Spotted this while being subjected to local news: A Long Island mother was arrested on Wednesday night for leaving her two kids in the car while she hit up Macy's. While this sounds pretty bad, if you take the time to consider her motives, the actual situation, and her punishment, the details paint a picture of justice gone retarded.
HER MOTIVES
I'm sure the two nosy bastards walking by who called the cops were thinking, "WHAT A MONSTER! WHAT KIND OF MOTHER LEAVES HER BABIES LOCKED IN THE CAR SO SHE CAN INDULGE HER SHOPPING ADDICTION!?" And then, instead of asking the kids if they were OK or anything, they just called the cops and bounced.
Anyone who's been in a Macy's in the days preceding Christmas knows it's fucking serious. The crowd is suffocating, customers are willing to gut you for the last whateverthefuck their brat asked for, and the employees are one rude glance away from shanking everyone. It's basically Mad Max in there -- only everyone's high on Christmas juice (a powerful mixture of adrenaline, prospective disappointment, and eggnog). You wouldn't drag your kids onto an anarchic battlefield, so why would you take them into Macy's a week before Christmas? Leave 'em in the car. Plus, she was probably buying gifts for her kids.
THE SITUATION
Leaving two kids -- an 11-year-old boy and a 14-month-old girl -- in the car, at night, in 28 degree cold, to go shopping does sound pretty fucking bad. But they were only in there for 25 minutes. Not even half an hour. If you consider that the car was probably a comfortable 75 degrees before Mom left and you factor in their jackets and combined body warmth, there's no chance that they could've possibly gotten hypothermia, or whatever people are claiming was the health risk. I'll give you a runny nose; they might have ended up with a runny nose from sitting in that car. For chrissake, did everyone forget that kids play in the snow for hours on end?
THE PUNISHMENT
For two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, Mom is now unable to see her children for a year. How does that make any sense? She fucks up by leaving her kids alone for less than half an hour, and the justice system's response is to keep her away from her kids for a year. That year without their mom is going to do more damage to these kids than those 25 minutes in the cold. Way to make a crappy situation worse, Judge.
P.S. Apparently this same woman also had a hand in another holiday season debacle:
Alright, maybe she should be kept away from children.
That's why I don't have kids. They get your ass in trouble.
ReplyDeletei remember when i was in the hospital, i had a child services case as a roommate. a baby. the mother was visiting, but the baby didnt get to go home with her.
ReplyDeletebut by the way mom was caring for the baby during her visits, i thought, theres no way this woman could hurt this baby, why are they taking it away
and since HIPPA or whatever says you cant share that information and rightfully so, what i go out of my nurses was that the child was being taken away for what seemed to be an accident on the mothers part.
now i cant explain to you how sad this mother was. and as the baby was taken away, she said make sure she gets a bath she hasn't gotten a bath in a few days, etc etc.
thats real sad. there are certainly some misjudgments and misrulings. but i guess they really cant take chances, that this kid will get hurt again and that services didnt do anything the first time, etc