Only a few days ago, the news was of the arrest of Ryan Snodgrass for saving the life of a young girl lost in the rapids when the police wanted to save the girl themselves, as soon as they could get around to it. We now learn that 14 year old Edwin’s attempt to help a 3 year old girl in a Burlington Coat Factory find her mother has bought him a felony charge for false imprisonment.

Edwin was shopping with his own mother when he spotted a little girl who had gotten separated from her mom. Believing that the mother might be part of a group of women walking out of the store, Edwin headed for the exit with the 3-year-old following. When he got outside, he took her hand. He says he realized the girl’s mom wasn’t outside and was about to turn around when her understandably alarmed mother rushed out of the store.

The girl rejoined her mother, and everyone went back inside, where Edwin continued shopping—and the girl’s mother asked someone to call 911. The dispatcher asked where the alleged kidnapper was; the caller said, “He’s over in shoes.” The police came, cuffed him, and took him to jail.

There is a message here.  The message is becoming increasingly clear. Don’t help unless you are prepared to enter a world of insanity and stupidity.  Don’t help unless you want to be the blamed. Don’t help unless you  want to accused.  Don’t help.

For most of us, with at least the tiniest bit of heart and brain, the idea of walking away from a child in extremis, in need, is inconceivable.  Heck, just a person in need.  There are some horrible instances of people walking away from, or merely around, a person in need.  I refuse to believe that most of us would do that.  I reject the idea that we care nothing for others. 

For people who I would call “normal”, there is a bone in our heads that makes us want to help those in need.  Whether because we would want someone else to help us should we need it, or just a recognition of basic humanity, we would act.  We could do no less. 

But does this bone exist in the heads of those wearing the hat of law enforcement?  Has paranoia become so institutionally imbedded that the idea of a 14 year old, shopping with his mother, helping a 3 year old to find her mother, fallen too easily into the “zero tolerance” hole? 

No doubt the mother of the three year old girl loved her daughter, though there is a lingering doubt about what she was doing, shopping, that her child escaped her notice and wandered off.  It can happen.  It can also happen that parents watch their children closely enough that it doesn’t.

And no doubt the mother of the 14 year old loves her son, who clearly has the bone in his head that refused to allow him to ignore a lost 3 year old girl.  Edwin’s mother did something right with her son. 

In this particular case, a critical factor, it would seem, was Edwin’s taking the little girl beyond the magic wall, the store doors, under the mistaken belief that his mother was part of a group of women standing outside.  He held the little girl’s hand.  This could have been significant.  This also could have been a heartfelt effort to calm the fears of a little girl and reunite her with her mother.  It was certainly a demonstration that Edwin had yet to feel the taint of a paranoid society’s scrutiny of anything that remotely appears to involve the possible harm to a child.

There was nothing wrong with the mother of the lost girl calling 911 before her little girl was returned to her.  It’s hardly clear from the 911 call whether the mother, when responding to the operator’s question of where the “alleged kidnapper” could be found, meant to confirm the knee-jerk assumption that it was a kidnapping. 

What is clear is that the most modest inquiry into what happened should have left little question that Edwin was trying to help the little girl.  The police, the little girl’s mother, the store, the media, could have told a story later that day of an act of kindness, a good samaritan, who had a bone in his head that wouldn’t allow him to stand idly by while a lost 3 year old girl wandered through Burlington Coat Factory in search of her mother.

Now what do we  teach our children?  Now what do we do when we someone needs help?  The bone in my head says we take the chance of being arrested for our effort, just because the bone won’t allow us to do anything else.

H/T Peter Black via Ed at Blawg Review