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.
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.