Were you, as so many of today’s kids, imprisoned through your childhood? From about first grade, I walked to the corner ‘convenience store’ that we used to call the grocery. I walked about a mile to school in my part of Los Angeles, crossing a main boulevard at a signal with the supervision of a school crossing guard. No, it wasn’t uphill both ways and there was no snow for me to walk in barefoot, and my mom usually drove me on rainy days. My wife, in her corner of the city, had the same experience as did most kids we knew. But as we all know, time passes and things change, right?
Cops Detain 6 Yr Old is Emily’s tale. She’s a “free range kid” per her mom (I guess this is now rare enough that they have named the genre.) She’s been carefully trained (as I was) in talking to strangers, crossing streets, finding her way etc. She knows the shopkeepers where she shops and they obviously know her, again as it was in my dim past. All very familiar to folk of my years but with one disturbing difference: If I were exiting the little corner grocery as a couple of cops came in, I wouldn’t expect to be arrested and hauled in for being a kid.
The cops grabbed Emily and took her away when the shopkeeper answered them, no, Emily’s parents weren’t in the store. When Emily’s mom thought her daughter had been gone too long, she followed her to the store, where the shopkeeper told her Emily had been taken by the cops.
When mom went to the police station to collect her daughter, the cops refused to release the kid until they received approval from child protective services, which took a while. So it appears that a kid who behaves today as did I and everyone I knew, is subject to arrest on suspicion of…something. The cops wouldn’t tell Emily’s mom what law was involved when she inquired.
I believe the cops were simply worried about a 6 year old on her own in the city. I believe the ‘anonymous’ caller who had earlier reported to the police Emily’s crossing a busy boulevard unsupervised was also just concerned for Emily. And I believe too that Emily’s mom and dad are if anything, more concerned about their daughter. What worries me, is the amount of change a few decades has brought to America.
Back when, we had pedophiles, crime, traffic, drunk drivers and rather more kidnappings of kids; none of those are recent.
Kids were generally told–all of us–“Go play outdoors, you’re driving me crazy!” We met the neighbor’s kids who’d been chased out the same way and the neighborhood became acquainted through that. And all those stay-at-home moms knew all the neighborhood kids and who their moms were and they all spied for each other. It was more efficient than drones and satellites; we went out until the next scheduled meal and no one worried. We developed a lot of social and political skills that way, too. And others, of course. We grew up with confidence in ourselves and no need for others to supply our ‘structure.’ We taught each other how to behave and how not to behave. All that seems now to have disappeared, vanished into some dark hole someplace.
Back then, if a cop had seen me looking lost (He wouldn’t bother if I seemed to know what I was doing), he might stop and ask me where I lived and what I was doing. If I was lost, he’d likely take me home. If I knew what I was about, he’d go his way, not report me to child protection services as a problem.
Some of us will see Emily’s case as perfectly appropriate policing. They’ll be happy for our caring society. Others may see it as heavy-handed state interference in citizens’ private business. And to me, that split is by itself, disturbing. It says we aren’t agreed on what sort of society we want or on what our rights should be or even, on what a parents’ authority should be in raising their children. That makes me worry.
Looking back, I’d rather the society of my youth than what we’ve made for ourselves. It had plenty of faults of course, but nobody was arrested and hauled off at age 6 for being a free range kid. That was the only kind we had… They grew up to be pretty useful citizens.
jcurtisblog 
I think that the police went a little overboard, but I really don’t think it’s right to just let a child go off somewhere by themselves either, not without a friend or someone else. They didn’t arrest her for being a kid, they just wanted to make sure she was being taken care of.
It was an innocent time you describe. We stayed innocent because we knew who the queers were and queer wasn’t promoted as normal. Not that I wasn’t tried. Older boy next door victimized me to some extent, not sodomy. I learned quick so that later when youth leaders at church made advances…I showed them my Knuckle Sandwich. I really did and they complained to my parents. Luckily it was my dad that taught me how to be a East Side Kid down South. I saw the flicks too!
Back then the little mom and pop “convenience store” at the end of the school block across the corner made a living selling us a coke and peanuts or bag of Frietos (with real sausage bits) after school, for 10 cents. That was late ’40’s early 5o’s. Their shop was formerly a Texaco station maybe 40 years before. All washed away now due to couple of hurricanes, house or home built there now. But old Texaco sign post still there on corner, glad they like memorabilia. Don’t live there anymore but drive by to see when I get over there, may not get to see again, but memory is there long as I last.
Right and wrong were day and night or light and dark; clear to all No moral grayscales or “If you’re from a cannibal culture, I shouldn’t criticize your lunch.”
In the 70’s I was between 6 to 10 years old and went for a walk to a friend house or a park that’s little extra miles then the friend house across the street but I wondered after hearing about this article above how can a government interfere with families, anyway if we today detain a child like the police did, will kidnap is kind of trouble we be in.