One afternoon this past April, a Florida mom and dad I’ll call Cindy and Fred could not get home in time to let their 11-year-old son into the house. The boy didn’t have a key, so he played basketball in the yard. He was alone for 90 minutes. A neighbor called the cops, and when the parents arrived—having been delayed by traffic and rain—they were arrested for negligence.
They were put in handcuffs, strip searched, fingerprinted, and held overnight in jail.
It would be a month before their sons—the 11-year-old and his 4-year-old brother—were allowed home again. Only after the eldest spoke up and begged a judge to give him back to his parents did the situation improve. […]
The children were placed in foster care for two days while the state ran a background check on a relative who was willing to take them in. “Our first choice was my mother,” said Cindy. “But she lives in another state and so the kids would have been in foster care even longer until they cleared her.” The parents decided to have them placed with a slightly problematic in-state relative instead.
On the day they all appeared in children’s court to move the kids from foster care into the relative’s custody, Cindy thought her older son smelled a little strange.
“What have you been eating?” she asked.
“Cereal,” he replied.
Only cereal, for the past few days. That’s not going to kill anyone, obviously. But if you’re arresting parents for not supervising their kids for 90 minutes, it’s more than a little hypocritical.
The boys went off with the relative. As Cindy and Fred were charged with a felony, they couldn’t cross the county line to go see them and the relative refused to bring them to visit. But after a few weeks, she got tired of taking care of the kids. “Unbeknownst to us,” said Cindy, “she was putting them back in state custody.”
That’s when Child Protective Services asked the court to place the boys in foster care. […]
according to Cindy, “My son spoke up.” He said he wanted to talk to the judge.
Surprised, their lawyer asked the boy: Did he have the courage to go through with this? And would he tell the truth?
The boy said yes.
“He went back there and spoke to the judge for about ten minutes,” said Cindy. “And then the judge came out and called the two lawyers to the bench and talked to them for about 10 or 15 minutes. And with that, our lawyer came to us and said that if we admitted that we didn’t know that it was wrong to [let our son] stay in the backyard, but that we know now that it’s wrong and we will never let it happen again, and that we will explain this to our son, he would let the children come with us.”
Cindy and Fred promised. The judge released the kids and closed the case.
But that is not the end.
That was civil court. Next, Cindy and Fred will head to criminal court to plead “not guilty” to the neglect charge. Naturally, they hope the entire case will be dropped.
In the meantime, to comply with all of the CPS dictates, Cindy and Fred are attending parenting classes. They are also going to therapy. The kids are attending “play” therapy.
This summer, as part of the deal, the older boy must attend day camp. The younger must attend day care. The reason, Cindy thinks, is that years ago there was a girl who disappeared while in foster care and it turned out that no one had been keeping track of her whereabouts. If kids attend day camp or daycare, their whereabouts will always be accounted for.
I asked Cindy how she and the kids spent last summer.
“We did little projects, we would go to the beach,” she said. Or they would visit dad at work. She had been planning to enjoy another low key summer with them.
Instead, she will be at home while her kids are in a program mandated by the state.
As the Left wants it. Destroy families, destroy family-supportive institutions like churches, teach children to be fearful, and to be totally dependent on The State.
This how the Left works.
It is what they are, it is what they do.
I 100% agree that CPS has run amok. And to the ‘neighbor’ that called the police, a contributor to the nanny state. A real neighbor would have sat on the front porch and invited the child to be near and within sight to make sure nothing happened until the parents got home.
That said, I can offer 4 events of parents murdering their child in Chicago area in the last month. I’m not sure how to deal with that. I know that CPS is not the way, no matter what the intent. But maybe if a neighbor there had stuck their nose where it didn’t belong….??
We know how to fix CPS, get rid of it. How to fix parents killing and abusing their children…except for after the fact punishment….I haven’t got a clue…
Trying to prevent 100% of bad things from ever happening is what leads to this kind of tyranny.
Greetings:
I don’t like that the writer used the superlative “eldest” in referring to the two brothers. It makes me even more aware of how the Progressives are driving comparatives, such as “elder” from our vernacular as they have succeeding in doing with “so…as” after a negative as opposed to “as…as”.
When I was 10, me and my 12 yo cousin would regularly ride our bikes 5 miles to town and go to a movie, maybe visit gram, stop for an A&W float, and ride home again.
I’m sure glad I got to grow up before America died.
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My parents would be serving life in prison.
There is a reason movies like Goonies, Sandlot and Stand By Me were so popular with kids.
We are destroying our young.
I must have died a hundred times as a kid.
I used to ride my bike to school and let myself in when I got home. It’s a miracle I’m still alive
The irony – of course – is that in the cities you have parents (well – moms) who are guilty of criminal neglect of their children and yet no one says boo.
They raise hooligans who roam the cities; fail their classes; impregnate/get pregnant when they can’t read … and yet nothing.
We want to harass those who teach their children ACTUAL independence; and reward (through social services) those who insure their children will be dependent upon the state forever.
Moynihan’s Law of the Canadian Border Reconfirmed for Umpty-umpth Time
I didn’t realize Florida was such a fucking police state
>I didn’t realize Florida was such a fucking police state <
ask a white hispanic
It’s funny CPS isn’t mentioned until you get way down there in the article, when they are the ones responsible for what happened to this family. It’s easy to blame the police (not to say anyone here is), but they are just enforcing the law, following the proceedgers laid out by CPS when minor children are involved.
Maybe I’m wrong, and the police could have taken less drastic actions, but I bet they were compelled to call in CPS, and once the “worker” announces she is removing the children (and yes, it’s always a she, and I know “removing” is a euphemism) the parents have to be processed, the cops and jailers have to do their jobs.
Used to be cops had a lot more discretion when dealing with the public, and so more likely to have more support from the community. That’s all gone now, replaced with alphabet agencies here to help us, exploring the boundaries of their tyrannical souls.
And citizens afraid to get involved, or eager to snitch…
It’s difficult for a fascist state to continue without citizens eager to snitch. Luckily for progressives that isn’t a problem.
I watched an Adam-12 the other day where a mother had left the apartment to go to the store and left her baby by itself. Not completely by itself, her pet lion was in the apartment as well.
No charges.