This story has a lot of details left out, and the cops may have very much been over reacting. But it is a pretty different scenario than the one previously cited. In this scenario, the girl was younger, and left at home/the park all day while the mother was away at work, for multiple days. (Rather than just being outside for a couple of hours once). It also is not clear what other conditions may have been present that may have contributed to the outcome.

I very much agree that helicopter parenting and snobby neighbors are a major issue. Just that it is hard to judge individual situations without all the facts.

Debra Harrel made the terrible mistake of being: black, lower income, and living in the South while black and lower income.

Meanwhile you have gangs of roving kids in Philadelphia robbing and beating people up.

And you have elementary schoolers in NYC walking to and from school.

Really it comes down to location. And the people most likely to be roused by news stories are people living in very sheltered locations (e.g. no one in Chicago is taking the "Chiraq" propaganda seriously).

If you don't want to have busy bodies getting involved in your life, don't live in busy body shitholes (most of the south -- coincidentally where much of this stuff happens).

Yea, I was going to say, there's no way the police would have reacted that way if the mother wasn't black and working class. If she was a white professional, she would have been treated with kid gloves by everyone in the justice system. The busybody nosey neighbors would have of course still reported the kid no matter what race she was.