No Child Left Outside: Another Mom Arrested for Letting Kid Play in Park

A Port
St. Lucie, Forida, mom has been arrested and charged with child
neglect for daring to let her son, 7, play in the park half a mile
from home. He was happily walking there when a busybody noticed him
and asked where his mommy was. Then the busybody called the cops,
since apparently no child should ever be outside without a private
security detail.

The police descended upon the scene of the crime and later
arresting the mom for the usual charge of
child neglect. What if something bad had
happened?

As the mom, Nicole Gainey, told
ABC Action News:

“My own bondsman said my parents would have been in jail every
day,” says Gainey who paid nearly $4,000 to bond out.

The officer wrote in the report that Dominic was unsupervised at
the park and that “numerous sex offenders reside in the
vicinity”.

“He just basically kept going over that there’s pedophiles and
this and that and basically the park wasn’t safe and he shouldn’t
be there alone,” says Gainey.

Never mind that research has shown living
on the same block as a registered sex offender does not make kids
less safe. It seems the cops bought into the idea that
predators are everywhere, always waiting to pounce, and simply
because the worst could happen—no matter how
extremely unlikely—children can never be left unsupervised in
well-lit, popular public parks.

Let me reiterate here
that these arrests are uncommon—that’s why they make the news—and
should not dissuade parents from sending their kids to play. On the
contrary, the more kids running around outside again, the more
normal it will seem, and perhaps these excessive fears will
subside.

Or else we’ll be living under a de facto policy of No Child Left
Outside.