Some idiots in Washington decided to make a video raising public awareness about the threat of child abduction (because obviously there hasn’t been enough attention already given to this).
So how do they do it? They stage a fake child abduction in a public park. With other families around, they pull up in a van, jump out wearing masks, grab a child (who was actually the son of his “kidnapper”), throw him in the van, and race off.
Lucky they were not shot, or otherwise seriously hurt by someone deciding to intervene.
Well, now I am aware that kids are sometimes abducted by assholes!
The more you know…
Didn’t you know? Busy playgrounds are where all the kidnappers do their snatching and grabbing nowadays!
Seems to me that most kids get abducted when they’re walking down quiet residential streets to and from school. But quiet residential street don’t appeal to attention-seeking fearmongers. I hope the judge throws the book at these fools.
Yes, on top of all the stupidities of what they did, they’re trying to publicize one of the least likely scenarios for an abduction.
We can only hope that there isn’t some future genuine abduction in a public place where bystanders hesitate to interfere due to having heard about this fake abduction.
I’d have called that a draw. Do something stupid; pay the consequences.
I’m more glad that nobody else was hurt in an attempt to stop the “kidnapping”.
Meh. The people involved are obviously idiots, partially because they imagined a YouTube video on child abduction would raise awareness rather than spreading ignorance. But I’m slightly amused and largely indifferent to this story.
2/10 would not pit.
I endorse this pitting. ‘Stranger Danger’ is way overblown, and parents should not be terrified to let their kids out of their sight. The vast majority of adults are not a danger to children, and crowded, public areas like playgrounds (during the day), malls, amusement parks, water parks, etc., are extremely unlikely to have a snatching right out in the open.
Statistically, children are in no more danger of being kidnapped now than they were 50 years ago. The only thing that has changed is the media.
Yeah, the media has changed, but also, NGOs have gotten into the business of promoting hysteria about human trafficking because they get millions in government grants for combating it and the actual statistics aren’t all that alarming. For example, one NGO-sponsored study found that as many as 300,000 of American children were “at risk” for being trafficked. And that number has been cited in a lot of papers as being the number of children who are ACTUALLY being trafficked. But as various debunkers have noted, the problem with the study is thatit is based on some ridiculous standards for being "at risk"such as living within 50 miles of the US or Canadian border.
So this looks like another desperate attempt to make things look worse than they really are. Don’t get me wrong … one child kidnapped is too many. But really … this is a board dedicated to fighting ignorance, and I’m glad to see this bullshit being called for what it is. And with NGOs pumping out bullcrap by the ton to keep the money flowing from government agencies, people tend to get some very wrong ideas, because the media, both liberal and conservative, just lap that stuff up.
Isn’t that exactly what an Evil Captor would want us to believe?
Police chief said it best: “There’s no law against stupid.”
Watch the video in the OP’s link. The two guys are laughing as they drive away. I can just see the next “awareness” video: “Hey, Rudiger, we need you to put on this white hood, right? And go into the building where all the people are singing!”
The kid’s mom is there too, telling the cops, “We just didn’t think people would care so much…We didn’t think people would react this way.” People reacted the way they should. They didn’t look the other way: they followed, and tried to get the license plate, and called 911. Awareness was raised long ago.
As for being shot, a responsible gun owner would not have shot at someone who was holding a child. But, in the video, the cop who pulls them over says that he was fully prepared to shoot the driver of the van if necessary.
ETA: They also claim that it should have been okay because they “notified police minutes before” that they were going to do this. Didn’t mention getting permission, though.
Makes sense. They say that kids are more likely to be abducted by a family member than a stranger, don’t they?
Apparently, that is all that ever happens down here since all of our Amber Alerts have way too many details to have been stranger abductions. Don’t really get how custody fights become Amber Alerts.
A possible scenario would be kidnapping parent with no known address / has moved / has left the country as the ex of a friend tried to do with her new husband and the kid she’d previously abandoned along with her first marriage. I think she might still be in prison.
There are enough irresponsible gun owners out there to make this a significant possibility. Or maybe a responsible gun owner closes the distance and fires at the perp’s head from close range to minimize the odds of hitting the kid.
They’ve done other stupid shit too, including staging a robbery. That one raises the odds of getting shot in the act significantly higher than the staged kidnapping.
People stage fake kidnapping to raise awareness, and are surprised when awareness is raised. Makes sense.
They’ve got that unshakable sense of moral superiority that comes from being dumb as a box of rocks.
All I want to say is that I read that link as “Fake abduction in park outrages many in SEQUINS.”
I guess I’m from the olden times when an Amber Alert was for when a kid was snatched by person(s) unknown. These days it seems like we get one every week that all look like custody issues.