I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
In the meantime, I read that neither he nor his sister had ever been to school, and their house was full of hoarded garbage. The landlord had been suspicious because they would leave the rent on the porch and not let him into their house.
I’m mystified how a 7yo could reach 255lbs no matter what evil you did to them.
Googling, seven-year-olds are typically four feet tall and about fifty pounds. So this child was five times that weight.
One of Kentucky’s slimy Senators (the one who still mostly walks upright, Rand Paul) is rapidly approaching delusional obsession with Dr. Anthony Fauci, determined to punish him for imagined crimes. It’s reached the point where the great majority of Rand Paul’s posts on Twitter are about Fauci, including one where he rants about Fauci allegedly being an agent of the “Deep State” for years. Another example:
What a toxic nutcase Paul is.
*noting that Trump’s henchmen will be the beneficiary of blanket pardons for actual crimes.
He’s been hit in the head too many times by angry neighbors.
I’m not sure you’re grasping “anonymous” here…
Several decades ago I made an anonymous accusation of child abuse against a neighbor. I wasn’t doing it as a prank, there really were some terrible things going on, but the report was genuinely anonymous. I made a phone call, and didn’t give my name, or location, or any other identifying details. I did give as much detailed information as I could. I guess the difference there/than was that instead of sending a SWAT team the authorities actually investigated before removing the children from the home. They couldn’t “look at the background of the accuser” because they didn’t know who I was (anonymous, you know?) and had no way to look into my background. It wasn’t a matter of being “allowed” to be anonymous, I actually was anonymous.
I expect that these days remaining anonymous would be harder than it was around 1980, but still possible.
That said, let me address a few others things that are now apparent after I actually read the article behind the headline.
First, this was not “Swatting”. Swatting is when someone calls in and something like an actual, armed SWAT team goes in loaded for bear. What happened here is the normal procedure. The ONLY reason this made the news is because someone with money and some power was the focus.
Interviewing the kids without any family around is standard procedure.
Removing the kids until the interview is completed is also standard procedure.
Buttigieg stated that everyone involved was professional and courteous. It was resolved within 24 hours. I totally agree that false accusations are terrible but this is exactly what happens when an accusation of child abuse is made. This happens to thousands of families every year in this country. I’ve seen it happen in things like ugly divorce cases, or when one family disapproves of another, or disapproves of a “lifestyle”. But where is the outrage for them?
On the flip side - if they didn’t investigate and it turned out a tip was true? Every investigation of crime has to start somewhere.
All tips have to be investigated, and they have to be done the same.
Now, I don’t doubt for a moment that in this case there were possible political and homophobic motivations. Traverse City is on the conservative side of the state and there are plenty of bigots there that believe homosexuals are child molesters and monsters and shouldn’t have custody of children. If MAGA retains power expect to see more and more of this.
Heck, I’m rather surprised custody wasn’t severed in this case, the twins wind up in foster case, and the Buttigiegs having to go to court and fight for years for custody. Because that certainly has happened to innocent people. All of which is an injustice.
And I remember my neighbors, of hearing and seeing a six year old beaten on a regular basis. Finding out the kids where being drugged and used to produce kiddie porn. Their mother shrieking and threatening violence and harm when she finds out who reported her. Fearing that I wouldn’t be believed when I called CPS yet afraid to let the authorities know who I was out of fear that this woman would beat me as she beat her own children if she knew it was me making the report. That one or another of her “boyfriends” would beat me as they beat her children. Or worse.
So I’m very much of two minds about this. I recognize that false accusations are harmful, but ignoring anonymous reports can also be harmful.
It’s right here. I’m outraged. Unsubstantiated anonymous hearsay on the level of “I saw Goody Proctor at the Devil’s sacrament” should absolutely NOT be legally actionable. The authorities should not be able to take someone’s children away from them because an anonymous source (who happens to be a nationally known political figure who has historically been subject to implausible accusations) claims without evidence that a total stranger confessed to them that they were a predator. Investigate the claimant before you investigate the claim.
Broomstick, you said that in your example that there was an actual investigation before the kids were removed.
That’s what I’m thinking. Based on an anonymous tip, the cops/CPS can do a welfare check to make sure there’s isn’t an obviously immediate issue. They can followup over the next day or so, but as long as (in this case, for example) the kids didn’t appear physically abused or clearly scared to be there, they aren’t getting separated from their parents tonight. I don’t know that, based on anonymous tip and no obvious abuse, that it should go much beyond maybe a CPS person talking to the kids alone (but at the house). And, again, maybe a followup the next day with the parents and/or school or other relevant people.
While do think tips like these need to be looked into, barring obvious evidence of someone being in danger, ISTM the next logical step is to require the complainant to file a formal, non-anonymous police report before the cops take kids away or any type of actual ‘swatting’ happens.
IOW, the police need to have someone willing to sign an affidavit, stating they believe or know something is happening that warrants a response like this. While that would typically be the person reporting it in the first place, it could even be a cop responding to an anonymous tip only to find it might have some merit. But no ‘swatting’ in any sense of the word, without someone to hold responsible if it turns out to be entirely fabricated BS.
I’d even be willing to set a rather high bar for the reporter to be charged with filing a false police report as you don’t want people to not report a problem for fear of getting in trouble if they’re mistaken (or they aren’t mistaken but the police can’t verify what they claimed).
I don’t know that there’s a right answer here. I’ve seen too many documentaries and read too many news articles about someone abusing their kids or SO or roommate for months or years. From time to time the police get a report about abuse at that house, but when they go there, everyone seems happy and unharmed. I think sometimes people forget that, from the cop’s POV, if nothing seems out of the ordinary, there’s no probable cause to go any further with the investigation at that time. And, with that, I think the general public doesn’t always remember that they only reason they know what’s going on, the only reason they know that if the cops just walked into the house they’d discover the abuse is because they’re watching it on Netflix years after the fact.
I think you may have missed why anonymous tips became standard—because of how underreported this was because of fears of reprisals, hassles, etc. Whether it’s wise or not, as a society we’ve decided the benefit of higher reporting (because it’s now anonymous) outweighs the very real danger of false accusations.
I will repeat, I’m not sure what the right answer is, but as a parent my gut tells me err on the side of caution (for the child). Which could very well be an emotional, illogical reaction.
It’s a very fine line that CPSes need to walk, but I’m not sure they quite got it right in this case. In particular, what kind of evidence do they need to take the step they did?
I’ve learned more two things about this case, one that enrages me more and one that relieves me a bit.
The relief comes from the fact that the twins were sent to their grandparents’ house for the night, which is a heck of a lot less traumatic than putting them with strangers. You can spin “unannounced sleepover at grandpa’s” in ways that are a lot safer for the kids’ psyches, even if said sleepover has a brief interrogation the next day.
The rage is because the accusation was two degrees of hearsay:
“An anonymous caller had contacted C.P.S.,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “The caller said that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.”
This is really different from your anonymous call. You gave events, people, actions that happened and that your had seen yourself. By contrast, the caller himself had no direct evidence. Heck, even the person who the who the caller had (supposedly) talked to had no direct evidence. The only person who had events, people, and actions they could have talked about (rather than just different levels of hearsay) was the subject of the accusation, and that’s obviously a nonstarter.
Did CPS ask to be put into contact with the woman, thus breaking one level of hearsay? And what degree of hearsay would be acceptable for CPS to take the action it did? Could we go based on the “finding-out-that-Ferris-is-sick” standard?
I agree that CPS needs to do something when confronted with this, but I think that investigating up the allegation chain should have been the right step, to the point where you had something firsthand that you could corroborate (or not, as the case might be) rather than driving a screw with a hammer because it’s the only tool in the box.
Anyway, thank you for your perspective - and for standing up and doing the right thing. A lot of people would have just looked the other way in your situation. I had a couple of friends who were the subject of a tribal CPS investigation because their own foster kids reported them (in the expectation that they would get to go back with their own family). The story fell apart under questioning, and their fosters went to another family (not their own) but they were really put to it for a while, which probably has given me a different perspective on such actions from yours.
To be clear, my suggestion wasn’t to do away with anonymous tips, it was to do away with swatting someone (or taking their kids away) based on absolutely nothing more than anonymous tip. My understanding of how this played out is that someone called the police and said “Pete is raping his kids” and the police/CPS took the kids away until they could sort things out.
What if, instead, the police got there, Pete and his husband seemed to be acting normally, the kids appeared happy, healthy and uninjured and nothing seemed out of the ordinary? The police/CPS can, in the home, separate and talk to the kids and parents on their own and if everything seems normal, they leave. They can follow up with the school to see the kids’ teachers/counselors/staff have heard anything concerning. Maybe even talk to the kids’ doctors to see if they’ve had any odd injuries. (Just spitballing here, any of these suggestions could be too far at this point). Assuming they come up empty, the next step would be to tell the anonymous tipster that they found nothing concerning and in order to go further with the investigation, they’ll need to come to the station, file an actual report and make a sworn statement explaining their exact concerns and any evidence they had.
And, in a situation like this, I’m okay with the ‘false report’ bar being set very high. Like you said, we don’t want people to not file reports for fear of the police not finding anything and getting in trouble themselves. I’ve seen a few documentaries about women reporting a rape and the cop not only talking them into retracting it, but then charging them with filing a false police report. In at least one case, the raped woman ended up in jail.
Also, just to reiterate what I said earlier, if the police get an anonymous tip and end up finding something, for example, if the kids had ligature marks on their arms and legs or black eyes etc), then the cop/CPS can be the witness and now the investigation could play out more drastically (taking kids away, arresting parents etc) because there’s evidence of a potential crime witnessed by a non-anonymous person.
TLDR: Investigating anonymous tips is fine, ‘swatting’ based on nothing more than an anonymous tip, not fine.
Do we have any kind of stats on how often a false report that leads to a swatting results in any kind of consequences for the reporter? A few people ending up in jail and/or having to pay restitution to the PD might set an example and stop some of this.
Yes, that is true… but it wasn’t that much of an investigation. The kids were taken aside at school, interviewed without the mother, then put under their grandmother’s custody the same day. Not that much different than what happened here, except for the number of lawyers that got involved back in the day.
Then again, I was pretty specific regarding gruesome scars, untreated injuries, dates, times, and a lot of other information, pretty much everything I could give.
Fair enough - and I’m inclined to agree with you.
The law is also unevenly applied, we all know that.
On the other hand, claiming that someone is raping a child I can see the authorities erring on the side of caution. But then a medical exam by a professional to asses whether or not there has been physical abuse to a six year old should be expedited.
If that had been the case back in the past then my evil next door neighbor certainly would have attacked me. One of her “boyfriends” involved in the kiddie porn end of this did get arrested for threatening violence on the neighbor he thought reported them, attempting to kick in the door which later needed repair along with the lock and doorframe.
Mr. Buttigieg and his husband are, I believe, good upstanding citizens. Not everyone else is. The purpose of anonymous reporting being an option is to protect witnesses against violence and reprisals. It is entirely possible to go too far in either direction. It wasn’t the police I feared, it was the child abuser living literally next door to me and her pimps/customers.
^ This.
It’s easy to second-guess and armchair quarterback when the case is neatly tied up into a 1 hour video.
Yes, that is certainly a big difference. My accusation was not vague, I gave a lot of specifics because, as someone clearly not adult calling I didn’t think I’d be taken seriously without giving a lot of specifics. FOAF accusations are quite different.
Yes. I am also aware of that sort of situation, too.
That’s assuming the anonymous tipster re-contacts them, but yes, either that or at least tell said person that they would need something much, much more specific because their investigation found nothing at all.
It’s really sad that someone just shot five people at a youth center in Stade, Germany today. It’s still breaking news with little details. My first association of a youth center is one with a pleasant atmosphere in so many aspects. It seems my expectation is not universal.
I tend to be a finger-pointer coming from my neighborhood. That level of violence is though very astonishing to me.
Facebook paid contractors to pretend to be children on the internet and try to prompt rival companies’ LLMs into talking about sex and drugs and suicide in order to “prove” that Facebook’s chatbot was safer than theirs.
Maybe that was part of the intent behind the program, but where in the article does it allege or prove such motivation?
That actually seems like a perfectly legitimate thing for people to be doing. Their motivation may not be entirely pure, but it’s good to have people testing these systems.