US couple suing cops for detaining kids

A Jewish couple from Maryland are bringing a legal suit against Montgomery Country Police and Child Protective Services for what they believe was an unlawful seizure of their children.

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv’s 10-year-old son Rafi and 6-year-old daughter Dvora were picked up by police last Sunday while walking alone in their suburban Washington, DC neighborhood and detained for hours, during which they were prevented from contacting their parents.

Child Protective Services have criticized the Meitivs in the past for letting their school-age children walk and play outside without adult supervision. In December 2014, CPS began an investigation of the couple after a concerned citizen reported to police that the children were outside alone. That time, the police brought the children home after picking them up as they walked home from a park where they had been playing one mile from their house.

In February of this year, the parents received a letter from CPS stating that they had been found guilty of “unsubstantiated neglect” of their children. They were in the process of appealing that finding when their kids were picked up again by police on Sunday.

Undeterred by the investigation, the Meitivs continued to parent their children as they saw fit. Alexander Meitiv, who grew up in the USSR, is reportedly particularly put off by government intrusion into his and his wife’s private family life.

In the meantime, the family has become a cause célèbre for Free-Range Kids, a parenting movement that encourages kids being raised in this era of helicopter and tiger parenting to take calculated risks and enjoy the freedoms that children growing up in previous generations took for granted.

“In just one generation, what was considered a normal, happy, healthy childhood has become considered wildly dangerous, litigiously dangerous,” wrote Lenore Skenazy, widely considered the mother of the Free Range Kids movement, on her blog.

“We’re swimming in ‘fear soup’ — fear of lawsuits, fear of injury, fear of abductions, fear of blame. (People love to blame parents for not being ‘responsible’ enough.) And Free-Range Kids is trying to paddle out,” she wrote.

In a statement issued by the Meitivs’ legal representation, the parents allege that this time, the children were told by police to get into their car so they could bring them home and call their parents.

The parents say the children were instead confined to the back of the police car for three hours and then taken for further detention at the Montgomery Country Crisis Center. The children were allegedly kept from their parents for a total of six hours, during which they were not given any food. The parents say they were finally notified of their children’s whereabouts and allowed to retrieve them at 10:30 p.m.— arriving home at 11:00 p.m on a school night.

The couple believes the authorities are acting contrary to their constitutional rights to parent their children as they see best, and that is why they are suing.

“We must ask ourselves how we reached the point where a parent’s biggest fear is that government officials will literally seize our children off the streets as they walk in our neighborhoods. The Meitivs intend to fully vindicate their rights as parents and their children’s rights, and to prevent this from happening to their children again,” said their attorney.