Children Picked Up By Police for Walking Home Alone

Two children were picked up by police on Sunday after a caller reported seeing them walking unattended in their neighborhood. The parents of the children have previously been investigated for letting them walk home alone.

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv of Silver Spring, Md. practice what they call a “free range” parenting style, which she described on her website as having “kids who roam.”

Dvora, 6, and Rafi, 10, were walking home from a local park when someone observed that they were alone and called the police. The children were placed into the custody of Child Protective Services for a few hours and were returned to their parents after they signed a “safety plan” which states that they will not leave their children unsupervised.

According to Today.com, the children were “two blocks away from their house.”

Meitiv wrote on Facebook:

The police coerced our children into the back of a patrol car, telling them they would drive them home. They kept the…

“Unfortunately, our first thought was, CPS and police. I never thought they were abducted by a stranger,” Danielle Meitiv told Today.com. “Our first fear was, ‘Holy cow. Could the police have stopped them?’ I actually had a nightmare about this a month ago, but I didn’t think it would actually happen.”

Jordan Richardson, a visiting legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said that this case raises “two important questions:”

“First, is walking home from school unattended dangerous? Second, should the government intervene if the parents allow this behavior? While there can be reasonable debate about the first question, we should be cautious about how we apply a policy solution to the second. When the government treats ordinary behavior as criminal activity, it undermines the legitimacy of the justice system.”

CPS did confirm to NBC-Washington that the Meitivs are under investigation.

The Meitivs have said that they are seeking legal counsel, but will not violate the terms of the safety plan.