Posted on 04/28/2008 7:58:13 AM PDT by mombyprofession
If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade.
And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.
The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.
Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.
Ratte is a tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, which means that, on a given day, he's more likely to be excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey than watching "Dancing with the Stars" - or even the History Channel, for that matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at wzzm13.com ...
I am betting this ‘professor’ now raises a good Republican
Even if it wasn’t an accident, who cares? The BS this kid went through is far worse for him than a bottle flavored malt liquor.
This is nothing more than the goon squad sending a message to parents saying "WE RUN THE SHOW."
after reading the whole story one wonders what trauma the boy will have and for how long being jerked away from all family members like that.....gov’t run amuck......
However, once you have a report of a seven year old publicly consuming an alcoholic beverage, it has to be investigated.
And once it is investigated, it has to be referred to child's services.
The officer on the scene, the supervisor and the child services worker doesn't know Ratte from Adam, and has no clue whether or not this represents a pattern of behavior or an anomaly.
They knew if they ignored it and Ratte's son turned up in an alcoholic coma a few weeks later, they would be raked over the coals and people would be calling for their blood.
Every system that allows such workers discretion is eliminated once that discretion leads to a mistake or two.
Perhaps it is an indication that the regulations by which the child services administration in MI operates are dictated by the lowest common denominator of child services cases in MI - in other words, the regulations were written with an unmarried teen crackhead's child in mind, not a tenured archaeology professor's child.
I think you’ve got it exactly right. It’s a real shame.
I don’t watch that c*ap either, and would never buy anything called Mike’s Hard ........, and caseworkers make me barf!
Did you expect competency, rationality and efficiency from the Kwame Kilpatrick administration?
“We are from the government and are here to help.”
Another bunch of brainless bureaucrats “helping the children”. They should all be fired ASAP for allowing this kind of thing to happen.
Worse case scenario the kid would have thrown up and had a hangover in the morning. Instead they wasted thousands of dollars on a simple mistake that could have been dismissed early on. Hospital stay, foster care and who knows how much was spent in legal fees and court proceedings. What a bunch of jackhole dipsticks, thank God I don’t live in that communist hellhole.
So how did he drink 12 ounces of Hard Lemonade, and have NO TRACE of alcohol in his blood about 90 minutes later?
investigation is one thing, child abduction is something different.
This guy has a Phd and he has never heard of hard lemonade?
MI ping.
1) Hire the best contingency lawyer in Michigan
2) Sue the state of Michigan for $100 million
3) Sue the Detroit Tigers for $100 million
4) Settle for $5 million.
How long should it take normal human beings to size up the situation. One problem with our justice system, let alone state bureaucracies, is that we make decisions that used to take 15 minutes into long, bureaucratically-entangled, drawn-out processes. Justice delayed is justice denied.
I agree. The headline should read ‘Over an alcoholic drink’ since it wasn’t just lemonade. I’d probably be appalled too, if I saw a young kid drinking an alcoholic drink like that. What would anyone do in the case of a kid openly drinking booze? What if it were beer? No one here would get upset, say something to the parents, call someone? I truly believe it was an honest mistake but still needed to be investigated.
I’ve never had a Mike’s Hard Lemonade and I’ve never seen an ad for it anywhere, but I do know that it’s alcohol, just like hard cider is or that hard sauce is made with rum or brandy. And I know that from *ta da* history books! You’d think Dad would have known that too.
The problem here is the police officer had no authority in this situation and the father was forced to comply. It was his son and he (mistakenly) was drinking in his presence, a misdemeanor at best. Taking custody of his child far overstepped his authority in this situation.
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