This morning, I was out grocery shopping with my two year old little girl when a "concerned mother" called the police because my daughter started crying.

This story requires some context. A little over a month ago, my wife passed away after being struck by a drunk driver. She had walked to the store to get some milk, after I had told her that I didn't want to go out at at moment. I saw the sirens before anything else; the accident had taken place only a few minutes from our house. My daughter is still too young to understand the concept of death fully, so she keeps asking for her mommy. Ever morning, I wake up with overwhelming guilt over the accident. What if I had gone instead? Would she still be alive? What if I'm not as good at being a single parent as she would have been?

This afternoon, I tried to take my mind off of the grief by taking my daughter grocery shopping. She kept asking for mommy, and eventually broke into tears while we were finishing up shopping. Deciding that it would be quicker than letting her walk beside me, I picked her up and finished the shopping as quick as possible, all the while trying to comfort my sobbing daughter.

After I checked out, I started to walk in the parking lot, when a police officer grabbed my arm, and took my daughter from me. I instantly asked him what the hell he was doing, before another office stepped between us, and asked me if I had any identification.

As is my right, I told him that I did not have to provide an identification without being accused of a crime. He told me that there had been an anonymous tip I had abducted a 2 year old girl. I told him that I was her father, and pulled out identification to prove so.

The other police officer was hesitant to give me back my daughter, but after I wrote down his badge number he gave me my daughter back. She was still crying, begging for her mother. The officer who had asked me for my ID told me that when the anonymous caller heard the little girl crying for her mommy, she assumed that I had abducted her when the mother had turned her back or something.

I told the officer that this was completely ridiculous, and asked him why they would follow up on suck a ludicrous statement. If someone was going to to abduct a child, why the hell would they do it in there of a grocery store with cameras everywhere, and witnesses everywhere as well. The police officer told me that they consider every report of a man abducting a child to be credible until proven otherwise.

I asked him if the same applied to female abductors, and he and his partner instantly looked uncomfortable. They told me that they apologized for the interruption, and told me to have a nice day. I didn't wish the the same.

Not only did this show how flawed my local police system's child abduction protocols are, but it also reopened the wound of my wife' passing again.

Thanks, anonymous caller. You've simultaneously pissed me off, and made my daughter day as well as my day much, much worse.