I don’t think “damage” consists merely of societal reputation. The subject’s emotional distress has to be taken into account too. Otherwise by that logic, racial profiling policies that pull people out of line and question them in private by cops don’t do any 'damage" as long as the nearby people were strangers who didn’t know the subject’s identity.
The person described in this thread, who was questioned by cops, probably was angered, humiliated, and felt unjustly wronged. That’s not trivial.
Our friend said he was going up to kids and asking them.
I do not believe that.
I know he wasn’t breaking the law.
The last time I had the police talk to me my reaction was something along the lines of “Oh shit, what did I do, I’m so sorry!” I’d like to think in this situation I would want to know what I was doing that freaked people out so that I wouldn’t do it again. However, I don’t really know since I haven’t been in that situation.
Again, we didn’t think they were going to send 3 cars and call the guy over, we were expecting them to just maybe have one officer there or something. If any of you were this guy I apologize.
I’m going to go with acting appropriately.
The over reaction is when cities say a person cannot go to the parkwithout a child.
Leaving out the dog which seems normal, the “drum incident” and asking kids if they like ice cream definitely seems predatory or “testing limits”. Plus not being there we cannot say that there wasn’t a vibe of “something ain’t right here”. And even if he had a kid there, that’s not saying anything. Child molesters don’t have kids of their own?
There was not grounds to arrest the guy. But there probably were grounds for the police to stop by and ask him a few questions. Ideally, having a little talk with the police shouldn’t even be viewed as a negative at all: The people should feel comfortable with them and vice-versa.
Suppose an African-American man finds that someone called the police on him, and now a police cruiser pulls up and these uniformed cops want to have a talk with him, while other people watch from a distance. Should he feel comfortable? Not at all put under suspicion? Not at all angered?
Well, I do. It’s called being friendly. It’s normal, or at least it was when I was being raised and acculturated. America has changed. If kids are around, you talk to them / play with them / entertain them. Fun for the kids, gives the parents a break, builds community.
What is bizarre is specifically seeking out unrelated children. But from the OP’s description, it just sounds like a guy who is good with kids. If a woman had exhibited the same behaviour, would anyone have remarked on it at all?
I take my kids to the park all the time. Kids often come up and talk with me. When they do, I engage in friendly small-talk with them, but I do two other things:
I look around for their parents so I can make eye-contact and smile and say hi to them; and
I angle my body to include my own child in the conversation.
I’m a teacher, and I spend a ton of time talking with kids without their parents around–or indeed without any other adults around (god how I miss adult conversation some days). And I would never act like the guy in this conversation, going up to have one-on-one conversations with kids without making at least eye-contact with parents. That’s a weird thing to do, that imposes unnecessary stress on parents, and it’s not cool.
I think your instincts aren’t wrong to watch out for unusual circumstances, but agree that when you escalate things to calling the police, that’s time for point blank specifics. Before I’d have picked up the phone, I’d have made certain to specifically ask him if he had a child there. If he did not, I’m sure that would’ve put him on notice that others were paying attention to him and he would’ve been out of there like a shot. Good outcome all around. If he did have a kid, then no harm, no foul, and no one is hurt or angry or feels bad about their actions.
And as echoed from up thread, I do hope you also speak to your child about your own behavior. Knowing good judgment and how to exercise it is never a lesson that’s too early to learn.
Well, sure, that’s one approach. But it’s not the standard one. A stranger who strikes up a chatty conversation with kids at a park without doing at least a visual check-in with the responsible adult is not, I think, acting responsibly.
Speaking as a poster here, this seems to be a pretty absurd reaction to what the OP said. The OP wanted to know if it was reasonable to be suspicious enough of one person’s behavior to call the police. You (apparently) think the answer is “no,” which is fine. But it’s quite a stretch to equate the OP’s actions with your…summary. Asking the police to investigate something because you aren’t sure if it’s problematic or not is not an attempt to “control the rest of the world,” even if you think there were better ways to handle the situation.
Calling the police every time you feel ooky is not a rational reaction to the world. The guy in question did nothing except defy the posters expectations. Expecting the police to show up and inspect any adult you don’t approve of, just because they are using the same public space as your kids, is nuts.
I stand by my first post. Something happening you don’t like but is perfectly legal, then you get to either tolerate it or get up and leave. You don’t get to call the cops on people who make you feel ooky. In fact if you pull this too many times they might arrest you.
When people are being reasonable they are ‘going with their spidey sense’, most likely. Unfortunately it’s the same when they are swept up in a hysteria.
IMO if somebody wants to get involved in a case like that, they should have the stones to address the person themselves not call the cops. Calling the cops should be for cases where either a crime has been committed, obviously imminent, or there’s reasonable evidence the situation would escalate negatively citizen on citizen rather than the police handling it.
But as mentioned, hard to know which responses are serious though, in some places the cops will go around parks asking possibly unaccompanied adult males what they are doing near children. I’ve had that happen to me in NYC. After you point out your kid they want the kid to come over and say yeah that’s dad. And this is sitting and watching (what turns out to be your kid), not chatting up other kids. I’m not very talkative in real life, so that wouldn’t apply to me even if society hadn’t gone nuts about this kind of stuff
This is stranger-danger taken to a ridiculous extreme. How on earth did any generation of kids survive to adulthood Before 1980? Every other child must have been carried off by the rampaging hoards of chatty adults lurking around public parks. :dubious:
Do you ever listen to yourselves?
You know it might just cause less harm for a child to experience one or two genuinely dangerous situations in their lives than to live with this hyper-security nonsense.
And none of it is rational. There is no danger. Your kid has about the same chance of dying in your bathroom as being harmed by a stranger.
Hate to break it to you, but you actually DO get to call the cops on people who make you feel ooky. That’s literally and totally and 100% something you get to do. If you call the cops on someone who refuses to say “thank you” at the drive through, you’ll get in trouble–but nobody but nobody gets arrested for calling the non-emergency number to report a suspicion about someone at the playground. “They might arrest you” is in this context technically true, but true in no other sense.
I know it’s faddish to complain about how we bubble-wrap children today, and there are some ways in which kids might be overprotected. But there are a lot of ways in which improved public health habits have materially increased children’s chances of survival.
Stranger abductions are extremely rare, no doubt. But so is this behavior. That’s why, when someone is engaging in this rare behavior, it’s reasonable to raise an eyebrow or two.
I agree with joyful that asking the dude where his kid is might be a better step than calling the cops. But acting like the behavior is normal, or is unremarkable? Nope.
A populated playground where there are other adults present is a poor hunting ground for a pedophile. There are easier and less risky targets - so the chances that this guy was a pedophile were really low.
Even if he had no kids on the playground himself, he has a right to hang out in a playground and talk to kids (unless he’s on a sex abuser registry or something). It might not be wise, but it isn’t illegal to talk to someone else’s kid. Chances are pretty high that all the cops can do is talk to him - in which case they scare him to a different hunting ground - if he’s a pedophile - or you’ve ruined an innocent man’s weekend.
You know what? Don’t listen to the other posters who said you overreacted. This guy was obviously giving off a weird enough vibe that it caused you and several other people to take notice.
I bring my kid to the park all the time. There is generally a social convention for adults to not go up to a stranger’s children and engage with them. Big people talk to big people. Little people talk to little people. Sometimes the little people will talk to the big people, but I always find that awkward.