Two Sides To A Story
Thanks to Christian, a long time reader who offered to do a guest post, he has a great blog where he does rants on his point of view on the recent news that comes out of the various newspapers each day. Which makes me think- there is always two sides to every story.
Ok so I saw a news article online from Fox news about a set of parents being charged with “felony neglect” because their 11 year old was outside unsupervised. It seems the neighbors saw the boy outside shooting hoops and called the police. Now I’ll discuss the article further in a minute but let’s stop right here for a tic and think.
The neighbors called the police because they were concerned about this kid being outside for a whole hour and a half without access to water, restroom or emergency needs. Wait. Huh?! So instead of offering the kid water, a friggin toilet or “emergency needs” they called the cops?! But the parents who were on their way home from work, THEY’RE the assholes?
Back to where we were. Where were we? Hey, somebody help me out here. You know I get distracted; I count on you folks to keep me en pointe when I’m dancing around these issues. Oh yeah…
So the cops show up, right? The parents claim one of the cops relieved himself in their yard. How professional. Bet he didn’t wash his hands afterward. How could he if the kid didn’t have access to water? What’s that? There’s a sink in the shed and a water hose?! Well, hell, this boy had water access then! A point that was brought up by his folks during the case. Uh oh, someone didn’t know the facts before calling this neglect. By the way, shouldn’t the officer be charged with “urinating in public” or “public indecency”? If we are leveling frivolous charges then that seems fair.
These must be odd neighbors. They didn’t know about the sink in the shed? Pfft. I bet MY neighbors have a better inventory of what’s in my shed than I do. “Hey, can I borrow a weed eater I’ll never return?” Um, I don’t have one. “Sure you do. It’s in the shed. Left wall, 3/4 of the way to the back, leaning up against the shelves. That green and black one.” Oh. Sure. It’d be nice if you brought it back afterward though. “Yeah. Uh huh. Sure thing.”
In their infinite wisdom the state of Florida removed BOTH the kids from the home (the 11 year old and his 4 year old brother) and bounced them around in foster care for a month. Oh yeah, that’s much better than the “neglect” of the kid playing at home for an hour and a half. Well played. Is this level of stupidity meant as a deterrent from keeping more people from moving to Florida? What’s the end game here? Tax dollars wasted on an investigation, a police call-out for something ludicrous, kids unnecessarily put through foster care (which is also state funded) and a family incurring debt to fight their case. A case they shouldn’t have to deal with.
I have custody of my 2 young sons. I do understand the importance of looking out for the well-being of kids. But, c’mon folks, isn’t this getting a little carried away? What happened to “good neighbors”? Surely State Farm can’t be the only ones left!
