Police arrived to the home after the children were already done playing for the day and getting ready for bed. After contacting the local District Attorney's office, Cooper was arrested in front of her children, and hauled off to jail where she was held for the next 18 hours.
The charges against here were eventually dropped, but a $7,000 bill for legal expenses remains, not to mention the emotional and psychological damage that comes from being wrongfully arrested as well as the damage done to her children's well-being by seeing their mother hauled off to jail.
In the video below much of the blame is laid on the neighbor who called police. Having a nosy
neighbor like that would certainly annoy me, but I think the blame here lays squarely with the police and the DA's office. Are the police so woefully incompetent that they cannot discern between an actual crime and the complaint of a busy-body neighbor? It's either that, or they are intentionally using any excuse, no matter how weak, to threaten, harass, intimidate, imprison, and financially shake down citizens who are not guilty of any crimes whatsoever.
Now let's imagine for a moment that the mother wasn't actually in the front yard the entire time? So what? When I was a boy I used to ride my bicycle around my entire apartment complex all day long. I also had to walk a mile to school, through a crime-ridden and violent part of town because students who lived within a one-mile radius were not allowed to ride a school bus. It is hardly uncommon for youngsters to ride their bicycles and skateboards and scooters up and down the streets and sidewalks of their own neighborhoods, and more often than not they are not under the constant visual surveillance of a parent. Not only do children actually need to be independent, within reason, but parents cannot possibly be expected to never take their eyes off their children. It is simply impractical.
Again, when I was boy, I was told where my boundaries were. At first, I was not allowed to leave sight of my building. My mother didn't sit staring at me the entire afternoon as I played on the swings or rode my Big-Wheel, but I was still within earshot if I screamed, and she could casually glance out the window from time to time to make sure everything was okay. The next year I was a little older, and knew little better how to get help if I needed it and how to avoid danger, I was confined to the apartment complex. When visiting other neighborhoods with friends, their parents would tell us we were not allowed to go further than the local corner store, or beyond a certain street, or to ride on a dangerous roadway. The boundaries were expanded as we got older and our parents recognized our gorwing need for independence as well as our ability to be responsible.
Perhaps there are those who think this is child abuse though. That children who are being taught to be independent are actually being put in harm's way, and that if anything were to happen to them the parent must be blamed for the natural fact that the world is and always will be a dangerous place. Perhaps these folks believe that children should be placed in front of the television and not allowed to leave their seats. Of course those children will wind up with diabetes and will suffer a heart attack by the time they are 30. But at least they won't get skin cancer from sunlight or lung cancer from unfiltered fresh air, right? When the kid gets their driver's license, they won't be able to find their own way ten blocks to a new job and will wind up lost in some hellish ghetto in a soccer-Mom van, but at least they won't get kidnapped or hit by a car before they turn 17. Right?
It is absolutely ludicrous that we see something like this even happens at all in a so-called "free country" but Ms. Cooper should be awarded an enormous settlement to make damn sure that something like this never happens again. Sadly though, that is not the trend in America today, as we continually slip into this fascist police-state of tyranny and oppression, for our own good they say.
Read more at: FOX 4
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