This is fucking infuriating. Pure rage.

I remember being in a car too long around the age of 5/6. I'm middle aged, I still remember due to the mild trauma.

Fuck. This poor kid died suffering, crying, screaming. Until he probably passed out due to exhaustion and dehydration.

FUCK.

Those involved deserve prison. Long sentences.

Wow. CPS takes your kid away, and promptly proves that they aren't capable of being a safe guardian either.

So the family managed to at least keep him alive for 3 years, the state takes him and he's dead after a few hours. This isn't going to go well for anybody. Poor kid.

The fact CPS is part of the Department of Human Resources seems about on par for Alabama

Workers contracted? Independent contractors are allowed to have custody of children? That's psychotic.

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According to the article the woman picked him up from daycare, went to a supervised visit with the father, then ran errands with K.J. still in the backseat for an hour instead of bringing him back to daycare, then went home and left him for 5 hours still strapped in the backseat and was only made aware he was still there when the daycare called to see why he hadn't been returned.

Several hours? Unbelievable! JFC!

If I lived in Alabama and CPS tried to take my child away, I would rather die protecting him.

Send the guy to prison. Term length doesn't matter.

Someone needs to be hanged for this

For...several....HOURS

The whole domain of foster care, CPS/CYF offices, and adoptions is a huge and tragic world that exists all around us but is invisible to most people.

Almost anybody who works in that world is in the same situation as jobs like teachers and game developers where passionate people are aggressively exploited by the business drones. But they have to deal with sadder higher stakes while getting even worse pay and nowhere near the resources they need. So then they become victims of the system too.

And we all know that here in the US at least, our population does not give a fuuuuuuck about living children breathing air outside wombs. And when they are poor and "urban?" Forget about it.

I can hear conservative distant relatives now: "Sounds like his baby mama should have taken better care of him!" (Of course with the term "baby mama" shoehorned in where it doesn't fit in order to make sure the sentence ends with an air of racism and dehumanization of an innocent child)

When the CPS isn't CPSing

Mistakes happen. Even the best of parents can forget their child for a few minutes. Not being accustomed to transporting children makes these kinds of mistakes so much more likely.

I don't blame the person who did this. I blame the system that allowed this situation to occur without any safety checks.

School bus drivers need to walk to the back of the bus before leaving. This is an example of a system that has been improved to prevent simple mistakes from having disastrous consequences again. If the person responsible is fired and nothing else changes, then we've learned nothing, and it will happen again.

The system must be improved to prevent this happening again.