Police in a Tennessee town think it’s parental neglect to allow a child to ride a bike to school. (h/t Instapundit)
The bottom line here is, a police officer took it upon himself to creatively interpret the law to scare a parent into changing their behavior. A commenter at the thread does some research and even talks to the Chief of Police and comes up lacking with any real evidence that the officer is acting within his limits. Everything hinges on the judgment of the officer involved, versus the judgment of the parent involved.
I suppose if I wanted to tease this out, I could go into a pseudo-impressive question mode. How busy is this road? Is the child in question following the rules of the road? Is the parent unable to give the child a ride to school in the morning? And on, and on.
But in the end, this comes down to one of those things that all parents are required to make: a judgment call balancing their child’s abilities with larger life lessons and safety. I’ll note that just because the officer in question wouldn’t let his child make that ride, clearly doesn’t mean everyone else would make that choice. To turn things on their head a bit, it is not hard to imagine his judgment on such matters being jaded by his job in favor of excessive safety. Children do not remain so forever and need to be exposed to responsibility, risk and decision making. Not all children grow up the same, as such only parents are equipped with the requisite base of knowledge to be able to make these kind of decisions. Micro-management of parental decision making is the very sort of thing that, I think, undermines the State’s authority.
Personally, I’d rather that we live in a world where the parent is given the latitude to make such a call without being threatened by State action. And, if he really felt the need to act, the officer could have simply dropped the child off at home and said “I was worried about the safety of your child and decided to give her a ride home. That route is pretty busy, you might want to reconsider letting her ride alone. Have a nice day.”