[It was near the end of an unusual day for the four Patterson children when the deputies came to arrest their mother. The sheriff’s deputies approached the house, a tidy split-level outside Blue Ridge, Georgia, with chickens roaming the front yard and yellow flowers blooming along the front steps. What happened next was captured on a body-worn camera.
Deputy Kaylee Robertson knocked on the glass, wearing an army-green vest over her short-sleeved uniform shirt, with a cartoon character tattoo on her left arm. She asked Brittany Patterson to come outside, saying she needed to be arrested. Patterson, a 41-year-old real-estate agent, was accused of reckless endangerment for allegedly leaving her 10-year-old son unattended and allowing him to walk a mile down a busy highway.
The incident would soon make national headlines, drawing indignant comments about parental rights and governmental overreach. It would lead one local columnist to suggest that safety-obsessed adults might as well be shrouding children in bubble wrap. And it would raise an uncomfortable question: Can it be a crime not to know where your children are?
A CNN review of police documents, body-camera videos, and a 911 call sheds new light on a case that could make parents think twice about letting their children run free. The Pattersons live in the hills of Appalachia, about 100 miles north of Atlanta. They have given their children a fair amount of freedom and responsibility, and the 10-year-old son had gone missing before, but this time, someone called 911, and the deputies were called.
The deputies brought the boy home, and his mother gave him a talking-to for walking to town without asking permission first. She said he would have to lose some privileges and do some extra chores. But the deputies had already decided to arrest her, citing Georgia’s reckless conduct statute, which covers a wide range of allegedly criminal behavior.
The statute is rarely used in cases that center on child safety, and a defense attorney said it was a “complete misuse and a stretch of the statute.” The case has raised questions about the limits of parental freedom and the role of law enforcement in protecting children.
Patterson was angry and confused, but she knew that making a scene wouldn’t help her kids. She decided to play it cool, even when she was being taken away in handcuffs. Her mother and sister picked her up from the jail, and she went home to hug her children. It’s not clear what will happen next in the case, but Patterson’s attorney is seeking a full exoneration.
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