Posted on 09/19/2012 2:36:56 PM PDT by sirchtruth
Police arrested a Texas mom for allowing her children to play outside last week, after a neighbor reported to police that the kids were riding scooters around a cul de sac.
Tammy Cooper, who was arrested for child endangerment, insists she was watching her children from a lawn chair in her front yard.
Now, Cooper is suing the La Porte Police Department, the arresting officer and the neighbor who made the call.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Cul-De-Sacs are streets. Where cars drive. Yes, slowly. But they are not parking lots. 6-year-olds riding motorized scooters are not a good mix with 3000-pound cars.
Should kids be allowed to play outside without supervision? Why can’t a 9-year-old supervise a 6-year-old? Shouldn’t they be allowed to ride bikes together — that is done in the street.
So you can see, I’m arguing that it is dangerous to allow your 6-year-old to drive a scooter in the street, if you aren’t there to warn him/her if there is a car coming. But it should be OK in general for a kid that age to be in the street, doing street-appropriate things, without supervision.
There is virtually no information provided to us to let us know what really happened. We have the word of the mother to the news outlet, who is suing.
Maybe a neighbor is being a busy-body if the neighbor sees a 6-year-old unsupervised in the middle of the street riding a scooter and almost getting run over by a car, and calls the police.
But do you think the neighbor should be sued for what happens? If someone did something wrong, it was the police, in conjunction with the district attorney they called before making the arrest. If we start holding civilians responsible for reporting suspicious activity, we will lose an important part of law enforcement.
For example, we had a kid die at a day care — probably the kid’s death was not the fault of the day care, but there were 23 kids in a house being supervised by 2 people, with no permits or inspections. The neighbors said they didn’t think it was their business to report the number of kids playing unsupervised. Maybe if they did, those kids wouldn’t have been at risk.
Imagine this — a neighbor sees a guy they don’t recognize, taking a kid into a car. The kid is screaming, the neighbor calls the police. The police interrogate the guy, maybe take him in. Turns out he is the kids dad, just got supervision, was supposed to take the kid to the doctor, the kid didn’t want to go because a show was on, and was being obstinate.
Should the father be allowed to sue the neighbor for calling the police?
So my opinion — the woman should not have been arrested, people shouldn’t be so glib about 6-year-olds driving small motorized scooters in the street without any supervision, neighbors shouldn’t be sued if all they do is call the police for suspicious activity, and there is much more to this story than what we actually are told in this article.
thanks
checking now..
Not long ago, a woman whose age was in three digits was asked what she thought the most impressive development in her lifetime was. One might think she would have said air travel, the moon landing or the Internet, but she said it was the fact that children are no longer seen out of doors.
We live on a cul-de-sac. My kids are grown, but there are kids playing in the cul-de-sac from morning until after dark 7 days a week. I can’t imagine anyone calling the cops and I certainly can’t imagine anyone getting arrested for it.
Except, I can imagine it because, over the years, we have had neighbors who would call the cops when something annoyed them. Thankfully, they’ve moved on and people go on living their lives. No one misses them.
A F'N Warning???
How about an excuse me Lady, I got to go taser your neighbor!
Well, then. From a cop's point-of-view, is it really expected you step in place of the parent? Since you're posting on this board, I'm really hoping you say, no.
I remember many years ago, a neighbor boy was told to go down the block to where his young girl cousin lived, to teach her how to ride a bicycle without training wheels.
Their neighbor, a dotty retired judge, saw him helping her keep her balance on the bicycle, and he called the police to report that the boy was molesting her. The cops arrived quickly to see the two standing there, and the judge came out of his house, claiming that he saw the boy drag her into the bushes and rape her.
The bushes were one foot high and flush with the ground. The boy and the girl looked at the policemen in a puzzled fashion, and both shook their heads ‘no’. So the cops escorted the judge back to his house, assuring him that they would take care of everything.
The judge went to the monkey house a week or two later.
Those add-on electrical driven you can get at an auto parts store. Really high pitched.
What in tarnation is a tarnation? Dagnabbit!
I thought an earlier report said the kids were riding MOTOR scooters. Maybe the neighbor got tired of hearing puttputtputt vroom vroom hour after hour? Depending on how close the houses are situated, that might be annoying. I know I get perturbed when the neighbor kids run their dirt bikes up and down our residential street (though not enough to call the cops).
And they wonder why we have a childhood obesity problem.
Good point. I grew up in a boomer neighborhood and all the moms were home. They all looked after us. That “neighbor” in this story sure as heck wasn’t going out of her way to help anybody.
Accidents happen all the time. Life is dangerous for children just in the normal course of growing up.
This mom and dad moved to a neighborhood on a cul-de-sac where the kids could use their scooters and play outside. She was in the yard - in ear shot and saw the cop car pull up to arrest her.
Just because you have a call from the cranky neighbor does not mean you disengage your brain and arrest the mom for letting her children play with their scooters on the cul de sac out front. Anyone who is not totaly retarded knows this is a crank call and that playing outside is normal and good for children.
That cop knew what he was doing. He got off on harming her and her family for nothing because he could. I hope she sues his nasty a$$ into a cardboard box on the street. What he did was very cruel.
Police arrested a Texas mom for allowing her children to play outside last week
Was she a party member?
Are her kids registered in the youth corps?
Did she get permission for outdoor activity?
Were the appropriate recreational fees paid?
Unfortunately the cop will be totally indemnified by the city tax payers and it will not impact his life in the slightest. This family is lucky they didn't have a dog for this guy to shoot.
What in tarnation has this country come too?.................There are too many nosy nellies and people that think everyone should be like them and in fact, nobody wants to the like them.....Nosy neighbors use to be an insult, now its the norm.
We actually had a dinner bell up on a pole. We would be a mile or more away, exploring the woods or hunting with bb guns. We would hear the bell and come home for lunch.
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