“Or, you could just put tracking chips in them like you can a dog.”

The chips that they put in dogs are not for tracking.

All they do is spit out a unique ID number to a reader at very close range (inches). If the dog ends up at a shelter or vet, they can use the ID number to get the owners contact information and call the owner.

Those kinds of ID tags would do nothing in the case where a child is intentionally being held away from the parents.

I was in very much the same boat in ’69-’71, downtown Milwaukee. My dad (was a Jarhead at the main recruiting office) would take me downtown to his office, and from there i would wander off, usually to the main library, where I would easily entertain myself all day. I knew when to get back, and how to get back to his officer.

I get that times have changed since you or I did the Great Escape, but why is everyone such a special snowflake now? Kids are not stupid. Getting to the park and back by themselves without a helicopter parent or the close gaze of government is not a difficult task. It’s part of what allows us as adults to travel easily.

Or, you could just put tracking chips in them like you can a dog. I wonder if CPS would consider that as falling under permissible or required supervision (so you can always locate your child), or child abuse (because your child no longer has to be in line of sight)?

As Hugo points out, kids can lose a cell phone (but, he overlooks that that they can take off and lose a panic button — an implanted chip prevents such loss). However, if, according to CPS’s thinking, children are mindless chattel, may as well go all the way — although I think we should stop somewhere short of branding).

[Disclosure of the type Walter made — I grew up in a semi-rural area, on a large lake where I went swimming, fishing and boating, next to farms (that had cattle, including breeding bulls, on them), and many nearby woods. Friends and I explored all of these, taking with us, at times, lighters and flammable liquids to build fires, fireworks, BB Guns, and small caliber firearms, and sometimes we even took tents and sleeping bags and spent the night. There was a neighborhood pool and park (where unsupervised children played pick-up sports, including tackle football, basketball and baseball — all 3 of which were contact sports, and we acted as our own refs, and managed to work out when fouls were committed, all without adult supervision). Sometimes someone got hurt, so we’d do appropriate first aid, or, more often, tell the kid to stop being a wuss and to either get back in the game or go home. As my parents were divorced and my mother (who had custody of my brother and me) worked, we did not have constant parental supervision. If I misbehaved, there were other parents in the neighborhood who would call my mother directly — as I discovered more than once. Dispite this apparent neglect, my brother & I graduated from high school, college and graduate programs — and, paid our own ways doing so — and never felt neglected or deprived since we had friends and found many ways to spend our time and learned independence and responsibility. If my comments about the Montgomery County, MD, CPS appear to have an edge of sarcasm, that is intended]

By all accounts, the children were stopped “around” 5 PM.

In the statement from the lawyers (http://www.freerangekids.com/a-statement-from-the-meitivs-about-the-detainment-of-their-kids/ ):

CPS did not release the children to Danielle and Alexander until 10:30 P.M., and the children did not return home until about 11 P.M. on a school night.

The statement then makes the charge:

Due to the actions of Maryland CPS and Montgomery County Police, the children were:
— kept from their parents for over six hours without access to food, and

The statement gives times that show that the kids were at most detained for 5 and a half hours, but then says they were kept from their parents without access to food for over 6 hours.

If the parents picked up the kids at !0:30 PM and had them home “around 11 PM,” why does the statement say the children were:

not returned to the parents until almost midnight on the night before school.

The “fudging” of the story to make a point or make the actions of the police / CPS worse is rather pointless in my opinion. The Meitiv’s and their lawyers are winning the public relations battle, so why release a statement that is inaccurate and contradictory?

Certainly the actions of the police and their statement to justify those actions can be seen as self serving. Yet when the Meitiv’s and their lawyers release a statement that doesn’t match their own stated facts, in some ways their account must be seen as self serving as well.

The police and CPS were wrong. But if the victims are going to lie or exaggerate, they lose some of the benefit of the doubt as well.

You have the right idea, but kids easily lose cell phones. The absence of a cell phone should not excuse those who detain a kid from immediately contacting the parents.

(1) Kids are good at memorizing a parent’s phone number, however. Any official detaining a child should be required to honor a child’s request to call that number, under the extreme penalties for kidnaping.

(2) Kids could wear light neck bands (not easily removed) containing the phone number and other key identifying information, in case the kid is too panicked to repeat the phone number

(3) Project for inventors: a light “panic button” that a kid can wear around his neck and press as needed. It would automatically initiate a call to his parents.

(3b) As body–cam technology improves, it can be downsized to be convenient for kids, and viewable remotely by parents over phone connections.