Mom Arrested for leaving 9 yo in park

At the end of the CNN story:

"This saying helps a lot of people: 'All the worry in the world doesn't prevent death. It prevents life.' "

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I don't know if that's literally true, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

I think this is a new article.

http://news.yahoo.com/sc-moms-arrest-sparks-child-care-debate-185002738.html

But some of their neighbors tell The Associated Press that Harrell shouldn't be vilified, because many nearby families also leave their kids at Summerfield Park. In the South Carolina summer, the park has obvious appeal to kids: there's cool water on a splash pad, a playground and basketball courts, and a volunteer comes by with a free breakfast and lunch. Plenty of friends and some parents and caretakers also are around to keep an eye on things, they say.


"Her child is not the only one at that park without a parent. There are children all over this neighborhood. They hold the feed-a-child program. There's that splash pad too," said Angelina Scott, who lives one street over from Harrell and has a daughter in the same grade as Regina.

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A worker for the charity that feeds needy children said she often saw Regina there and knew she wasn't with her mother, but apparently didn't think it necessary to call police

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(underlining mine)

Assuming the above is accurate, the child was hardly "alone."

So a modern Mrs. Grundy got a woman arrested for no apparent reason, is what this whole story boils down to in the end? I'd say the Atlantic article didn't go far enough in it's condemnation of the arrest. I'd say the officials involved should be walking the unemployment lines, or at least be severely reprimanded so this kind of legal assault doesn't happen again. This crap's gotten out of hand and a message needs to be sent in no uncertain terms.

Oh, and Mrs. Grundy should be punished too. I'm not sure what's appropriate, but maybe a nice civil suit for a few tens of thousands of dollars will teach her to mind her own damned business.

If there are so many unattended children at the park, why was *this* particular child asked? Why was *this* particular parent arrested?

For me, those added details from the Yahoo news story paint an even darker picture here. And, yeah, there is a bit of pun intended there.

Mom Jailed for Letting Her Kid Play Unsupervised Also Fired From Job

No one should be surprised. She was arrested and charged with a felony. McDonald's (almost any employer, really) almost has to fire such an employee.

Once the charges are dropped (as they should be), I would fully expect McDonald's to rehire her. But the dropping of charges is FAR from assured. If A, I expect B, but that doesn't mean that I expect A.

Devil Ledbetter said:

Is it just me or did anyone else get an assload of virus popups from that link? I expected better from Reason. WTF.

Don, please summarize.

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I run Firefox with NoScript, so I don't see popups or other crap unless I explicitly tell the browser to allow them.

It's a short article, here are two of the six paragraphs:

Harrell was jailed for one night. Her daughter was kept in state custody for a whopping 17 days.

That's right: Seventeen days in custody, all because her mother wanted to let her play outside rather than sit inside a stuffy restaurant all day.

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Devil Ledbetter said:

Is it just me or did anyone else get an assload of virus popups from that link? I expected better from Reason. WTF.

Don, please summarize.

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I run Chrome, but I've been visiting Reason for as long as they've been on-line, and I've never seen a popup or a virus from there.

Ben covered the rest of the article, mostly. Although her being fired is the bad news, there's some good news too:

Robert Phillips, a trial lawyer, has taken Harrell's case a pro bono. And someone (not me) set up a "Support Debra Harrell" fund that currently has about $30,000 in it.

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robjvargas said:

If there are so many unattended children at the park, why was *this* particular child asked? Why was *this* particular parent arrested?

For me, those added details from the Yahoo news story paint an even darker picture here. And, yeah, there is a bit of pun intended there.

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This was bothering me as well. If this is true and there are volunteers and people who bring food and drinks for the kids, this sounds like a really nice set up to me. It's not at all the same as sending a child to a park and just hoping someone else will take care of them if something goes wrong. I'd still rather have a child at home for various reasons, but I have a lot less of an issue with this in these circumstances.

But really, if it's happening so much, why in this specific case was there an issue? It's possible someone who doesn't know the situation called it in and no one else has been reported, but I would suspect that any investigation would find that this wasn't a super dangerous situation and that charges would be dropped.

Then again, a mom was just arrested for letting her 7 year old walk to the park by himself. So who knows.

kaitie said:

Then again, a mom was just arrested for letting her 7 year old walk to the park by himself. So who knows.

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In-freakin'-sane.

I don't think this video has been posted yet. Free Range Kids has the interrogation video posted. Here'll has sued over the release, saying the original version didn't redact her social security number.

http://www.freerangekids.com/watch-...jailed-for-letting-her-daughter-play-at-park/

The video of her interrogation just makes me more angry that she was even arrested, much less charged.

They don't even question her assertion that other people do it.

Freakin' busybody bugs. Those of you who can think of more colorful turns of phrase, you're right. I'm just trying to keep my rile down a bit.