Summary
Brittany Patterson, 41, was shocked to face a criminal charge for alleged reckless conduct when her unsupervised 10-year-old son walked less than a mile from their home.
Although authorities offered to drop the charge if she agreed to always supervise her children, Patterson refuses to sign, insisting she did nothing wrong and will fight the charge, which could lead to up to a year in jail.
Her lawyer argues that parents should have discretion over their children’s whereabouts, questioning if constant GPS tracking is now expected. Patterson was released on $500 bail.
The elementary school closest to us is about a mile away. Kids in my neighborhood walk to school.
What the hell is wrong with letting a kid walk a mile away??
Happened in the woke liberal capital of… * checks notes *
… Georgia?
Small townrural Georgia, no less!I crossed out “small town” because Mineral Bluff is too small to even count as incorporated. Literally all that’s there, in terms of businesses, is a gas station, a Dollar General, and whatever the Hell this is.
This is the size of village where everyone knows everyone. It makes no sense other than a squabble.
That’s what happens when you have a general store and a Dollar general comes in next door. They sell anything you can’t get at the Dollar general store and then advertising space.
I’m confused… shouldn’t this be happening in one of those liberal nanny states where big government is supposed to be all up in your business?
Oh, right… those people need to tell you how to raise YOUR kids, but don’t you dare tell them how to raise theirs…
America: where young people are coddled until they’re 18 then it’s either sell your body, sell your soul, or both multiple times over just to survive.
Or get sold into sexual slavery, and if you get pregnant by your rapist, fuck you, you’re having his baby.
How we have lost perspective. When I was that age I was forced to walk to school, a distance of about 1.5 miles.
Forced, mind you, because if you were considered “too close” to the school you were not eligible to ride the bus. Other than the land directly adjoining the school grounds, the roads I had to use also did not have sidewalks. The number of children killed, maimed, or injured by this during the years I attended that school were, to my knowledge… zero.
They asked me to put my hands behind my back and all that stuff, and I realized what was going on.
Because she was too dangerous to be cuffed normally, or not cuffed at all?
Als I hate this doubly for the kid. Your mom getting arrested for your slightest sign of independence will fuck you up.
Cuffed normally is behind your back. You only get cuffs in front with some prisoner transfers where you also have leg shackles and a belt. Cops routinely have a pleasant and peaceful interaction turn violent and it isn’t worth risking harm to anybody by not equally applying a handcuff and search policy.
Often it is department policy that anyone arrested is handcuffed. Some stipulate that anyone who goes in the back of a squad car gets handcuffed as part of detaining someone.
Town of 400? Was she a flight risk. Could they not have asked her to come by and remand herself? Do keep in mind this is a non-violent crime. This was for show, to make a point or simply to be cruel.
The police here are probably just two of the 400 people with no oversight.
When the deputy was complaining about her child wandering downtown, It paints a very different picture if there’s only a general store a Dollar general and a gas station.
The only thing I can imagine if the police aren’t being dick heads, is that the kid was getting into trouble. Maybe he was stealing or being perceived as stealing. Because he was being homeschooled maybe he was down there and they were pissed off because he was truant but can’t really be truant.
Wikipedia says the village is not even that big and only had a population of 223 in 2020. It is basically two highways coming together with a couple other streets.
The officers likely were not one of the people in town. A town like that is too small to have dedicated police. The country sheriff’s department has people patrol and respond to specific areas of the county.
I doubt the kid was stealing. They picked him up by the cemetery. Not much to steal there. He was probably just dicking around like pretty much every 11 year old in a small town does because there is not shit to do.
That poor kid. I already was upset thinking about them having to see Mom get arrested. I didn’t even consider the fact that the youngest is probably blaming himself.
Pfft when i was that little i would wind up in a different city/state unbeknownst to my parents.
That’s actually really not good lol
They could have lived in a city that straddles a state boundary. Crossing to a different city/state could be done measured a matter of meters/yards.
At the Four Corners, they could be in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, or Utah in a single step.
More realistically, if you were in NYC, you could hop a train and be in CT, NJ, or PA for a day trip. Or even further, if you started early enough.
I was thinking something like this where you can be TOTALLY INSIDE ONE SMALL BUILDING and be in two different cities/states.
The left side of gas station (QuickTrip) is Kansas City, Kansas. The right side of the gas station is Kansas City, Missouri. So cross state lines going from the chip aisle to the soda refrigerators.
Google Maps boundaries aren’t the most accurate. You can look up property records for KCMO and see it’s almost entirely inside KCMO (though it does span multiple parcels).
What’s more interesting is that while the building is in KCMO, the address of the gas pump canopy is in KCK. I’m sure they all just use the address of the entire business in KCMO for all legal purposes.
How the hell does this work employment wise? Are employees working in Kansas or Missouri and which state collects taxes? Probably not as big of an issue there, but in my state we have things like income tax while our neighbors don’t, which would make situations like this incredibly confusing.
Just a guess, the mailing address probably specifies which state’s rules its under. Police enforcement might be interesting though.
Stay classy, Georgia
A mile is nothing … what the actual fuck? I used to be gone for hours god knows where.
When I grew up, we were “free range kids”.
Or, as they were called then, kids. This modern stranger danger and always track your kids is insane, everyone be living like the sky is falling every ten seconds.
