Frivolous lawsuit?

Short version:

Mom is watching her two kids ride scooters on the cul-de-sac, a quiet street. She's sitting on the front porch. Cops roll up, arrest the woman for "Unattended Children". Goes to jail.

Time to pull out my coffee can with holes ....

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/mom-sues-polices-she-arrested-letting-her-kids-134628018.html

Seems like there must be some important details missing from that story.

well berkeley, kids play outside all the time. Heck, I might even be inside. or worse, behaving a beer while watching them

I'm rather surprised that you of all people find her lawsuit against the police for this to be frivolous. Are you actually saying you think the arrest is proper and correct?

Chrissakes. I played outside 'unsupervised' so much my mom and dad should both be serving life sentences.

foxtrapper wrote: I'm rather surprised that you of all people find her lawsuit against the police for this to be frivolous. Are you actually saying you think the arrest is proper and correct?

Not at all! I just couldn't think of a better topic.

With childhood obesity on the rise it's nice to see kids out. There may be more to the story, I think the neighbor got a stick somewhere.

Dan

foxtrapper wrote: I'm rather surprised that you of all people ...

Not being confrontational, just curious.

"Kids, come back inside and play gory video games. I don't want to get arrested."

Curmudgeon wrote: Chrissakes. I played outside 'unsupervised' so much my mom and dad should both be serving life sentences.

But there were no pedophiles back then don't you know?

Reading between the lines, I'm guessing the scooters were noisy on the "quiet street" and the neighbor was annoyed by the noise so the charge might more properly be "Allowing children to annoy neighbor."

For berkeley sake, that is ridiculous. I spent my whole childhood playing outside "unattended". I guess I need to call the cops on my parents for letting me do that rather then locking me inside with an N64.

Whenever I'm watching COPS and they go to a house because someone called in a domestic violence complaint, they often say something along the lines of "we got called for domestic violence, we don't have a choice but to arrest someone". I wonder if that's the same thing that happened here, that there's a law on the books that says that if someone calls the police because a child is in danger, they have to arrest the person who is putting the child in danger? After they investigate, they find out the call was BS, the woman gets her charges dropped and the neighbour gets charged with filing a false police report. It sucks, but it's not the police's fault, it's poorly written laws.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and the police could be idiots. Since we only heard one side of the story, we're all just guessing at this point.

I know of one solution...

914Driver wrote:

foxtrapper wrote: I'm rather surprised that you of all people ...

Not being confrontational, just curious.

You've been very strong about loss of liberties, and the overreaching arm of the government. That's why I was rather confused.

I could have better worded my post. I was not attempting to toss barbs or insults.

Very short editorial. I think something is missing. With so little information, this could sway either way.

In reply to 4cylndrfury:

Nice

La Porte TX? They should be worried about all the toxic fumes from the industrial plants than some kids on scooters.

I smell feud in that neighborhood.

So a parent has to tag along behind their kids all day long?

What if they have 2 or more and they want to go different directions?

Wow, I think my parents deserve the death sentence, then. When I was 9, I was roaming the neighborhood on a moped.

foxtrapper wrote:

Cool, thank you.

I know a guy from another forum who used to ride a bored-out (by his handyman uncle) pit bike around his neighborhood as a kid, everyone called it "the angry bee" from the sound it made and it went stupid fast for what it was. One time he was in the hospital after crashing it and sitting down bloodied next to another kid, laughing their asses off because they were both high on morphine. These days his childhood would be considered a non-stop horror show.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

Some of my great childhood stories and memories sound like that.

It goes like

• "Hey, you remember we built that treehouse and all of us fell out of because of poor construction"
• "You remember that 5HP go-kart we put the 20HP John Deere engine on!! I lost a lot of passengers that day . . . "

I really couldn't imagine growing up with my parents following me everywhere. I could understand maybe at age 5 or 6 and younger, but any older than that and I was a free range kid. I just wasn't allowed to cross 4 lane highways. It was kind of an unspoken rule. My elementary and middle school were within bounds.

I walked to school at 5 years old. When I got home I would ride my bike all over the area. We would play by the crick in the park too. My parents never followed along, they must be hardened criminals.

In reply to Strike_Zero:

thanks for the reminder. Need to get the carb tuned and build a harness for the cart. Damn thats going to be dangerous (fun).