Neglectful Mom or Overzealous Cop?

[projectadam 0]

Everyone keeps saying that they were left in the car lots of times and I am just wondering how you can remember back to when you were two years old? I am having problems remembering what I had for breakfast today  

 

To me it seems like the situation was handled appropriately when the officer had suspicion that the kid might have been kidnapped and the mom refused to speak on her behalf and identify the child. In the end the right decision was made and I am sure that the family was put through a rough time and hope that they can go back to their daily lives. Wonder if they will try to sue for damages???

[Duke87 1,070]

Actually, I just remembered something. There was a time when I was 9 and my sisters were 5 and 2 where my mother left us alone in the car in a parking lot one summer day (with the windows open!) while she went into the store to grab some things real quick. While she was gone, some other woman noticed us and called the police saying there were three kids left alone in a car. When asked, she said the oldest one looked to be about 10, and was told "oh, someone probably just ran into the store real quick, it's probably nothing." A cop did show up on the scene, and upon seeing my mother returning, informed her of this little anecdote... but then simply left without any inquiry (having now seen that we weren't just abandoned there).

Conclusion: Stamford Police 1997 > Chicago Police 2008.

[Meg 368]

 When my brother, sister, and I still had single digit ages, Mom would take us to the grocery store and give us each assignments.  "You get the ketchup, you get the bread, you get the Cheerios" and we would scatter in three different directions.   Anyone who does that these days is asking for trouble.

Times are different.  and the standards for watching small children are different.

[purpledaddy 6]

Gotta love scavenger hunts! I remember when my older brother would take me snark hunting... well nevermind.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: SkiGeek  When my brother, sister, and I still had single digit ages, Mom would take us to the grocery store and give us each assignments.  "You get the ketchup, you get the bread, you get the Cheerios" and we would scatter in three different directions.   Anyone who does that these days is asking for trouble.

Times are different.  and the standards for watching small children are different.quote>

Well, one issue with sending kids off to go get things is that then they have to be able to find you again.... and that's certainly easier for them to do if you're shopping at some little local mom and pop grocery store  than at  Super Stop & Shop or Costco.  The  shift away from local businesses and towards big chains with huge warehouse size stores definitely helped kill that pattern of operation. And, well, again, the store is bigger, people come from further around, and the odds of there being even one other person in the entire store that you know are rather slim. With a local store you frequented, you'd probably get to know the guy behind the cash register, and maybe even some other people, too. With the big chains, you don't have that great a chance of ever even seeing the same person behind the cash register more than once since people work all different hours and it's the kind of job that people tend not to hold down that long before moving on for one reason or another.

Still, the whole shift from "eh, they'll be fine" to "zomg a pedophile might run off with them!" is definitely the key factor... although it's not just in dealing with kids. For quite a while, America has been becoming increasingly paranoid about all sorts of things to the point where nobody trusts anybody anymore. People will point to 9/11 as the cause, but it was already in motion long before then. That was just the huge final nail in the coffin, the defining "paradise lost" moment.