My priors weigh pretty heavily in favor of "if it makes the news it's probably rare enough that you don't have to worry about it", but as a counterpoint, we live in the same neighborhood as you and in the past ~1-2 years we've witnessed at least two instances of people calling the police on unattended children. Our neighbor's daughter (6-7) apparently went to the park without shoes on (she did not have to cross any streets to get there) and it seems that she crossed the street (the one the park is on) and someone called the police, who brought her home.
In another incident, our son (3 at the time) apparently escaped our notice and decided to go to the park (again, no street crossing), again without shoes. We looked for him on the bike path and sent our older son (6 or 7 but the size of a median 9-10 year old) to check the park. Our older son returned from the park with the younger one and an adult was following them and told us they were worried about our younger son being unaccompanied and without shoes and called the police. As far as we know the police never showed up, though.
Neither of these incidents resulted in any consequences for anyone involved and it doesn't worry me so much that I plan to let it stop me from free-range parenting, but it has made me think that "you let your kids play by themselves and then end up in a Kafka-esque CPS nightmare scenario" is more plausible than I had previously believed.
My priors weigh pretty heavily in favor of "if it makes the news it's probably rare enough that you don't have to worry about it", but as a counterpoint, we live in the same neighborhood as you and in the past ~1-2 years we've witnessed at least two instances of people calling the police on unattended children. Our neighbor's daughter (6-7) apparently went to the park without shoes on (she did not have to cross any streets to get there) and it seems that she crossed the street (the one the park is on) and someone called the police, who brought her home.
In another incident, our son (3 at the time) apparently escaped our notice and decided to go to the park (again, no street crossing), again without shoes. We looked for him on the bike path and sent our older son (6 or 7 but the size of a median 9-10 year old) to check the park. Our older son returned from the park with the younger one and an adult was following them and told us they were worried about our younger son being unaccompanied and without shoes and called the police. As far as we know the police never showed up, though.
Neither of these incidents resulted in any consequences for anyone involved and it doesn't worry me so much that I plan to let it stop me from free-range parenting, but it has made me think that "you let your kids play by themselves and then end up in a Kafka-esque CPS nightmare scenario" is more plausible than I had previously believed.