Feds Take Teddy Bears Out of Tramautized Kids Hands

(H/T Overlawyered)

Yes, because the first thing I'm thinking I want to hand a frightened, scared-out-of-its-gourd, little kid is a book.  Seriously, I wish I were making this up.

As police respond to traumatic events, sometimes children can be found sitting to the side of the emergency, feeling lonely and scared. For years, officers have comforted them with stuffed animals, but that's now changing.

Laws typically are meant to protect people and to make sure they're safe. The new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act does that too, but it has law enforcement officers rethinking handing out stuffed animals because of the chemicals they might contain.

Middleton police Sgt. Don Mueller said that in the past, handing out the stuffed animals or other toys could help children feel a little better.

"If you can get them to open it up and start reading, it can take their mind off whatever the problem is we're passing them out for in the first place," Mueller said.

In the back of Mueller's car is a bag of books that can move the mind from the unimaginable to a world of pure imagination.

"(The children could be) witnessing their parents in a domestic abuse situation to they're hurt on an EMS call, or they could be in a traffic accident," he said.

Mueller said that he used to hand out Teddy bears or other stuffed toys to children. Now, Middleton police are using the books to make sure they're in compliance with new federal regulations.

"One of the reasons for that is we get older toys that come in and they're perfectly fine to give out, but we don't know if they were made under the new requirements," he said.

You know, can't they just wash the stuffed animals or Teddy Bears (if they aren't already) before handing them out. I realize this is an over-blown protection the CPSIA now has because of Congressional concerns about 'poisoned toys from China' and other such things, but this seems like an intense overkill.