Officers told her that she needed to contact child welfare authorities, but Aldridge allegedly threatened to leave her kid on the ouside sidewalk. Before the encounter was over, Aldridge was charged with possessing a controlled substance and endangering a child’s life. Oh – and those child authorities were called in after all. I guess you have to be accused of a crime before police will make the call.

What a mess. I’ve never spoken to Tierra Aldridge but if you take your kid to police in the middle of the night you’re desperate for help. So why instead is she now being held in jail on $75,000 bond – and probably facing years in prison because she possessed some rock?

Some cretins on the comment pages didn’t waste time ascribing Aldridge’s plight to her skin color, but a refreshing number of people also voiced sympathy for her, and questioned why she was criminalized when she should be applauded for taking the brave step of delivering her child to authorities.

”It just never seems to amaze me,’’ wrote PigHeaven69 on the Sun-Times comment board. “Someone actually does the RIGHT thing…and she gets ridiculed and criticized because she wanted to give her child up. Come on, that little one was better off being taken there than him being left at home alone, killed, tortured, starved, beaten or numerous other things bad that could have happened to him. At least she had the guts and the brains to take him.”

”At least she didn't drown the child,’’ wrote Pencilneck. “Take the kid and let her go!”

Jack wrote, “They always say instead of throwing them in the dumpster or abandoning them to take them to a police station or a firehouse or even a hospital and nothing will happen to you. Well....there goes that theory.”

And someone named Farley pointed out the financial idiocy of arresting this young mother for possessing a small amount of dope and then keeping her imprisoned for years.

The U.S. has the largest prison population of any country in the world. We arrest more people and keep them locked up longer than either “communist” Russia or China. According to the New York Times, our war on drug plays a major role: “In 1980, there were about 40,000 people in American jails and prisons for drug crimes. These days, there are almost 500,000.”

The Times says those numbers “draw contempt” for the U.S. in Europe for pursuing “the war on drugs with an ignorant fanaticism.”

That ignorant fanaticism was on display in Chicago last Saturday when authorities choose to arrest instead of helping Tierra Aldridge.