The problem is that it’s still just her telling her side of the story. We have no other facts other than what she’s saying.
I don’t think this is strictly a Republican-Democratic issue but I do believe a kind of politics or world-view comes into it. It’s about “the world is a dangerous place, muggers & child molesters around every corner, keep your children as close at hand or under observation as possible” vs. “crime has been exaggerated so people are afraid of their shadows, there were muggers and molesters when we were kids too but our parents let us have some measure of freedom, there are costs as well as benefits to guarding your kids like the Crown Jewels or prisoners.” Of course, adherents to the former generally don’t literally lock up their kids, nor do adherents to the latter generally leave their kids completely to their own devices.
And I think cops and prosecutors are going to tend towards believing stronger versions of the former and thinking adherents to the latter are irresponsible fools. While they should know the statistics better than anyone, having arrested and prosecuted many non-stranger victimizers of children, they also have heartbreaking anecdotal evidence of “the kid left alone for five minutes” and the like.
But belief in these views doesn’t necessarily break down along party lines. A lot comes down to personal experience; IME city dwellers tend a little more to the latter approach and suburbanites to the former, having already self-selected with their different thresholds for accepting an ambiguous environment vs. a more (apparently) certain one.
I’m sure a lot of libertarians (like the Reason staff) lean more the latter way, but I also know a lot of moderate Democrats who’ve swallowed the “stranger danger/tight control” philosophy. It only takes a few at CPS to agree with the first philosophy to end up with a case like this one.
Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?
It’s hard to draw any conclusions on that, one way or the other. CPS in Texas has been notoriously ineffective at protecting children from actual abusers, and in the meantime has been ordered to go all in on investigating the parents of trans children into oblivion with no exceptions.
I just re-read the original article and the Independent article and I don’t see either one making that statement?
Quote?
Child services had the family agree to a safety plan, which meant Wallace and her husband could not be alone with their kids for even a second. Their mothers—the children’s grandmothers—had to visit and trade-off overnight stays in order to guarantee the parents were constantly supervised. After two weeks, child services closed Wallace’s case, finding the complaint was unfounded.
Yeah - The Independent at least says they tried to contact Texas Department of Family and Protective Services - but they aren’t going to comment due to confidentiality. We actually do have a couple of facts other than what she’s saying - it’s a fact that neither writer reports speaking to her attorney or seeing the court documents that specify exactly what she is accused of doing ( not “endangering a child” but exactly what she did to endanger that child) or speaking to the neighbor who allegedly called the police. Wallace absolutely could have allowed the lawyer to speak to the writers or give them the court documents if she couldn’t provide a copy herself and the neighbor didn’t even need Wallace’s permission to speak to the writers. So did the writers speak to the attorney and the neighbor and see the court documents? If not , why? Was it because Wallace wouldn’t allow it or wouldn’t identify the neighbor? Or did one of the writers speak to them and what they said didn’t fit the story that the author wanted to write? Who knows? The one thing I am certain of is that the writers did not see court documents that told the exact story Wallace told, nor did they speak to a neighbor who said she called the police for no reason other than that she saw a boy who lived on the next block walking alone at about 5 in the afternoon. Because if they had, that certainly would have been in the story.
@PastTense beat me to it, but yeah, that’s what I was talking about. Does the fact that CPS, those who you claim to be more likely to be Democrats, didn’t go along with the prosecution of the mom change any of the conclusions that you made based on that assertion?
No, we have cops who are very tolerant of certain kinds of people. The same cops who will be deferential and placating to middle-class suburbanites are not likely to treat people in other groups quite the same. As a middle-aged middle-class white female in the 'burbs myself (albeit in Kansas), I am well aware that I have certain privileges, one of which is that most cops will likely start off with the assumption that I am telling the truth and that I am not a threat to them. That’s not a privilege everybody enjoys, but I’d guess she probably does.
How mouthy do you think you can get away with being towards a cop?
If they came to your door with your kid they picked up off the street, wanting to give you a lecture on how to raise them, and you told them to kindly fuck right off, do you think they’d say, “Yes ma’am.” and be on their way?
There are two different sets of laws at play. CPS has certain actions they can take, regarding custody of the child or who gets to spend unsupervised time with him. The original article claims that CPS basically backed off because of recent changes in the law affecting them, that was sponsored by the article-writer’s organization. Criminal charges are different from CPS actions, and are based on different law, and that law was not changed The same incident might or might not trigger both CPS action and criminal charges. For this incident, CPS was (allegedly) obliged to close the case, but the criminal law was still in play.
If they came to my door with my kid they picked up off the street under the circumstances she states, they most likely would not be wanting to give me a lecture in the first place. That’s rather the point: the way the cops even approach suburbanite white women is quite a bit more deferential than the way they approach some other groups.
No, as I said, my point was that if the accuser is saying, “Them Democrats are doing X” then pointing out that the nefarious people in question are Republicans is important to point out as part of the analysis. There’s literally no greater meaning behind mentioning it and I’ve been very clear about that.
That a 3rd party, who was directly involved in the situation, said that the punishment was not merited bears noting - so I am sorry that I missed that. But that’s independent of politics. It’s that it’s a 3rd party, who has been able to investigate and understand the situation.
But I would still question why they didn’t tell her and her lawyer that they’d gladly testify on her behalf. Having someone from Child Protective Services willing to come in and say, “Nope, she’s solid”. Seems like a slam dunk, in court.
I would also wonder whether someone in CPS would be allowed to talk to a journalist about a case, so I don’t know that I’d trust that the idea that CPS was on her side is something that’s been independently verified.
Ultimately, we don’t know how much work the journalist put into the article. If it’s as presented then the lady should get an apology and, as the article suggests, the laws should be revoked or better clarified as to what situations they accept and don’t accept. So it’s just a matter of double-checking and seeing if there are any chinks in the armor.
At least here in Kansas, a violation of criminal law will get CPS interested at least as much as a violation of family law; they will in fact be quicker to implement safety plans and remove kids from the home if somebody is accused of criminal endangerment.
@Roderick_Femm
That’s true to a certain extent - but here’s the law in Texas
Sec. 22.041. ABANDONING OR ENDANGERING CHILD. (a) In this section, “abandon” means to leave a child in any place without providing reasonable and necessary care for the child, under circumstances under which no reasonable, similarly situated adult would leave a child of that age and ability.
(b) A person commits an offense if, having custody, care, or control of a child younger than 15 years, he intentionally abandons the child in any place under circumstances that expose the child to an unreasonable risk of harm.
(c) A person commits an offense if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence, by act or omission, engages in conduct that places a child younger than 15 years in imminent danger of death, bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment.
Any behavior fitting that description will also be abuse or neglect if the person is under the jurisdiction of CPS*. And CPS cases generally have to meet a lower standard of evidence than criminal cases - there certainly is not a higher standard. But I just realized something else - the information that CPS closed the case in two weeks after determining that the case was unfounded also comes only from Wallace and Wallace could still be under CPS supervision without anyone other than her household knowing that - because CPS can’t talk. Others might know if the kids were in foster care or couldn’t be alone with the parents, but I worked in CPS and it’s entirely possible for the CPS case to be remain open even while the kids live with the parents without 24/7 supervision by someone else. It’s even possible for a case to be closed within a couple of weeks even if it is not unfounded. **
* usually parents/ parental substitutes, sometimes includes teachers and child care workers but not just everyone - if a stranger hits your kid, CPS is not going to investigate.
** In my experience, this would happen for incidents that would not happen again - one example is that people who a kid nearly drown in a bucket aren’t going to use those large buckets anymore.
Is someone doing that?
And of course, how Republicans are paragons of virtue who would never abuse their authority.
Fair, actually, I think that there is even less meaning behind mentioning it, which is why it is odd that you chose to.
Is that something that they are allowed to do? I have no idea. And maybe they would have, had it gone to trial rather than her being pressured into taking a plea deal.
CPS probably can’t speak directly about the specifics of a case, no. But at this point, you are not looking to fill in holes in the story, you are just straight up calling her a liar.
There are many stories where that should be the resolution, but it very rarely is. It’s important not to fall for the Just World hypothesis, because very often, it is not.
And then it falls to opinion. Even if you, as the parent of this child, don’t think that them walking a couple blocks through suburbia exposes them to an unreasonable amount of harm, if it is the opinion of a cop, that letting your kid walk a couple blocks through suburbia constitutes exposes them to an unreasonable risk of harm, then they will charge you with that offense. IOW, the state is telling you how to raise your family.
I mean, it’s one thing to question the nuances of the story, and to try to feel out what the holes in it could be shaped like, and it’s another to just straight up claim that it is fabricated. If we think that the mother is just straight up lying, then there is no reason to even consider any parts of the story at all.
Reason is a Libertarian Republican news source. Ergo, it was worth pointing out who was involved in the decision.
There’s no larger message.
I’m not claiming she’s fabricating the whole thing. But the story she tells doesn’t make sense - the neighbor and the police think she endangered the kid simply by having him walk a short distance, the police arrest her, she gets indicted , the lawyer tells her to take a deal (which suggests that the lawyer thinks it’s not a good idea to go to trial ) but somehow CPS doesn’t think she did anything inappropriate, At all - not just that they don’t think the kids need to be in foster care, not that it’s a one time thing that won’t happen again and no further monitoring is needed . Nope, they decided that there was absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with what she did while somehow there was enough evidence that she committed a felony that her lawyer advised her to take a deal. She’s either lying about some of it or didn’t give the writer all of the information or she and/or the writer didn’t really understand what happened - maybe CPS closed the case within 2 weeks and Wallace and/or the writer just assumed that the closing meant the case was determined to be unfounded and it really wasn’t. Maybe there was a very different story in the court documents and Wallace didn’t tell the writer what she was actually accused of doing.
There are situations where there might be no CPS issue but there’s a criminal case for endangerment - but they’re cases where the person’s relationship to the child doesn’t allow for a CPS case. Not where everyone agrees on what happened and CPS says “no problem” while the CJ system is charging someone with a felony.
FWIW, Reason evidently didn’t share your skepticism. And, predictably, this is making the rounds on the libertarian subreddits, and is also not being met with any skepticism there.
This “story” is serving its current purpose, which is to feed content to the right-wing rage machine. It ticks two boxes for them – America is full of a bunch of pussies, and the nanny state won’t let you raise your kids how you want.
Honestly, I don’t see the point of the thread, as we have.
- Single source of information that appears to be repeated without new information in other sites.
- Said single source has an identifiable lean / agenda.
- Said source is from a single participant in the event.
- Said source is directly profiting from via the GoFundMe regarding the event.
PS - said thread is in the Pit, which seems to indicate the OP wanted us to be offended either for or by the original event.
Not that we don’t all looooove to suck and savor microscopic bits of information to be in the know, or at least be know-it-alls (Myself included 
) - but short of getting some additional information in the future, it’s all a bit much to tear each other apart over. Not that it isn’t a feature of the Pit, just seems we could do it over something more meaty!
Yep. And that’s the only reason party actually matters: it shows how even when Republicans misbehave in government positions, somehow it gets translated by the uninformed and the gullible into “look at what those oppressive liberal nanny-staters are doing today!”