It did from my pov, I just did my usual write a paragraph when a sentence will do and said the same thing I guess.
From the article, it’s just not that clear how they came to a conclusion that a SWAT team was necessary when presumably a conversation with the paramedics goes along the lines of “I’m a trained medic, the kid’s fine, he’s got a few bruises and I’ve given him some paracetamol and an Ice pack, if he gets any worse I’ll take him to A&E.”
Personally I’d probably have let them see the kid anyway just because “We saw the kid, he’s fine” looks better on a report than “Stroppy [medic] Dad wouldn’t let us see the kid”.
I have a friend who works for CPS in Texas. When he has to go knock on the door of someone who has previously chased people down the street with an axe, I do wish they’d send the cops first.
Turning up with a Police Officer or two to check on the wellbeing of a kid because the guy has a “history of violence”, especially when your police are routinely armed anyway is fine, sending in a Swat team to cuff and bag 'em first just seems a little overkill to me.
Now that’s just mind-boggling. Doesn’t it matter in the least WHO he was chasing with an axe, or WHY?
If I agree with his choice of targets and his methodology in choosing them, then by damn he’s the sort of guy I want at my back, and I’ll be absolutely sure to avoid giving him any reason to chase me with an axe, because I understand that he has right on his side. This is not an attitude the police ever take, because the job of the police is not justice, it is enforcing order, and suppressing any disruptions at all anytime for whatever reason no matter the justice behind it.
He wouldn’t think sending in militarized police to break down the door wearing ski masks and aiming automatic weapons over a bruise is bullshit?
I honestly don’t understand how some of you guys could be okay with this… What happened to all the outrage over police state politics like the Patriot Act?
The religious example is inflammatory. How about this for a more moderate version of the same thing. You’ve read the studies and you’re convinced (note: I’m not, but reasonable other people are) that the small quantities of mercury in the flu vaccine do, in fact, have some link to causing autism in kids. More than that, you’re also convinced (using the CDC’s own numbers: http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/PREVIEW/MMWRHTML/mm5301a3.htm ) that the flu vaccine doesn’t actually decrease the likelihood of getting the flu. So you decide your kids aren’t going to be getting vaccinated. The state, in the interests of preventing the spread of a communicable disease that causes way too much trouble each year, decides you’re a loony and your kids are damn well getting vaccinated so they don’t punch holes in the effort to control the disease.
Does the state have a right to do that? From your POV, they are unnecessarily and forcibly endangering your children. From their POV, you are unnecessarily endangering other people, and they arrogate themselves the right to force compliance to fit the dangers they believe they see. The thing is, whose kids are they? Who has the final say over what happens to them?
The religious example was good, because people refusing blood or other treatment that is clearly lifesaving for religious reasons are without any doubt endangering their children.
Your example is much more iffy - allthough I thought the problem was with MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and not flu. These diseases are deadly, the vaccines do work and if everybody complied we could stamp out the diseases.
But yet our nanny-state actually just had a courtcase end, where the conclusion was that doctors calling our equivalent to Child Welfare on parents refusing the vaccine was overstepping their bounds.
So even here we leave that choice to parents - in my mind the difference is when the danger to the child is emminent and the treatment they’re refusing will save them.
The Flu shot is an okay example, but here’s a better one… What if the single-father and their house mate turn out to be… gaspa gay couple! Living in an area were that is considered ‘morally objectable’, CPS would have no choice but to make sure this environment is safe. But the father is also an ex-vet with a sign on the fence that says ‘Protected By Smith & Weston’, and for some reason he just doesn’t seem okay with taking his kid away.
Yes, there are extremes on each side: should the state protect children from sexual abuse? Should the state protect children from being raised Muslim? You can clearly find an argument that says the state needs to have the power to override a parent’s wishes, and an argument that says the state shouldn’t be able to override a parent’s wishes. The point is that in each instance something different is going on, and just because you say that the police need to show up and handcuff everyone in the area if daddy takes off his pants doesn’t mean that you believe they should put babies of a gay couple up for adoption.
In this case, any law that covers the situation needs to assume the worst because there is no harm in checking if someone needs medical care.
In a case where the proposed medical care had potential risks, it comes down to having government regulation of informed consent. Essentially, there needs to be a cut off where the risks associated with a particular course of treatment (or testing or whatever) require the signature of someone capable of giving informed consent. Again, mistakes can occur if the regulations lag behind research, but the alternative is to make children into slaves whose parents have the power of life and death over them.
This is a very apt analogy, and provides a lot of clarity and a fresh perspective from which to view the situation.
I would counter that if the police hadn’t come to investigate the welfare of the child, it would be exactly like ignoring the humanitarian crises in Rwanda and Darfur.
Okay, here goes: What if the dad was… gasp Darth Vader! And the police were Indiana Jones. And they were living on that mining colony from Outland? Not so clear-cut, now, is it?
Really? You mean, using a military force to subdue and/or capture residents in a potentially volatile area…? Instead of, oh I don’t know, negotiating or using other non-violent means?
Actually, that’s a really terrible analogy. We have plenty of evidence about what’s going on in Darfur… On the other hand, it was based on speculation about the child’s condition by strangers who hadn’t even given the child as close a look as the parent, who had medical training.
It relates to Adolph Hitler, the rise of Marxism and Nixon’s approach to China.
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Or maybe, we’ve got a situation where our information (those of us who read the article) is limited, but suggestive of a range of possibilities. But uncertainty shouldn’t stop us!!! It’s all the fault of the gestapo police tactics. George W. Bush was probably on the phone with the police commander.
He said two Garfield County deputies arrived Friday before the AHRT and explained the warrant and that they would need to take the 11-year-old boy in for medical evaluation.
“He was rather vulgar in his response,” Vallario said Tuesday.
Yeah… the cops show up at your door and tell you they’re going to take your child over a bruise that you knew was fine and could not possibly be construed as your own doing. No shit he was vulgar. I would be, too.
Also, Anti-Bunny, could you please quote your evidence (from the article or elsewhere) for “you knew was fine” after your child fell on his head in the course of playing with a moving car.
Just because the result was that he was basically ok is hardly proof that the father had reason to conclude that definitively. I kinda doubt the father is a physician. It’s possible of course that the injury was so superficial that this may have been obvious even to an untrained individual, but the article doesn’t directly speak to that possibility, one way or another.
“Shiflett also said authorities never told him they had a warrant, and he would have let them in if he did.”
The article states the father had medical training, which is further backed up by the doctor prescribing pretty much what the father did: rest and aspirin.
