You don't have children, I can tell. He was threatening to take away their children if they spoke to him. Would it be OK if he threatened to murder them where they stand if they said another word? If you had kids, you wouldn't think the two threats are so far apart. If someone was writing a movie about a totalitarian state and wanted you to hate a character, this is exactly a line they'd use. This is an authoritarian power-tripping asshole. He should absolutely, immediately, and irrevocably lose his job over this threat, just as he should if he threatened to murder them. I would even say jail time would be appropriate; you'd face jail time if you went into someone's home and threatened to kidnap their children. How can you possibly defend this?

I have a grown daughter, a two-year old, and one on the way.

There are lots of things you can’t tell just by text.

Who said anything about defending this? I happen to agree with the author of that article, including things she did not elaborate on in the article as an advocate of free range parenting.

It boggles my mind that people seem to read things that are not said.

> It boggles my mind that people seem to read things that are not said.

If one person misreads something, maybe they just misread it. If multiple people misread something, then maybe it wasn't expressed well in the first place.

I said for example, "this isn't necessarily a power trip". I said nothing more, and nothing less. And yet many people took that to mean something a lot more.

I say, "there are deeper issues at play", yet people are so attached to the idea that this is about police overreach.

Go to the end of the article to the author's link to her foundation, Let Grow, and see what other kind of articles the author has written about. Look at the front page, and the language. What is that foundation advocating for? Are they framing it in terms of police overreach? Is that the most important thing they are advocating for? Did they even talk about police overreach in the front-page text, above the fold?

You were dismissive and tried to do the whole “both sides” bullshit that’s so common nowadays.

You minimized the thing others care about because it doesn’t suit your needs. Just because you don’t give a shit about police brutality does not mean everyone thinks the same. By you trying to minimize discussion of it and paint both sides, you actively look like you are defending cops.

Once again, one person, maybe they misread. Multiple people, it’s on you to communicate your thoughts. If everyone is misinterpreting it in the same way, then it was just written that way; don’t blame others for reading the things you wrote.

I’m sorry but that’s just excusing the police at this point. He said that he would arrest and take away their kids if the wife dared to speak to him again.

Whatever his intentions behind that statement, that’s what someone on a power trip would say. Not in any way caring about the content, just the utterance of another word would have caused her arrest and the kids taken away.

Forgetting the fact that someone was already arrested as is. For this.

This is prime epitome of a power trip and it amazes me to see someone try to defend it as anything but.

If that is what you care about and get angry about, I won't gainsay it.

In my view, that is the smaller issue of the bigger issues at play. The author of the article, and what he is advocating for, is broader than that, but hey, if people are motivated to act and speak out because of this, sure, why not?

That is a link we make at Let Grow, too. Let Grow is the nonprofit that grew out of Free-Range Kids (which I wrote). We are trying to make childhood independence easy, normal and legal again, so kids can grow up with some adventures, problem-solving, street smarts and confidence. LetGrow.org