"officials placed two brothers into foster care after one, 11, was found playing basketball alone in his own yard."
He'd gotten home early from school and his parents came 90 minutes later. He was in his own yard. The family lost their children to foster care. Ironically in foster care ACTUAL abuse rates are pretty darn high!
"When Cindy and Fred arrived home they were arrested for child neglect — then fingerprinted, strip searched, and held in jail overnight.Their kids, meanwhile, including their 4-year-old boy, were removed from the home and from their parents’ custody"
Mom worked in the school district ironically.
"We still do not have our children, we are fighting for our own freedom and due to the nature of my employment I am no longer employed,” she wrote. “My son was in his own yard playing basketball, not in the street or at the park. The authorities claim he had no access to water or shelter. We have an open shed in the back yard and 2 working sinks and 2 hoses. They said he had no food. He ate his snacks already. He had no bathroom, but the responding officer found our yard good enough to relieve himself in while our son sat in a police car alone."
Being accused of child abuse / neglect is a career ender. The idea of my 4 year old being taken is beyond belief. What is so ironic is so many real / terrible things are happening (crime of all sorts / abuse in the traditional sense / financial fraud online) where nothing happens. But your kid shoots some hoops in their own yard, you lose custody. You are jailed and strip searched. You lose your job.
I realize big government is here to protect us, I just wish they would focus on the harder problems.
That's a horrible story that resulted in the Maryland CPS issuing the following statement clarifying that what those parents did was not neglect:
> And in fact, as Donna St. George reported in yesterday's Washington Post, Maryland's CPS has just issued new guidelines, saying, "Children playing outside or walking unsupervised does not meet the criteria for a CPS response absent specific information supporting the conclusion that the child has been harmed or is at substantial risk of harm if they continue to be unsupervised."
This is a big country and that was a rare and particularly egregious case; it's not the norm.
Even if it is not the norm, people hear about situations like this, and become fearful. Fear of CPS taking kids is enough to make many parents not willing to allow their children freedom.
I sort of understand that someone might call something in.
My issues is the govt, arresting, strip searching parents, take away a young child from them and putting them in foster care, getting folks fired.
What are they trying to accomplish here. There is insane abuse IN the foster care system. What is the great harm to an 11 year old child playing outside in their own yard that requires this govt response.
On the other hand, that something is rare does not mean we should dismiss it because it is rare. If humans get together to set up a system then edge cases that are high risk like this (high risk because risk == chance of occurrence * effect) should not be able to happen. Do NASA just shrug every time a rare occurrence ends someone's life? I hope not, and the care system is not rocket science so there's even less excuse for an heedless attitude.
Created by people who mean well perhaps, but subsequently captured by another sort.
> Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
No. As a manager I embrace process that aids my team in achieving our goals, and eschew process that hinders it. For me the process is a means to an end.
I meet lots of bureaucrats who literally only care that the processes they oversee are carried out. For them the process is the goal.
When I was 5 my parents went on holiday abroad for 2 weeks and left me alone at home with 2 dogs. We had great fun after I learnt how to use analogue camera
>due to the nature of my employment I am no longer employed
This is an overlooked problem. Lack of employment protection. Nobody should be able to be fired for being arrested. That doesn't mean they committed a crime. It's not their fault they can't show up to work. There should be employment protection for that. In my country, even schoolteachers being investigated for sexual abuse aren't fired. They aren't allowed to go to work but they still get paid while the justice is being worked out, because they might turn out to be innocent!
If they're paid while the justice is being worked out and their trial takes years, that is potentially a burden that the employer can't bear.
Also, you're describing a situation where bad behavior becomes a protected class as soon as you get arrested for it.
In my high school, a teacher was caught raping one of his teenage students. He was fired for it.
In your opinion, if he had been arrested, he should have had his paycheck legally protected until his trial ended.
That's absolutely, totally insane. I don't know what country you live in, but I'm glad to live in the US where I can fire someone I know has committed a crime. It is possible to know things before the criminal justice system decides they are true.
Hooray for people having their entire lives destroyed because someone decided they 'know' something which might not even be true.
There are plenty of cases of trials over rape or assault allegations which were entirely fictitious.
This isn't even really the point being discussed. It's more that someone could be fired for an arrest over a an offence which has absolutely nothing to do with their job.
> Hooray for people having their entire lives destroyed because someone decided they 'know' something which might not even be true.
People are not entitled to due process to keep their jobs. Where do you draw the line? Should it be illegal to fire someone for failing a drug test (which are not 100% reliable) until a jury finds them guilty?
> There are plenty of cases of trials over rape or assault allegations which were entirely fictitious.
There are very, very few[1]. You're just more likely to hear about the false ones.
This makes logical sense. It is personally costly to the accuser to accuse someone of rape, even when the accusation is completely true.
The accuser is subject to people calling them a slut, liar, etc.
> In my country, even schoolteachers being investigated for sexual abuse aren't fired.
> It's more that someone could be fired for an arrest over a an offence which has absolutely nothing to do with their job.
So you're moving the goalposts. First, you said that even a teacher accused of sexual abuse (which is very much related to their job) shouldn't be fired. Now you're saying that should only be true if the crime is related to the job.
Does that mean I shouldn't be allowed to fire someone for being filmed murdering someone on camera? That person hasn't been convicted yet. The legal system considers them innocent.
You say you want a blanket ban on firing people for accusations of crimes, but then you don't address what we should do for the edge cases. Nothing you're asking for makes any legal sense.
I should be able to fire someone for any reason that isn't my own prejudice. Freedom of association is important.
Paid by the government, so the burden isn't directly on the employer.
Yes, a rapist should be protected before his trial is over. If you're so sure he's guilty, why even have a trial? Just do summary justice. There's a reason we have due process and countries like Russia and China that don't are seen as human rights violators.
That's an argument for a speedier judicial process, not allowing a lack of employment protection to act like a non-judicial punitive action (that then also likely hinders the actual defence within the justice system).
> I'm glad to live in the US where I can fire someone I know has committed a crime. It is possible to know things before the criminal justice system decides they are true.
That's the opposite of what the constitution sets out to provide.
> That's the opposite of what the constitution sets out to provide.
The Constitution does not include "accused criminals" as a protected class. Please point to the exact section of the Constitution that includes them.
I'm going to be charitable and assume you meant that presumption of innocence is in the Constitution, which it actually isn't[1]. As set forth elsewhere and respected in the US, presumption of innocence applies only to the legal system. You do not have a right to the presumption of innocence by your fellow citizens.
And as I asked in another comment: if I witness someone committing a crime and decide to fire them, should the government force me to wait until they are convicted of the crime?
What if the victim doesn't want to press charges? What if the criminal abuses to legal system or repeatedly appeals, resulting in a delay of multiple years before they are convicted?
This is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard. No one should be forced to keep someone on payroll that they have good reason to suspect is dangerous or dishonest.
Should've started and ended with that and I might've believed you, but
> This is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard.
It seems fitting to place those quotes next to each other.
To your charitable assumptions and questions:
> The Constitution does not include "accused criminals" as a protected class. Please point to the exact section of the Constitution that includes them.
As you wish. The 5th and 14th amendments[1] provide a right to due process. The "protected class" you're looking for is “All persons within the territory of the United States are entitled to its protection, including corporations, aliens, and presumptively citizens seeking readmission to the United States”.
> if I witness someone committing a crime and decide to fire them, should the government force me to wait until they are convicted of the crime?
No, and I certainly wasn't suggesting that. Was anyone? I made sure to put the most important objection in the very first line of my response:
> That's an argument for a speedier judicial process
and I continued with its de facto opposite, the one that you appeared and appear eager to support:
> allowing a lack of employment protection to act like a non-judicial punitive action
because you were arguing this:
> If they're paid while the justice is being worked out and their trial takes years, that is potentially a burden that the employer can't bear.
They're turning up to work, right? The employer could bear it the day before their arrest so they can the day after.
> Also, you're describing a situation where bad behavior becomes a protected class as soon as you get arrested for it.
Your strange fantasy about being able to fire a rapist that you know did it when you were surely also the one that hired this reprobate is at once amusingly ironic and the setup for one of the worst straw man arguments I think I'll have the misfortune to witness for a good long while.
This is confusing, because you are linking here to a story about a couple in Maryland. "Cindy and Fred", as quoted in the post you replied to, are in Florida.
It's a similar situation, so the confusion is not surprising. I had to bounce back and forth a couple times myself because it didn't quite seem to line up. Thought maybe one was an updated version of the other with the false names revealed as actual people, but it turns out the situations are different. One of the kids is a different age, and in one case the kids were going to the park and back and in the other one the older kid was walking home from school playing ball in his own yard waiting for his parents to arrive.
I have a strong suspicion that "Cindy and Fred" are in fact minorities and this is just plain vanilla southern racism at play. This is the state terrorizing minority communities to remind them who is in charge. That's usually what is going on when you see gross miscarriages of justice like this in the south.
Florida. There are two cases being discussed in this thread and at least one post explicitly conflates them. "Cindy and Fred" are in Florida. The other story is a different couple in a similar though different situation. They are actually named, and live in Maryland.
"officials placed two brothers into foster care after one, 11, was found playing basketball alone in his own yard."
He'd gotten home early from school and his parents came 90 minutes later. He was in his own yard. The family lost their children to foster care. Ironically in foster care ACTUAL abuse rates are pretty darn high!
"When Cindy and Fred arrived home they were arrested for child neglect — then fingerprinted, strip searched, and held in jail overnight.Their kids, meanwhile, including their 4-year-old boy, were removed from the home and from their parents’ custody"
Mom worked in the school district ironically.
"We still do not have our children, we are fighting for our own freedom and due to the nature of my employment I am no longer employed,” she wrote. “My son was in his own yard playing basketball, not in the street or at the park. The authorities claim he had no access to water or shelter. We have an open shed in the back yard and 2 working sinks and 2 hoses. They said he had no food. He ate his snacks already. He had no bathroom, but the responding officer found our yard good enough to relieve himself in while our son sat in a police car alone."
Being accused of child abuse / neglect is a career ender. The idea of my 4 year old being taken is beyond belief. What is so ironic is so many real / terrible things are happening (crime of all sorts / abuse in the traditional sense / financial fraud online) where nothing happens. But your kid shoots some hoops in their own yard, you lose custody. You are jailed and strip searched. You lose your job.
I realize big government is here to protect us, I just wish they would focus on the harder problems.