Etan Patz killer arrested?

For what this animal did to our society he needs to be executed. Too bad NY's AG is too much of a chicken shit to go for it.

Are you not familiar with People v. LaValle?

Well--given that this is really about how the media coverage affected society rather than the actual killer and/or crime--it's not all the child killers who followed him, it's all the child killers/kidnappers/etc. before him.

From what I've read, the number of incidences is lower now.

Yep. For example, how many "stranger danger" programs are there now? Ann Arbor public schools have a thing called Safety Town they run for kids in the summer. It's aimed at bicycle safety, mainly, but our guys went through a module that seemed aimed at making them avoid speech with anyone they didn't know well. I have no idea if the number of incidents like the Patz case is lower (or, if it is, whether programs like this contribute to it being lower), but there is no doubt in my mind that kids are now taught to see the world as a scary place in a way that did not used to happen.

Side note: Before he could read, my older son used to think that series was called "The Bears Named 'Bears'". Later on he commented that he had wished they'd had a better name because the one they had was pretty boring.

I once got reported to airport security (I think it was at Dulles) for NOT going into the bathroom stall with my son. Someone reported that I was waiting outside of a stall for a kid who was in it. I was questioned, and told that my behavior was suspicious. I was advised that, in the future, I should go into the stall with him. My son, by the way, was several years old and well past toilet-training age by that point.

Am I crazy, or is that weird? I was talking to him, telling him there was no rush, we had time until o our flight. I mean...maybe it IS suspicious. I don't know. I just think that we've made fear of child molesters the "default" position. It's not like I was in there for a long time. I'm talking within five minutes of my son saying "I have to poop", there was a uniformed security officer confronting me. And I'm talking a BUSY public restroom.

Many of the kids in our neighborhood literally never go outside without at least one parent. EVER. There's a whole gang of stay at home Moms in our neighborhood who spend every minute of every day hovering around while the kids play.

Once, a couple of middle-school kids from our neighborhood were "missing." These Moms convinced the mother of the girl to panic and call the police. They'd been "missing" for roughly 30 minutes. I don't mean that the girl's Mom had spent 30 frantic minutes looking all over for her. I mean that her child and one of her classmates (they both lived on our block) went out to play roughly half and hours earlier; and these Moms, upon hearing this, and finding out from the mom that she hadn't asked where they were going and neither of them brought a cell phone, decided that it was OBVIOUSLY an emergency, so....

1) they immediately called the police and reported missing children;
2) they organized a search posse;
3) they sent "extra" parents to go door-to-door asking if anybody had seen the kids;
4) asked other adults to drop what they were doing and look for the "missing" kids.

(Keep in mind, these were Middle-school age kids. In the middle of the afternoon in a quiet suburban neighborhood, with people out and about all over the place).

I was one of the people home that day; all I knew was that so-and-so and so-and-so (both kids were neighbors and in fact were classmates of my younger son) were "missing" so naturally I went out to look around. I was getting ready to walk the dog anyway, so I figured an extra pair of eyes wouldn't hurt.

So I walked down the street to the corner where this gang of helicopter Moms usually spend every minute of their day standing around watching each others' kids not being attacked by roving pedophiles. Of course they all asked me if I'd heard the news, and I assured them that I had and was in fact taking a look around myself. One of them was talking to one of the MULTIPLE police officers who had responded to this call. Including an officer from some special unit specializing in this sort of thing. There were cops driving and walking all over the place.

Anyhoo, I asked, just to know, how long the two kids had been "missing" and was told--in near-panic "Nearly 40 minutes!" I think I managed to keep a straight face. And then, I walked across the street to the neighborhood of condos where lots of kids live and lots of them meet to play and skateboard. It took me all of two minutes, and I saw both of the "missing" kids--100 yards away, across the street, hanging out with several other kids who go to the same school in a small yard just behind one of the condo buildings. Just like they do everyday.

I told the girl that her mother was looking for her, and I told the boy he should check in as well just to put everybody's mind at ease.

What really gets me about that "incident" was that the Mom who really led the charge on panicking and calling the cops wasn't even slightly fazed that the whole thing was a false alarm. The next time she saw me, she told me that the lesson she had learned was--that our neighborhood really needs a comprehensive phone list and assigned call-lists so we can coordinate our "response" more quickly "the next time."

Yeah.

When I was 5 or 6, my dad was out of town on business and for some reason my mom could not pick me up at the normal time. So I had to ride the bus home from school (the city bus). The school was okay with it and even made sure i got on the right bus. AFAIK, nobody complained.

Times have changed. We live just a ten minute walk from the elementary school, but kids in our neighborhood were forbidden to walk unescorted to school becasuse--I'm not making this up--the only sidewalk from our neighborhood to the school passes by a pond. So it was a "drowning risk."

The same school also banned TOUCH football because of the risk that a kid walking past the game might get hit on the head by an errant pass.