Unless you live under a rock you have, at least, vaguely heard of Justice for Harambe, or the Cincinnati Zoo shooting a gorilla. In the case that you do live under a rock, or you need a refresher, I'll sum it up for you. On May 28, 2016 a three-year-old boy crawled into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. Upon falling down into the enclosure he was met by Harambe, the gorilla inside the enclosure, and was taken by Harambe into the moat. The onlookers were screaming, many felt the boy was in danger, some, however, thought the gorilla was trying to protect the boy, and one caught it on video. The gorilla was shot to protect the child, and the video went viral. A petition, entitled Justice for Harambe, garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures and called for charges to be brought against the mother. The Hamilton County prosecutor announced on May 30th that NO charges will be brought against the mother, saying that she should not be expected to be able to have her attention on all kids at all times. Now I have a few problems with this argument, as do many others.
I was previously a swim instructor at a local YMCA, as part of my job I taught lessons to three-year-olds who had little to no swimming ability. I was expected to ensure the safety of the eight kids in my lesson at all times, and I never had a problem. The argument that a child can run away in less than a minute is correct, children can run away, BUT if you are doing your job properly, staying with one or two children while looking out for the others, this will not happen. In fact, it is not hard to watch children if you keep them in the same vicinity, and if a parent is in a situation where they cannot handle the amount of kids they are with they ask for help. If one of the eight kids in my lesson was harmed in any way a prosecutor would not hesitate to bring charges against me even if I were to use the argument that a child can sneak away very quickly.
My second major problem with this argument was that it happened at a zoo. The location has two major implications. First, it is a crowded area. Though other parents may not be able to stop the child they probably had some concerns and some of them probably yelled at or about the kid. The mother must have heard some commotion, and upon hearing the commotion she should have at least glanced back to check on her child. It also isn't hard to chorale kids when an area is crowded. The second implication of the location is that it provides strollers. If you have too many children with you simply getting a two child stroller will significantly cut down on the amount of children you need to divide your attention between as two will be contained.
If anyone has been following the situation closely there is one final key piece of evidence: the video. It turns out the child expressed his desire to go into the gorilla enclosure and the mother admonished him for it. Well, if a child wants to go into the gorilla enclosure I certainly would watch them closely around it and take them with me upon leaving the area. The full video was also not taken into account. The woman who took the video mentioned that she had more video footage that she would have given to the police if they asked for it. So not only does the video show a mother's negligent behavior, and failure to properly address a dangerous situation, it was also not fully taken into account by the police, and, by extension, the prosecutor. Perhaps the video may have shown the mother in a better light, or exposed even more wrong-doing on her part, but at the very least all evidence should have been taken into account before coming to a decision.
