely loved the freedom, and we were able to periodically check is location. My MIL thought we were insane for letting him do this. She also thought we were insane for letting our oldest, a HS senior, do a 4 week summer course at USC in LA. He delighted in telling us about going off campus to play basketball, etc.

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gogobio 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm also in the US, in a city in a populous state and I've never seen that, as a matter of fact it counts as child abuse in my state as well. Why don't you mention where you live and what state you see this within? Is it because what you're seeing is anecdotal in some particularly rich area? I can assure you leaving children under 16 unsupervised is illegal in most states.

	▲	illiac786 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It is actually telling you didn’t even check this. It’s because you are so 100% convinced it’s true. This shows how bad the situation is in some places.
	▲	kxrm 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> I can assure you leaving children under 16 unsupervised is illegal in most states. This is absolutely untrue. Only 3 states have an age specific standard. Most states set no specific limits by age. The bigger problem is the vagueness of the laws we do have in place around child neglect which allows a cop or neighbor to be the biggest determining factor of whether you get a knock on your door.
	▲	hex4def6 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Citation needed. A kid that's 15.5 yrs old is more than able to be unsupervised for a few hours. c'mon. The only state that I can find with the oldest age defined is 14 in Illinois (but it's defined as "for an unreasonable period of time"). Most states otherwise don't define it (~38 states), and of the ones that do, it's between 6-10.