This can happen when you're home alone with your children too. Should we require night chaperones? What's the acceptable level of present adult redundancy?

Yes, but people would know the child was there. If someone fall down unconscious in the middle of the supermarket nobody knows which car they arrived in, or even for sure that they arrived in a car, and nobody knows about the unattended child. That's a different kind of risk.

On the other hand, for the person in the parking lot to film the child in the car and call police, but not make any contact with the child or wait by the car, borders on malice. Police and prosecutors should investigate but heavily discount such pseudo-testimony because it is deliberately presented without context.

The argument still sucks. Given a reasonable choice in the beginning ("The weather's cool, the kid strapped in, car is secured, will be right back") the kid would - what? Complain and cry after a while? It's a four year old boy with a tendency (if you read between the lines) to throw fits. Maybe all boys are like that..

If the mother (to stay with the original article) would've fallen unconscious or dead in the supermarket, nevermind that both options would have some consequences for the family, the kid would've been fine.

Calling the cops was fine. Creepy the way it was described, but okay.

Cops arriving was fine. That's their job.

"Huh? The "abandoned" kid is gone already? Let's trace the car and take out our frustration on .. the mother?" wasn't fine. That was just braindead. The correct movie quote variation would've been "Nothing happened, move along".

Theoretical "But here's how the kid could've died" arguments are .. weird. And countless.

I agree that the police reaction is sub-optimal, but there are reasons not to tie a child to a seat and lock them into a car and then leave them unsupervised, even if that is for a few minutes.

Reasons not to .. and reasons to to exactly that.

The decision is not yours, not ours. It's the parent's. Like everything else about the daily life of the kid. That argument contains no value. Of course there are reasons that one might not do that. Loop/Recur to line 1.

That's not much help for kids who do have abusive or neglectful parents, is it? They're citizens too and if they're stuck in a dangerous situation they're entitled to the same level of protection as any other member of society.

there's a middle ground between the state as inflexible guardian and complete parental sovereignty.

Fine. Abused kids need help. There, I said it. It's nothing new and not related to the example at hand, but yeah, we found some common ground.

The state has laws and agencies to interfere and check (Disclaimer: I've no clue about the US of A here, but I assume it's not too far off from what I know). But that's not related to the action(s) we discuss. Are we missing a part of the picture? Certainly. Is the partial picture scary? Yes.

The adversaries in the story didn't act to protect the kid. They acted in a completely crazy fashion. There's so many things wrong with this story, I cannot even begin to imagine how someone would defend the side of the cops here..

One (out of far too many) questions: If this mother is utterly incapable, if a lawyer actually can make the point that she might lose her kid if she's not complying: Why does it take 10 month to proceed? I'd say that someone with a little ambition can kill a kid in less time than that...

There's not One. Single. Point. in that article that makes sense, on the side of law enforcement. Zero. The only potential reason to discuss why this might not be so far removed from reality that everyone involved should be ordered to take a drug test is that the article might be lying. If that is not the case ... there is no case.

The police didn't act in a crazy fashion at all. They responded to a complaint, collected evidence, checked it against vehicle owner records. Then they visited the owner of the vehicle, gathered some more information. When an arrest warrant was issued (by the court, not by the police) months later, the police telephoned the author of the article to advise her about it and make arrangements for her to come to court.

I've said repeatedly that I don't think there was any point in bringing a prosecution. since you don't live in the US maybe you don't appreciate that the police and the public prosecutor are completely separate entities. The police didn't do anything abnormal in this case.

> since you don't live in the US maybe you don't appreciate that the police and the public prosecutor are completely separate entities.

I don't live in the US, but I often get the impression that in the US, they're less separate than in other countries.

Is this case even remotely discussable as "middle ground"? There was no malice except on the part of the police and the bystander. Your responses to this thread show a deep lack of understanding of practical parenting or human resiliency.

I fail to see what police malice you're finding. The author of the police doesn't criticize them at all.

That's part of the problem, that they think they deserve to get treated this way by making a sound and considered choice.

Get treated what way? You haven't articulated how it is that you think she was mistreated by the police.

There are parents who neglect or abuse their children. It's fortunately rare, but it does mean that children also deserve protection from their parents, when necessary.

Leaving a child in a locked car is a bad idea, even when it's totally safe, and even with a window cracked. (In fact, leaving a car window open when you're not there is also a bad idea, though a few minutes probably won't hurt.) Honestly, in that situation, it's better to leave the car door open, so the child can get out when necessary. If you don't trust the child to make that decision, don't leave it alone.

No, society should protect children. As you say calling the police is okay, but the reaction of police is not okay.

And those reasons are?

Approaching a young child who has been left alone in a car is foolish in today's paranoic society.

Also, the returning parent is unlikely to be grateful to the comments of "I was just making sure your left alone child was not dying".

The person was near enough to spot the child and take a photograph, so they could have remained at that distance and call the police if they feel it's necessary, not least to advise the returning parent/guardian that the police were called. In that case the police would probably have arrived and written a ticket or something. Although this would have involved a delay and frustration for the temporarily unattentive parent, it would have been better than the actual outcome involving the issuance of arrest warrants.

One could say 'why not let the matter drop, the Mom came back and so everything was OK' but that's a classic example of hindsight bias. From the police POV, a child was left alone in a vehicle that was later driven off by someone else. When they followed up, it turned out that the person who drove off was not the owner of the vehicle (which belonged to the child's grandparents). They have to at least consider the possibility of malfeasance.

«From the police POV, a child was left alone in a vehicle that was later driven off by someone else».

No "someone else", but the very same woman: leaving the car, returning back to the car. The same woman, not someone else. Unless the good samaritan has deceptively shown just the last part and told the police he (or she) saw a different person leaving the car with the child inside.

The issue here is not car theft, driving license not matching the car owner, or whatever. It was instead a good samaritan evaluating as criminal/dangerous the fact that a mom left his son alone in the car for few minutes. And decided (when she came back) to call the police to...? Check if the child was fine? Whatever.

It takes few minutes to check if the car was stolen and/or the owner knows that someone else is driving it.

Your firs para: could you imagine the situation where you tell a parent that you called the police because you were worried about their child? That's not an easy conversation.

I agree that people should report early and report often; and allow experts to make decisions. Sadly, reporting early and often just swamps people who are already far too busy dealing with children who are being abused, or it dumps reports with police who take action when they don't need to do anything more than have a chat.

I agree it's not an easy conversation, but if you think it's important enough to take photographs and call the police about it was important enough to communicate to the person who you have made a potential suspect. In this case it would probably have resulted in a much less traumatic outcome for the author of the story, who at worst might have missed her plane.

That is an entirely different world of crazy that doesn't belong here, does it?

Are we going to turn this into a 'You need to be careful about talking to a child' debate? If you cannot address/talk to a child, things are worse OUTSIDE of that car.

Of course it belongs here!

In a sensible world she would have been able to call out to some car-park lurker "hey I'm just going to grab something from the store, can you just wave at my kid through this window"; or she could just run in and grab something and people seeing her run in and then out would not call the police; or etc etc.

Society has decided that men wanting to work with children are creepy (try finding pre-schools with male workers and early years schools with male teachers), and this extends to the damaging concept of "stranger danger" where someone waiting by the car to check the child is safe is not going to be seen as a welcome bit of support for a busy harassed mother but will be seen as a creepy threat.

It's all part of the same weird system of protecting children without regard to what actual risk is.

Yes, driving to the store is considerably more dangerous for the child (even if it's in correctly fitted car seat (and many children are not)) than being left for a few minutes in the car.

Still, leaving the child alone leaves them open to more risk than taking them out of the car.

This parent was not buying anything important - just headphones for a child - and they took the wasy options by i) taking child to shops and ii) not taking child out of car.

I don't criticise other people's parenting because I am particularly lucky with my son but the idea of leaving my nearly-four-yo son unaccompanied (out of eyesight) fills me with cold fear.

Again, the problem here isn't that they left their son for a few minutes in a car, it is that society is pretty hostile to parents and parenting, simultaneously being quick to judge and slow to offer any real support.

> Still, leaving the child alone leaves them open to more risk than taking them out of the car.

So a child in an immobile tested-safe metal box with ventilation, locked and alarmed, is more at risk than being outside the car? I'd like to understand how you came to that reasoning.

»I don't criticise other people's parenting because I am particularly lucky with my son but the idea of leaving my nearly-four-yo son unaccompanied (out of eyesight) fills me with cold fear.«

The thing is:

1) You do. The post says "She was lazy"¹. That's criticizing.

2) Your pov is noted and fine. You're probably a good parent. But what works for you isn't transferable to other parents and kids. And those parents will make decisions that wouldn't work/make sense for you and your kid. I love that my not-yet-two son disappears and plays in hidden corners. He's probably longer out of my (and my wife's) sight than the boy in that car was, albeit in our apartment. Cold fear sounds nasty. I understand that to a point, but for this particular parent that wouldn't work/would be unhealthy.

We're different. Projecting one's idea about child care is different from laws about child care.

1: Blame reading comprehension skills on my English teacher