TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—Florida law enforcement came down hard on a single mother last week for the crime of letting her 7-year-old son play at a neighborhood park by himself.
Police arrested Nicole Gainey, 34, of Port St. Lucie and charged her with child abuse. If convicted, she could go to prison for up to five years, and the son could end up in state custody.
Think the arrest is a small town one-off? John Whitehead, a constitutional attorney for the Virginia-based Rutherford Institute, said the case was not unusual at all and could happen to any family.
“For the so-called ‘crime’ of allowing her son to play at the park unsupervised, Nicole Gainey was interrogated, arrested and handcuffed in front of her son, and transported to the local jail where she was physically searched, fingerprinted, photographed and held for seven hours and then forced to pay almost $4,000 in bond in order to return to her family,” said a Rutherford Institute statement. “Gainey’s family and friends were subsequently questioned by the [Florida Department of Children and Families].”
Karen Wagner, executive director of the National Parents’ Rights Association, expressed similar concerns.
“There’s nothing written in terms of what rights parents have,” she said. “There is no bill of rights for parents. Police and government agencies work on a case-by-case basis.”
The Rutherford Institute is providing free legal defense for Gainey and sees the arrest as part of a trend of treating minor mistakes as serious crimes which, as Whitehead said, is “tantamount to living in a police state.”
Police assert the park was too far away for the child to be left unattended. They responded after receiving a call from a bystander.
Gainey said she frequently allows her son, Dominic, to ride his bicycle to the nearby playground less than half a mile away. She makes him wear a cell phone around his neck and talks with him regularly when he’s outside playing.