I have a pretty sensitive “ooky” meter when it comes to “guys I wouldn’t want to be alone with” from being sexually abused as a young adult. I think about 40% of the SDMB male population sets my meter off. I think I’ll start calling the cops every time it goes off. :rolleyes:
Really, what I do is be polite to ooky guy in question (a few have turned into friends given time) and avoid being in a situation where things could get out of hand (“no thanks, I have a ride.” “Oh, I can’t work late tonight, sorry.”) until either they are out of my life, or a level of trust has been established.
Because while all men could be potential rapists, and there are a lot of men with serious boundary issues - the intersection between actual rapists and men with boundary issues isn’t worth being an asshole about.
My experience has been more the former, though it’s been variable. I’m quite confident that in the story about the stick-wielding odd fellow wandering around for 12+ years, that while the cops later on weren’t concerned about him the first few encounters were likely far more edgy and confrontational. That it turned out a balanced approach by law enforcement was good, but it doesn’t always go that way.
Keep in mind police officers are humans just like everyone else, and despite screening and training, their personalities and temperaments are still varied and consequently how they deal with different types of people on a given day also varies. The potential problem though is that they have an awful lot more power than a normal citizen (both individually and collectively), and when they make a disproportionate decision on the spot - legitimate or not - it can have a big impact on someone. Being told off by one over-bearing mom is entirely different from being told not to show your face in the area again by a uniformed officer with a gun and his 2 team mates who were sent there by even more companions in dispatch who collectively have the entire legal system on their side. If you’re an innocent person, this experience can indeed be harmful.
Parents routinely ignore/aren’t focused specifically on their own kids constantly throughout any given day; sometimes it is indeed due to zeroing in on someone else’s kid and its entirely normal. This evening I took my 4 year-old daughter to indoor soccer; while she was out playing with 12 other kids and 2 coaches I was standing in an empty sitting area watching her. At one point I saw a young boy about 5 years old come from behind me and sneak into the adjacent sitting area … he had a big grin on his face as he made eye contact with me and then hid. I had no idea who the kid was but siblings slightly older or younger than the kids on the field often play around while their parent (usually just one of them) tries to keep track of both. I walked over and made an exaggerated look down onto the kid to let him know an adult knew he was hiding, and also for a potential parent somewhere nearby to spot me finding a hiding kid, then returned to watching my own kid (who I’d ignored for a minute as she was fine).
10 minutes later I saw an older woman obviously not related to this kid come over and start talking to him saying mommy was looking for him. Then she just left unconcerned (signaling to me that she was going to tell mom where this kid was), so I returned to watching my own kid who I’d ignored again for another minute to listen to this other conversation/situation over someone else’s kid.
A few minutes later his mom showed up and rousted him out of his hiding spot. Turns out he was supposed to have been on the field with my kid all along (mom had lost track of him for 8-10 min). The funny thing was while numerous adults had an eye on this kid, they didn’t particularly try to find/communicate with each other because it was such a benign situation… little kid goofing around hiding in plain sight; meh.
The other interesting thing was that nobody noticed or cared about the solitary middle aged white guy off by himself who was ignoring his own kid (if he even had one) and staring down at an isolated little boy hiding in a relatively secluded area. I even had my iphone out a couple times checking messages; if the wrong person had been looking at me tonight at the right times they could have construed I was lurking around taking pictures of this kid I had cornered while his mom was desperately searching for him. But that didn’t happen, nor did it happen to a thousand other people tonight in similar circumstances.
It’s possible I’m a little “jumpy” when it come to pedophilia. I have a cousin who was molested for we-don’t-how-long by her father. Over a decade later she was blaming herself for breaking up her family and thought maybe she had made the whole thing up. It took reading the medical exam notes to convince her she didn’t.
I like thinking I can forgive people, but I’m still working on it with him.
You talk to the guy, interact with him more than asking some closed questions. Ask some open ended questions, engage. Feel him out. If the OP had done that, then it is likely that his suspicions would be allayed.
You ask specifically what to do? It would vary based on situation, but I would have approached and said “I am new to this park, have you been here before?” and see where things go from there. Or, “Be careful if you kid plays on the swings, I saw a kid fall off the other day.” Plenty of ways to approach and assess the situation.
What you shouldn’t do, is call the authorities down on someone doing no one any harm.
If someone is going around, offering the kids ponies and ice cream, then you should probably keep an eye on them.
Well at least that debate is progress from ‘the cops will probably just shoot somebody’. Seriously the two types of problem have a theme in common. Unjustified shootings by the police or molestation of children by strangers* are shocking and horrible: they can’t be ignored as issues as a citizen participant in public policy. However both are very rare in terms of how likely a given person is to encounter them and there’s a lot of room, well demonstrated in modern society in general, and this thread IMO, for hysteria about them by subjective exaggeration of how prevalent they are.
I don’t personally know many cops (actually two neighbors, now young officers, I’ve known since they were kids) and even generalizations which might be accurate in one part of the US wouldn’t be in another.
However to me both the rationales given sound plausible and likely in particular cases, with particular cops, in particular towns. Depending how much serious stuff actually happens in the town, the personalities of the cops, their specific read of the individuals (reporting or the person reported on), their biases (no way to eliminate this, only limit it) it seems to me just as plausible they’d end up essentially admonishing the reported on guy, or the reporters, or just smooth things over and be willing to come back whenever another report was made.
*by known relatives, teachers, caregivers, clergy etc is no less horrible but not directly relevant here. And stats of 14% of cases being by actual strangers have been quoted but another source say it’s half that, 7%. https://www.raccfm.com/files/child%20sexual%20abuse.pdf
And there is the root of the insanity right there. We as a society have completely lost the ability to recognize and evaluate threat. As I posted earlier, over a five year period in the 90s 515 children were abducted by strangers in the US. By all estimates the country is much safer now than in the 90s.
How can you possibly take that statistic and say that the logical conclusion is that no adult male should ever speak to a child they don’t know. You know, just in case he is part of the .002% of the population that might abduct a child. :dubious:
And as a result every adult male is now seen by you and your kids, not as a potential role model, or protector, or friend, but as someone who only exists to get him some “bad touching.”
I have a similar question: how can you possibly take that statistic and say that the logical conclusion is that aliens are in control of the Federal Treasury?
I mean, as long as we’re asking questions about conclusions that NOBODY IN THIS THREAD HAS DRAWN, let’s try to make them more interesting, shall we?
Again, in an attempt to accuse the other side of vast overreactions, you’re vastly overreacting to what the other side has said.
It’s an excellent example of why using your irony meter on the internet voids the warranty :).
Is walking around a neighborhood that is all white considered by you an “atypical” manner consistent with a threat?
I think I’m the only white person living in my neighborhood, should I call the cops if I see another white person just walking around the neighborhood? It seems to be atypical behavior because white people don’t typically walk around the neighborhood.
I have a gazebo in a common area where I live, and during the summer, a lot of kids from surrounding areas go there and hang out doing whatever dumb kids do, even after dark! People that LIVE in my neighborhood don’t typically sit in the gazebo, should I call the cops on the kids, even though they are doing nothing but sitting in a gazebo?
I would bet that any random guy is also statistically less likely to be grooming a child for abuse than not doing that.
I also suspect that people who do groom children for abuse are not doing it by 30 second conversations with kids at a full playground with kids they will probably never see again.
LE has specific approach methods they train for and use every day. The tactic(s) are categorized based on the environment and community: Rural, Urban and Suburban, factoring in the known risk factors for every actual call they respond to. Then it breaks down to individual officer’s own personal instincts and training. It could range from a plainclothes detective casually sauntering in to observe to a full-on SWAT deployment and everything in between.
Assuming “the cops” will react or or respond in any sort of routine, predictable or expected fashion is totally disingenuous. Calling the police in a situation like this is just absurd. They are either not going to take it seriously at all or cause an unnecessary fuss like happened here. Just depends on how that last “personal officer” factor gets played at the dispatch center.
Why not? It’s not typical behavior. How do you know the guy isn’t scoping out houses to rob? He could be seeing who is home at night and who isn’t. Maybe he’s looking for children that are in the yard playing, so he can groom them for abuse.
Hogwash, several posters have said that they consider the threat of perverts so prevalent they they consider an adult male even speaking to their child as being beyond the pale, something no right thinking person would ever do. That is a paranoid mindset. A ridiculous fear based on zero facts. It would make as much sense to say that you refuse to let your teenage daughters talk to adult males because they might be white slavers.
A man at the park, probably killing time, was playing on a fake drum toy, which probably belonged to his child, was standing next to a dog, chatting with kids at the park.
None of that sounds suspicious to me. Am I missing something? Was there something unusual about his appearance?
Like the last poster there is lot of mischaracterizations of our side of the argument.
First of all, no one is saying that any male adult talking to a child is a potential pedophile. What we are looking at are the ooky guy’s actions that many of you are completely ignoring
The guy was not playing with his own kid to the point that a few parents didn’t even realize that he had a kid there.
Non-Pervy Comparison) You are playing/talking with other kids while playing with you own child.
The guy was approaching kids.
Non-Pervy Comparison) You are talking with kids that are around you naturally. Like in line at the grocery store or while you are with your dog. What kid doesn’t want to play with a dog?
The conversation the guy was having might be seen as grooming. This is a tough one because what is “normal” small talk? About ice cream? Maybe he wants to separate a kid from the herd when the ice cream guy comes by. About school? Maybe he want to find out what school you go to. Hobbies? Is that a roundabout way to see if you are home alone during the afternoon? You would have to be really paranoid to read more into a conversation than is there but then again I would definitely be more aware if something about it didn’t seem right.
So let’s look at mmmiiikkkeee’s experience. Do many of you not see the difference if instead of just looking at the kid through the slats instead:
What if instead he got off the stands and went over to the kid and started asking questions like what games do you like to play at home? All y’all really would not have a red flag go up? And when you go to him and say, “Do you have a kid here?” and he waves in the general direction of the field and says’ “Yeah over there.” that you would honestly say, “Oh I guess everything is cool then.”
As for the cops. I’ve been thinking about this and their reaction is curious (overkill?) BUT what we (or the OP) doesn’t know is maybe there had been multiple reports on this guy or maybe there was suspected molestation going on in the town or even his house.
About the dog, nope. What the difference is that he wasn’t interacting with kids around him - he was going up to (seeking out?) kids and apparently ignoring his own in the process.
Maybe he was asking the kids what toys they like so he knew what to get HIS kid for a birthday or Christmas and he didn’t want his kid to overhear him?
Maybe he was bored watching his kid play on the slides and just wanted something to do?
Maybe talking to a strange child shouldn’t be casted in the worst possible light in order to call the cops on a guy doing nothing but talking to a child that is not his own.
I still can’t believe some of you think this is something that warrants calling the police. :smack:
With the OP not knowing which kid was his, I am not sure I feel inclined to trust the idea that he was not playing with his own kid, just that the op didn’t observe such.
The guy may very well have been following his kid around, who was approaching kids. With the op unaware of what kid belonged to the guy, there is no way he could have known that.
I don’t want to talk much on the subject of pedophiles and their grooming habits, (mostly because I don’t want them to get any ideas), but I will say that a crowded park is the LAST place that a predator is going to be looking for victims to molest.
If that were my perspective on things, I’d never leave my house, and keep my child tied and leashed to me at all times.
I know parents like that, who drag their kid around the grocery store on a tether because they are afraid of the kid being napped. I understand the fear, but taking it to those levels of paranoia isn’t healthy for you, your kid, or those around you.
That would be an interesting experience. As that is nothing like the OP’s I am not sure why you bring up this hypothetical. But yeah, in that situation, I’d ask a follow up question, maybe even two. Not run away and call the police.
But, once again, “red flags”? Is that a thing now? Is there anyone you do trust? As most predators are going to spend time studying up on their subjects and psychology, the predator is NOT the guy looking out of place, the predator is the guy you are ignoring in order to focus more intently on the guy that put your flags up. (Actually there is very likely no predator there, at all)
If the guy had multiple reports on him for just being at the park with his kid, I suspect he’s probably tired of it by now. If there is stuff going on in the town, not his fault, but you are right, he may receive a much harsher reaction because of what other people are doing. In his house? Now, LHOD was fairly insulting to me when I suggested that this sort of interaction could lead to a chilling effect on the guy of not taking his kid to the park as often or at all. Now, if my imagination is running wild because I predict natural human reaction to being wrongfully accosted by authority figures, where exactly does that leave this speculation of yours that the cops showed up because they are aware of molestation going on inside the guys house?
Seriously the two types of problem have a theme in common. Unjustified shootings by the police or molestation of children by strangers* are shocking and horrible: they can’t be ignored as issues as a citizen participant in public policy. However both are very rare in terms of how likely a given person is to encounter them and there’s a lot of room, well demonstrated in modern society in general, and this thread IMO, for hysteria about them by subjective exaggeration of how prevalent they are.