11-Year-Old Boy Taken Away By US CPS For Being Left In Backyard Alone For 90 Minutes; Parents Charged With Neglect

One afternoon this past April, a Florida mom and dad I’ll call Cindy and Fred could not get home in time to let their 11-year-old son into the house. The boy didn’t have a key, so he played basketball in the yard. He was alone for 90 minutes. A neighbor called the cops, and when the parents arrived—having been delayed by traffic and rain—they were arrested for negligence.
They were put in handcuffs, strip searched, fingerprinted, and held overnight in jail.
It would be a month before their sons—the 11-year-old and his 4-year-old brother—were allowed home again. Only after the eldest spoke up and begged a judge to give him back to his parents did the situation improve.
– From the Reason article: 11-Year-Old Boy Played in His Yard. CPS Took Him, Felony Charge for Parents
By Michael Krieger: If the title to this post sounds familiar, it should. Back in April, I published an extremely troubling piece titled, 11-Year-Old Kansas Boy Taken Away from Mom Due to Her Use of Cannabis Oil to Treat Crohn’s Disease.
Here’s an excerpt:

Yesterday Shona Banda, the Kansas medical marijuana activist whose home was searched after her 11-year-old son challenged anti-pot propaganda at school, failed to regain custody of the boy, who is now under the control of Child Protective Services (CPS). “I am not giving up,” Banda said after yesterday’s family court hearing. “I will get him, and I am not going to stop until I do.”

This boy was defending his mother’s use of a drug that helps her deal with an awful condition. Because he stuck up for his mother, the state arrested her and ripped him away from her. Even if he is eventually returned to his mother (as he ought to be), the school, the town, and the state of Kansas have already done a lot more damage to this kid than Banda’s use of pot to treat her Crohn’s disease ever could.

The Garden City Police Department, which conducted the search of Banda’s home, insists that the state-sanctioned kidnapping is in the boy’s best interest. “The most important thing here is the child’s well-being,” said Capt. Randy Ralston. “That is why it is a priority for us, just because of the danger to the child.” 

Yes, snatching away a young child from his mother because she uses a plant to treat a disease is clearly in the boy’s best interest. What a monumental moron this guy is.

Even worse, in the original story, Banda was described as facing 17 years in jail for her “crime.” Since then, she has been charged with five felonies and faces 30 years in jail. Apparently, this is considered humane justice in Kansas. Lock up a woman who uses a plant, legal for various purposes in 38 U.S. states, so long that her child will be a middle aged man by the time she gets out. What kind of sick, twisted culture could see this as beneficial to society? May as well start burning witches at the stake.
Here’s an update on the case from the Washington Post:

With a wave of legalization measures in recent years, marijuana in some form is now legal in 38 states. But in the 12 where it is not — a swath of the west and Midwest, including Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas, and in the rust belt states of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — parents whose use of the drug would be legal elsewhere are losing their children and often seen as irresponsible parenting pariahs.
In March, Child Protective Service workers took Shona Banda’s 11-year-old son from her home in Garden City, Kansas, saying her use of marijuana to control debilitating Crohn’s Disease put the child in danger.
Last Friday, the state of Kansas charged Banda with five felony counts of possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute, manufacturing Tetrahydrocannabinol, an oil extracted from marijuana, two counts of possession of drug paraphernalia and one count of child endangerment.
Banda, who will turn herself in to authorities June 15, according to her attorney, could face a maximum of 30 years in prison.

Of course, this isn’t an isolated event. The Nanny States of America is alive and well, and children are being systematically separately from their parents more often than we’d like to admit for no good reason.
Today, I want to highlight another case. The story of a Florida couple that had their two small children taken away for being left alone in their own backyard for 90 minutes. Reason reports that:

One afternoon this past April, a Florida mom and dad I’ll call Cindy and Fred could not get home in time to let their 11-year-old son into the house. The boy didn’t have a key, so he played basketball in the yard. He was alone for 90 minutes. A neighbor called the cops, and when the parents arrived—having been delayed by traffic and rain—they were arrested for negligence.
They were put in handcuffs, strip searched, fingerprinted, and held overnight in jail.
It would be a month before their sons—the 11-year-old and his 4-year-old brother—were allowed home again. Only after the eldest spoke up and begged a judge to give him back to his parents did the situation improve.
Here is the law: “A person who willfully or by culpable negligence neglects a child without causing great bodily harm, permanent disability, or permanent disfigurement to the child commits a felony of the third degree.”
The children were placed in foster care for two days while the state ran a background check on a relative who was willing to take them in. “Our first choice was my mother,” said Cindy. “But she lives in another state and so the kids would have been in foster care even longer until they cleared her.” The parents decided to have them placed with a slightly problematic in-state relative instead.
On the day they all appeared in children’s court to move the kids from foster care into the relative’s custody, Cindy thought her older son smelled a little strange. 
“What have you been eating?” she asked.
“Cereal,” he replied.
Only cereal, for the past few days. That’s not going to kill anyone, obviously. But if you’re arresting parents for not supervising their kids for 90 minutes, it’s more than a little hypocritical.
The boys went off with the relative. As Cindy and Fred were charged with a felony, they couldn’t cross the county line to go see them and the relative refused to bring them to visit. But after a few weeks, she got tired of taking care of the kids. “Unbeknownst to us,” said Cindy, “she was putting them back in state custody.” 

This is simply criminal behavior by the state.

That’s when Child Protective Services asked the court to place the boys in foster care.

Cindy and Fred cannot be sure who called the cops and turned their lives upside down. (They have their suspicions.) But they do know who told them they needed to take parenting classes, get therapy, and promise never to let their kids play in their own backyard without a watchman again. They know who took their children away.
And you know, too.
Many people will read this article and shrug it off saying it’s just a one-off. It’s not. Significantly, this one story encapsulates all that is wrong with modern America.
First, it shows how completely dysfunctional and broken the legal system really is. Letting bankers off with a slap on the wrist for financial crimes is one thing. Destroying entire families for completely normal behavior is quite another. While some of you may not be able to identify with the medical marijuana activist, what happened to the Florida couple could happen to anyone. If this doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what will.
Second, it shows how twisted our social interactions with one another have become. If you recall, this entire incident happened because a neighbor saw the situation and called the cops. A normal, decent, caring and remotely enlightened human being would have walked over and asked the kids if they were ok, and then offered them some food, water or a bathroom. Instead, this neighbor called the police and destroyed a family. What does this tell us about how corrosive our communities have become?


In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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