General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMore child "neglect" insanity: 8 yr. old son of dying mother skips church, gets dad arrested
Last edited Sun Jul 20, 2014, 06:59 PM - Edit history (2)
for neglect. In Ohio. The dad's facing six months in jail.
http://dailysignal.com/2014/07/07/son-skips-church-father-arrested-child-endangerment/
What started out as a normal Sunday morning for Jeffrey Williamson of Blanchester, Ohio, turned into a nightmare when police officers showed up to his front door and arrested him in front of his family. His crime? Child endangermentas the authorities described itbecause his son skipped church to go play with friends. He now faces up to six months in jail.
According to Williamson, the local Woodville Baptist Church sends a van to his neighborhood twice a week to offer free transportation to those interested in attending services. Williamsons children ride the van regularly on Wednesdays and Sundays. This morning was no different, as his eight-year-old son Justin and siblings said goodbye to their father and left their house to board the van.
One problem: Justin skipped church and went to play instead.
The young boy stayed in the neighborhood to play with friends and then later ended up at the local Family Dollar store down the road. After police officers were called to the store by a customer who recognized Justin, they took him back to his neighborhood where they proceeded to arrest his father for child endangerment.
Williamson recounted his interaction with the police officer, stating, The next thing you know, he comes up to me and he says, Youre under arrest. My kids start crying their eyes out wondering why Im getting arrested.
http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/warren-county/blanchester/church-bus-driver-takes-blame-for-parents-arrest-
Williamson also told WCPO that his ex-wife is in hospice with terminal cancer and the court gave him custody of their four kids.
The Clinton County prosecutor did not return a call for comment on the case.
Williamson is due in court July 15.
__________________________________
Also, a thoughtful piece on the general issue from today's NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-the-parent-trap.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region
But the pattern a criminalization of parenthood, in the words of The Washington Posts Radley Balko still looks slightly nightmarish, and there are forces at work here that we should recognize, name and resist.
First is the upper-class, competition-driven vision of childhood as a rigorously supervised period in which unattended play is abnormal, risky, weird. This perspective hasnt just led to the erosion of child culture, to borrow a quote from Hanna Rosins depressing Atlantic essay on The Overprotected Kid; it has encouraged bystanders and public servants to regard a deviation from constant supervision as a sign of parental neglect.
Second is the disproportionate anxiety over child safety, fed by media coverage of every abduction, every murdered child, every tragic hot car death. Such horrors are real, of course, but the danger is wildly overstated: Crime rates are down, abductions and car deaths are both rare, and most of the parents leaving children (especially non-infants) in cars briefly or letting them roam a little are behaving perfectly responsibly.
Third is an erosion of community and social trust, which has made ordinary neighborliness seem somehow unnatural or archaic, and given us instead what Gracy Olmsteads article in The American Conservative dubs the bad Samaritan phenomenon the passer-by who passes the buck to law enforcement as expeditiously as possible. (Technology accentuates this problem: Why speak to a parent when you can just snap a smartphone picture for the cops?)
Louisiana1976
(3,962 posts)Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)Idiocy everywhere.
John1956PA
(2,654 posts)From http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/10/loc_warrenvote10.html :
Warren Co. defends lockdown decision
FBI denies warning officials of any special threat
By Erica Solvig and Dan Horn
Enquirer staff writers
LEBANON - Warren County officials, facing scrutiny of their decision to lock down the administration building on election night, say they were responding to a terrorist threat that ranked a "10" on a scale of 1 to 10.
The information, which Commissioner Pat South said was previously deemed confidential, is coming out a week after the public was barred from viewing the Warren County vote count. The Ohio Secretary of State's office doesn't know of any other county in the state to impose such a restriction.
County officials initially said they feared that having reporters and photographers present could interfere with the ballot counting. They subsequently cited homeland security concerns.
Now, they say an FBI agent told them that Warren County ranked a "10" on a terrorism scale. However, state and federal homeland security officials said Tuesday they were unaware of any specific threat against the county.
. . .
pnwmom
(108,955 posts)NBachers
(17,081 posts)tammywammy
(26,582 posts)Response to pnwmom (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
Initech
(100,038 posts)pnwmom
(108,955 posts)2pooped2pop
(5,420 posts)So what happened?
pnwmom
(108,955 posts)Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)Another industry that has grown under the most liberal president in history