You can't just say the ends justify the means, without actually working out the price you're paying. Otherwise, we should be OK with the government monitoring us 24/7 so that they don't miss any terrorists or child molesters. What proper Good Thinking citizen would possibly object to Big Brother watching them, after all?

When an organization has the power to destroy families, I think we might want to require a standard of evidence above one nosy neighbor - or at least evaluate how many kids are protected VS how many suffer in Foster care VS how many had their lives ruined because their parents had a marijuana joint.

> You can't just say the ends justify the means, without actually working out the price you're paying.

I wasn't suggesting that the ends justify the means. I'm simply speaking to the realities of the situation. However, from an ends justifying the means perspective, if you're not going to investigate, there's little point in hearing the case, and more importantly in people making the call in the first place.

"When an organization has the power to destroy families, I think we might want to require a standard of evidence above one nosy neighbor - or at least evaluate how many kids are protected VS how many suffer in Foster care VS how many had their lives ruined because their parents had a marijuana joint."

We do have a higher standard of evidence for that power to be invoked; that's what applied here, and why CPS ultimately passed on this one. If anything, the bar is generally pretty high, and you can get away with some pretty dastardly things with the odds of CPS taking any kind of "family destroying" action very low.

> Otherwise, we should be OK with the government monitoring us 24/7 so that they don't miss any terrorists or child molesters.

I think that's unreasonably slippery sloping this story.

Sure, there are horror stories about CPS being overzealous, but this isn't one of those stories. I don't much like the "family safety plans", but it's a huge leap from there to 24/7 monitoring... and CPS obviously wasn't worried about terrorist or child molesters in this case.

It's a hard problem to get right. There's a LOT of really bad stuff going on (estimates are that 1 in 7 children have experienced abuse or neglect at some point). No matter how you do it, families will be destroyed and children will suffer horribly. However, the system errs on keeping families together, which is what you'd want. Given that bias in the system, engaging in at least a lightweight investigation is entirely reasonable.

> evaluate how many kids are protected VS how many suffer in Foster care VS how many had their lives ruined because their parents had a marijuana joint.

I encourage you to look at the data on this. It's one sided.

> Sure, there are horror stories about CPS being overzealous, but this isn't one of those stories.

The parents were forced in to two weeks of supervision, requiring another adult around them 24/7. The innocent parents, who had not actually done anything wrong.

How is that not "overzealous"?

> I don't much like the "family safety plans", but it's a huge leap from there to 24/7 monitoring...

"Wallace and her husband could not be alone with their kids for even a second."

That sure sounds like 24/7 monitoring, even if it's not the government doing it.

> The parents were forced in to two weeks of supervision, requiring another adult around them 24/7. The innocent parents, who had not actually done anything wrong.

> How is that not "overzealous"?

I didn't say it wasn't overzealous. I said it wasn't one of the horror stories about them being overzealous. I was specifically referring to the power to "destroy families". That didn't happen here.

> "Wallace and her husband could not be alone with their kids for even a second."

>

> That sure sounds like 24/7 monitoring, even if it's not the government doing it.

At best that's 24/7 for 14 days. In truth though, it's not monitoring at all, as there was no monitoring requirement, just that they couldn't be left alone with the kids. I mean, they literally considered a sleeping grandmother somewhere in the house to be sufficient. It's certainly intrusive and unpleasant, but it's not 24/7 monitoring, nor is it a slippery slope towards that.

There are many people on HN who prefer broadly distributed and hard to quantify harm (e.g. everyone having government up in their business over mere heresay) over some rare, specific, easy to quantify harm (e.g. the occasional random kidnapping).

> CPS does need to investigate.

No, they don't. CPS does not need to investigate observations that, even if they are true, imply nothing. That's just sentencing everyone who deviates from orthodoxy to constant investigation. CPS should be investigating claims of something and should have clear standards for those claims instead of being aggressive as a defense.

Or you can be a black man with a white stepdaughter, or a white-passing daughter, and literally get authorities called every time you walk outside with her.

> No, they don't. CPS does not need to investigate observations that, even if they are true, imply nothing. That's just sentencing everyone who deviates from orthodoxy to constant investigation.

I think you're taking a slippery slope argument well past the point of reason.

For starters, there'd be no reason for constant investigation: once you've completed an investigation, there is no reason to have another investigation in response to a similar report. At worst, every family would get a cursory investigation once. Admittedly, that's not great. Realistically, that would not happen either, as CPS does not have unlimited resources and would of course prioritize their time. So, the more people make spurious complaints, the less likely they'll get investigated. Similarly, it's pretty trivial to identify cases where someone is just spamming the system with complaints, and deprioritize it accordingly.

While it's not unusual for complainants to exaggerate, it's also not unusual for complainants to understate; you get a call about a family you've never heard of before, from someone who has never called in before, you just have no idea what you're going to find.

> Or you can be a black man with a white stepdaughter, or a white-passing daughter, and literally get authorities called every time you walk outside with her.

...and again, in that case, you're going to learn to ignore those calls pretty quickly.

You’re assuming someone in the process is in the position to apply sanity. More likely, they operate as “call-taker puts every call into GovJira, investigators are required to investigate in order to close a GovJira ticket”

I didn't assume that. I specifically pointed out that CPS has limited resources. Let's assume the process works in the moronic fashion you're suggesting. Texas CPS has under 10,000 people, of which about a third are investigators, and investigations typically take 2 weeks. Then there's the police/courts/jails that have their own limited resources.

Imagine how that'd work. If you called in a complaint about a ten-year old today, the kid would no longer be a minor by the time the investigation began. ;-)

Depends on what was reported but if the report said child walked alone on the sidewalk the really do not need to investigate. That is my daughters regular activity when they go to school and come back. If someone reports me as having had dinner, why does the police need to come to my house? Where is the potential crime?

My point was about CPS's investigation, not the police response. Given that the police arrested their mom, you want CPS involved, and if they're involved, they ought to do some degree of investigation, if for no other reason than so they can STOP being involved.

Investigate, absolutely. The cops need to do that as well. However, as someone else pointed out "Child services had the family agree to a safety plan" is not investigating. That's taking action and making a threat: "if you don't agree to this we'll take you to court and let a judge sort it out at your expense."

When CPS is investigating abuse it seems completely reasonable for them to implement a safety plan to ensure ongoing abuse doesn't occur during the investigation. Far better than yanking the kids into protective custody.

That sort of thinking enables all sorts of abuse, though. Knowing this, a neighbor with a beef with parent-neighbors could cause them a lot of grief by manufacturing a false report to the police or CPS, in such a way that they won't get in trouble themselves.

I get that sometimes pro-active measures are prudent, but "hey, police, I saw my neighbor's kid walking outside unattended" is not one of those times.

And even if we did agree that these parents were in the wrong, and that the kid shouldn't have been walking alone, the "safety plan" CPS came up with was still a huge unnecessary overreaction. That kind of plan should be reserved for situations when CPS is investigating reports of active abuse.

> That sort of thinking enables all sorts of abuse, though. Knowing this, a neighbor with a beef with parent-neighbors could cause them a lot of grief by manufacturing a false report to the police or CPS, in such a way that they won't get in trouble themselves.

That's true, but the thinking you are describing also enables all sorts of abuse.

> the "safety plan" CPS came up with was still a huge unnecessary overreaction

Yeah, at least as described in the article, it seemed excessive and unnecessary. I could see where they don't have a smaller scale mitigation to put in place during an investigation. It's definitely not ideal.

> I get that sometimes pro-active measures are prudent, but "hey, police, I saw my neighbor's kid walking outside unattended" is not one of those times.

It's possible that "I saw a kid walking alone" isn't enough to justify an CPS investigation but "This child's parent was just arrested and is being charged with a felony for endangering this child" is reason enough.

At the point CPS got involved, they were investigating the home of someone being charged with felony child endangerment. We don't know what CPS polices demand n that situation, or what alternatives were available to the family, but after hearing what options they had the family agreed to the safety plan. If the alternative was "this or we have to remove you or your children from your home" I'd say it was the right choice.

It's entirely possible that CPS did their job exactly as they should have and were required to do under the circumstances. In fact, if the family had gone to trial it would have helped their case that CPS investigated the home and determined that that the complaint was unfounded.

There's no reason to think that a neighbor with a beef could have called CPS and had this happen to anyone else. There's not even reason to think that a neighbor calling the cops would do it since those cops would have to be as dumb as the one in this story and arrest and charge an innocent person with felony child endangerment for it to work. That should be a pretty high bar to clear. The police screwed this one up, and that's what opened the door to all the other grief.

> At the point CPS got involved, they were investigating the home of someone being charged with felony child endangerment. We don't know what CPS polices demand n that situation, or what alternatives were available to the family, but after hearing what options they had the family agreed to the safety plan. If the alternative was "this or we have to remove you or your children from your home" I'd say it was the right choice.

It's also worth noting that CPS's investigation would no doubt serve as helpful for the parent's defense against the charges.

You are the reason we have a violent oppressive police state (and one that’s racist to boot).

Look at the hoops you’re willing to jump through to apologize for this behavior… the banality of evil.

“Of course it’s reasonable to report a parent because their child went for a stroll. Then the police would have no choice, but to charge her with a felony; laws the law. Then of course CPS must follow procedure; the kids coulda got kidnapped. Let’s solve this by kidnapping them, strip searching them, and putting them in an abusive home.” (the stuff about strip searching was an amalgamation w/the propublica story. Not a part of your story, but not fake.)

Anything is reasonable as long as you follow policy? You were just following orders?

You're reading a lot into autoexec's comments that aren't actually there (maybe it's from this ProPublica story that I can't find a reference to?).

There was no comment about how it was reasonable to make the phone call, and there's specific criticism of the police conduct... All they said was that at the point CPS got involved, it's entirely possible that CPS did their job exactly as they should have.

I would point out that all we know that CPS did was a) require that the parents not be left alone in the house with the kids while they were conducting their investigation (and even for that, it's not clear from the story that that requirement came from CPS, but it seems likely that's the case) and b) perform an investigation that concluded there was no observable risk to the kids. They weren't involve in the decision to perform the arrest, not involved in setting bail, not involved in any strip search, etc.

>There was no comment about how it was reasonable to make the phone call, and there's specific criticism of the police conduct... All they said was that at the point CPS got involved, it's entirely possible that CPS did their job exactly as they should have.

I would suspect the first step of any investigation would be to find out why they are investigating and not just set everything in motion based on a vague report from police?

I don't think this line of reasoning goes where you think it goes...

One could imagine that is how the investigation proceeded.

> “Of course it’s reasonable to report a parent because their child went for a stroll.

never said that. It's worth noting also that the person who called didn't report the parent. They reported the child who was alone. I don't know why she was concerned about the fact that a kid was walking unaccompanied, but as others have pointed out, we've only got one move when there's concern about some strange child's immediate welfare and we don't want to get involved directly and that's to call the police. It'd be nice we had a better option, like an agency to call who didn't see everyone without a badge as the enemy, but we don't.

> Then the police would have no choice, but to charge her with a felony; laws the law.

Again, I said nothing of the sort. In fact I explicitly stated that the cop was in the wrong.

> Then of course CPS must follow procedure; the kids coulda got kidnapped.

Yes, CPS should follow procedure. That doesn't mean that they should act as mindless drones, but they depend on police to alert them to situations where they need to be involved and once they are involved they should do their job. The concern the CPS should have had wasn't to make sure the kid isn't going to be kidnapped. It's to make sure that the child isn't being neglected or abused.

CPS has a tough job. If they a get a case and blow it off as no big deal and the kid they were supposed to protect gets killed that's an injustice too and sadly it happens (see https://abc7.com/gabriel-fernandez-anthony-avalos-noah-cuatr... or https://www.cbsnews.com/dfw/news/cps-cases-workers-fired-aft...).

CPS has a job to do, and there was very little harm done by them in this case. They had a grandparent stay over for a few days. That was it. It might have been worse if the family didn't have nearby relatives who could stay over during the investigation, but again we don't have information on what CPS was obligated to do or what they would have done, we only know what happened and this was not a CPS horror story (which I know do exist!)

In this case, CPS was inappropriately given the case by the police, but there's no indication that they acted inappropriately in their role. In fact, they correctly identified that there was no need for them to be involved.

So in the end some lady messed up and thought a normal situation was an emergency and called the police. It happens and it wouldn't be reasonable for her to think there would be any harm done by that. The police showed up and failed at their job entirely, gave the mother a felony charge and got CPS involved. CPS did their job and are on record that the police made an error. The cop was the real problem here.

I'll also call out another party that failed here and that's the entire rest of the justice system. Every other officer aware of the circumstances who did nothing, and the folks who decided to go ahead with the charge and offer the "deal" that punished the innocent mother are just as bad. If the police officer involved isn't punished for this it also makes the department guilty.

The problems with our justice system go far beyond police. Anyone so clearly innocent should be able to fight in court with confidence that they can be cleared of the bogus charge and without risk of bankrupting themselves in the process. We clearly don't have that today.

but they had no suspicion that any abuse was occurring?

You mean, other than the parents being arrested by police for that?

You seem to be resistant in several threads to the idea that the specific conduct alleged is not on its face abuse. There was never a reason for CPS to even claim they were investigating abuse.

I have had jobs that required me to be a mandatory reporter several times in my life, and none of this was even close to evidence of abuse I'd have to report.

The police at the scene arrested and charged. That really seems like reason enough. Really, once the police arrest the parents, you need to get CPS involved anyway, to ensure the kids have some degree of support.

> I have had jobs that required me to be a mandatory reporter several times in my life, and none of this was even close to evidence of abuse I'd have to report.

Mandatory reporting rules are, by design, not intended to include anything and everything that constitutes abuse or neglect.

When investigating a report of abuse, that's often reasonable.

When the report itself doesn't have any abuse in it, no way.

In this case, the parents were arrested and charged. One could argue wrongfully, but given that's happened, so some kind of short-term mitigation and investigation seems eminently reasonable.

I would agree if these types of pro-active measures required a judge to sign an order given a minimum threshold of evidence.

I have heard that it is shockingly easy to get a judge to issue a search warrant at 2 in the morning on a Saturday. I am not a lawyer, but from what I understand even then there is a minimum bar that needs to be met as far as evidence supporting the petition goes: what is the suspected crime? What evidence is there that supports the suspicion? Why do we believe that a search warrant will produce concrete evidence that the crime occurred and what is the scope of the required search (what property, specifically, are we asking to be able to examine and potentially confiscate?).

Similar, much higher, thresholds need to be met with respects to holding suspects in custody pending a trial.

Under no circumstances should any other government agencies be able to compel anything from anyone "just because." That's what the courts exist for. People have a right to due process and "agree to a safety plan" under threat is an act of force that was not authorized by a court order but by an independent government agency acting alone; outside of the one single entity that we trust to be in charge of doing that both fairly and under extremely tight scrutiny and limitations.

> I would agree if these types of pro-active measures required a judge to sign an order given a minimum threshold of evidence.

Police are empowered to arrest people on the spot. It seems impractical to add a judge to that process. Once someone has been arrested, you need CPS to step in anyway, at which point it seems silly to bar them from investigating.

> Similar, much higher, thresholds need to be met with respects to holding suspects in custody pending a trial.

I mean, she was released on bail, but she was held in custody. So yes, holding them in jail without bail has a higher standard, but you'd really hope the standard would be higher for that.

> Under no circumstances should any other government agencies be able to compel anything from anyone "just because." That's what the courts exist for.

That seems like a broad and vague statement. In fairness, the parents aren't obligated to do anything, but if they don't, then the courts would get far more involved.

Yeah, as I've said elsewhere, I'm not sure that the family plan, as described, makes much sense given the situation. I get that it was a temporary measure while they were doing their investigation, but it still seems pretty impractical and disproportionate.

> ...and really, CPS does need to investigate.

Why does CPS need to restrict parental rights while investigating a report which even if confirmed as true (as it was in this case) does not violate family law and warrant further action.

This would be like saying that, had the law which addressed the family law aspects also (as it should have) made the same changes to criminal law, the police should still have arrested her, even when their information was only of an act that would be a non-crime if true.

> Why does CPS need to restrict parental rights while investigating a report which even if confirmed as true (as it was in this case) does not violate family law and warrant further action.

So, the police arrested the mom, which means you've got a case where the mom has at least been accused of violating the law. Even if mom has not done a single thing wrong, given that she's been arrested & taken from the home, CPS has to get involved just to make sure the kids are okay. It follows that some degree of investigation is done.

I guess you can characterize it as "restrict parental rights", but really all they were doing was insisting that there be someone else in the home with the kids at all times. That does still seem like a bit much, I agree, but I don't see that as a restriction on parental rights. Let's say that it is then, I don't think it's unreasonable that someone who has been arrested specifically on charges of child abuse/endangerment might have their rights curtailed at least until such time as someone can feel like the kids are okay.

> This would be like saying that, had the law which addressed the family law aspects also (as it should have) made the same changes to criminal law, the police should still have arrested her, even when their information was only of an act that would be a non-crime if true.

It's very clear that they interpreted her own statement as meaning she did not perceive how she was endangering her children. I think that's a terrible assessment of the situation, as by their own admission, the kid was NOT in serious danger, but given that assessment, yeah, they should arrest her.

In the end, you do end up empowering people to exercise good judgement, and when they get it wrong, there will be terrible consequences.

Investigating is one thing but it seems that they also punished them before starting their investigation.

It's pretty much required, for obvious reasons, for CPS to put mitigations in place for whatever they might be investigating. Mitigations often feel like punishments, for sure, with the key difference that they are only until the investigation is resolved.

Is it though? If that’s necessary why isn’t it necessary to lock someone up while you investigate whether he might be involved in drug dealing, just in case he might be guilty and destroy the evidence?

Wait... I think you've got cause & effect backwards here.

The police arrested the mom, not CPS. There was no interaction between the family and CPS prior to the arrest. The arrest is what brings CPS in to the picture. Just by virtue of arresting a parent, CPS should to get involved, because arresting the parent potentially puts the kids at risk... and then you double down on that because they've been arrested for endangering the kids. CPS then needs to figure out the lay of the land, so that they can establish that the kids are NOT at risk and they can step out of the picture.

What I’m objecting to is the imposition of the “no unsupervised time with your children” rule, which, to my mind, is a punishment just as much as a precaution.

> What I’m objecting to is the imposition of the “no unsupervised time with your children” rule, which, to my mind, is a punishment just as much as a precaution.

Which is another way of saying that it is just as much a precaution as it is a punishment.

CPS responsibilities are to the children and their safety. The police & courts deal with the parents, collect any evidence, mete out any punishment, etc.

Well then that brings me back to the other point. We could do this with far more suspected crimes. Just to be safe.

We do do this for other crimes.

Again, CPS isn't focused on the crime.

This is the fork in the road, they need investigatory power, but not punitory power. They should be empowered to investigate the reports but their investigation should simply be evidence. The evidence should be passed into the legal system and treated no different to other evidence… presumption of innocence snd burden of proof should not be abrogated … lest we simply abandon any pretence of jurisprudence on such matters.

I think you're confusing the role of CPS with the police. It's the police who investigate crimes and provide evidence to the courts, who will in turn mete out any punishments.

CPS's job is to protect the kids. AFAIK they aren't involved in any kind of punishment. Any measures they take are limited in scope to the best interests of the children. Now, they're indifferent to the impact on the parents, so some of the measures to protect the kids can feel like punishment to the parents, but that's not their concern.

I keep feel like people aren't able to draw the line here between what CPS did and what the cops did. Absent more details on the story (and we always have to keep in mind that we're getting the version of the story that is most charitable to the mom), it sure seems like the cops really messed up here. Once the cops arrested her, that's when CPS got involved, and the consequences from CPS's involvement were pretty much inevitable, and frankly the least of the hardships placed on that family.