A mom who let her 8-month-old twins wait in the car with the windows down, within her view, for 10 minutes, finds herself released on a $25,000 bond and electronic home monitoring. As aeneiifhsr
Patch reports:
ALSIP, Ill. — An Alsip woman was arrested after she left her infant twins alone in a car while she went to register her older child for school, prosecutors said.
Sarah Laveille, 28, appeared before Cook County Judge Peter Felice on two misdemeanor counts of child endangerment.
The prosecutor said that around 8:50 a.m. Monday, Alsip police were called to Prairie Junior High School, 11910 S. Kostner Ave., for a report of two babies left alone in a car. One of the babies was crying.
Crying! Well if that isn’t enough to prove a child is in mortal danger, what is?
According to Alsip police, a citizen heard a baby crying and when she went to investigate, she saw the two babies in the back seat of a Ford Taurus.
A woman, later identified as Laveille, returned to the vehicle with a third child. Police said that Laveille left the vehicle with the windows rolled down.
The babies, 8-month-old twins, had been left alone in the car for about 10 minutes, the prosecutor said.
As the assistant public defender pointed out, the car was within Laveille’s sight “at all times.” So the mom was being responsible, signing one kid up for school and keeping an eye on the other two, but she is under arrest.
Can we please call this a war on moms? Even though it is demonstrably safe to leave your kids, even babies, in the car with the windows down for 10 minute — try it! you will see!—society has elevated this normal parenting practice to a crime against humanity.
The idea that she should have gotten both kids out of their carseats and into a double stroller to schlep into the short errand within view is basically saying: The fact that your kids were literally and statistically safe doesn’t matter.
It reminds me of the way the TSA makes 90-year-old grannies take off their shoes. The whole idea is to demonstrate excess, no-stone-unturned security, not to actually make anyone safer.
“I don’t know how in your right mind you could leave two infants in a car, not saying that you’re guilty,” Felice said.
Maybe because she knows the facts? More children die in parking lots than waiting in cars. Of the 30-40 kids who die in parked cars every year, which is indeed tragic, 80 percent were either forgotten there for hours, or got into the car on their own and weren’t found till too late. The number of children who die during a 10 minute errand is zero, as far as I can tell. And yet:
Felice released LaVeille on a $25,000 I-bond and electronic home monitoring.
Sarah is in Cook County, Illinois, so here’s a description of home monitoring from the Chicago Tribune:
Defendants on electronic monitoring in Cook County must wear an ankle or wrist bracelet, which operates on radio frequency and sends signals to a cellular receiver plugged into an electrical outlet in the home. If a defendant attempts to cut the bracelet or steps out of the home, an alert is sent to a third party vendor, who then notifies the sheriff’s office.
Yes, she really sounds like she’d better be tracked like that. Gracious, she might bolt to the grocery!
“I’m releasing you on your own recognizance,” the judge said. “You better not be doing anything foolish with these kids.”
Foolish, like making sure they’re safe in car seats, bringing them along as she goes about her day, making sure they are within her sight and not overheated? Foolish like that?
Alsip’s slogan is “A great place to live.”
Not if you’re a mom.
.
.
40 Comments
Not a war on mom’s. Parents.
According to the laws you have listed she didn’t break the law.
While the age of the kids concerns me, the punishment, if any was necessary, is way out of proportion to the supposed crime. People really need to learn. I mean, why drag the other kids across a parking lot just to sign a kid up for school? How is she supposed to keep a hold on twin babies while doing the registration forms? Ridiculous.
I think the prosecution or judge should have to prove that punishments for parental activities demonstrably make the kids in question safer. If kids are being burned with cigarettes or having bones broken by parents, then sure, they’re much safer out of reach of such abuse. But how are this woman’s kids any safer or better off because their mother is being harassed and confined? What if the school-age kid is out of the house and needs help, but her mother can’t come out and get her because of the ankle bracelet? It just makes no sense at all, and helps absolutely no one.
What she needs is good lawyer. These dummies never learn unless you kick where it hurts. And lawyers are great at that!
I truely believe this, and other cases like it, violate the Eight Amendment of the Constitution:
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
I don’t get that either. She has three kids, one school aged and two babies. If she’s confined to the house, how does she take care of special circumstances with the older child? How does she take the babies to doctor appointments? How does she get groceries? One cannot be reasonably expected to care for their children workout the ability to leave her home. And sure, dad might be there, but how resentful is he going to be working all day and then having to do everything that mom usually had to do because she literally is sitting at home? And how does this make her kids any sager unless we strap the kids as well so we can ensure she’s never more than arm’s reach from them? This whole thing is ludicrous on its face and the person who thought it a reasonable punishment should have to go through it themselves to really and truly understand it.
This is also a class issue.
My husband is a lawyer (although not a criminal lawyer) and he told me that often, the public defender does not even meet the client until they walk into the courtroom. Meaning that the defender would not have been prepared with facts on car dangers, the nuances of the laws, or even the details of his cleint’s situation.
A person who could afford their own lawyer would almost certainly not have had such an outrageous outcome.
Could you imagine the moral outrage and the public outcry had she left a 400 pound gorilla unattended in her car.
Warren,
I’m cracking up
So presumably, for the duration of this monitoring, her kids are never supposed to go outside either? I doubt she’ll dare to let the bigger kid out even in the yard without her, given the judge’s vendetta, and she can’t bring the infants outdoors. Let’s confine three small children indoors for several months – that will make them healthier and happier!
This is a war on moms but I think it highlights a bigger problem. When the brain is stressed over real things or the boogieman, logic can be forced to take a back seat. Zero tolerance and over zealous prosecutors are an issue. However I think the main issue is the way the brain is hard wired. It has a stress trigger. Unfortunately the fear hysteria of the last 50 years has altered the amygdala. (stress trigger) It fires (fight or flight) for non-fight or flight situations.
I explain this further on my blog
http://www.onmysoapboxx.com/puppet
There are many great points on this blog about how this defies logic. However that only strengthens my point. 1000,000 years of evolution has made a stress trigger. It worked very well and didn’t fire inappropriately anywhere near as often as it does now.
The internationally best selling book, Emotional Intelligence spent over one and a half years on the New York Times Best Selling List. Needless to say, it’s a good book. However the actual title of it is under criticism. That’s because it’s a contradiction in terms. Most neuroscientist agree that emotion has no intelligence!
The intelligence comes from a different part of the brain. To say that intelligence comes from emotion is like saying that the engine in your car is what makes it change gears. The engine supplies the power but the transmission is what makes it change gears. Emotion doesn’t weigh up pros and cons or investigates multiple options and choose the best one. A different part of the brain does that.
People are saying this is too harsh of punishment, but this isn’t even her punishment. This is bail. If she’s tried and convicted, she’s probably going to get additional punishment, possibly jail time. It’s only going to get worse for her.
This is an outrage. I’m trying to figure out who I can write a letter to: The prosecutor? The police chief? Their local newspaper op ed page?
Here is what will happen if you keep arresting parents for leaving kids safely in cars: Parents of limited means will start simply leaving some of their children home alone, where they will be far less safe, but where no one can see that they are unattended. What if this mom had left two crying infants alone in their cribs at home for 30 minutes while she drove her kid to the nearby school to complete registration? What trouble would she be in now? Absolutely none. But I don’t think that would’ve been better for the babies, and I suspect the mom would agree with me.
Making more and more activities illegal does not necessarily make society safer. There is only one result of making new laws and that is making more criminals.
I keep thinking of the Sly Stallone film Demolition Man. In which anything deemed not good for you is illegal. Mind you my daughter laughs at the scene where he continually swears to get fines that he can use as toilet paper.
We could be heading in that direction where all choices are pretty much made for us.
Must think about how passer’s by, neighbors, cleaning ladies that enter your home, and others will react whether you like it or not. Everyone has authority over how you parent your children.
“Can we please call this a war on moms?”
Sure, if you want to be sexist about it.
The relevant statute would be 720 ILCS 5/12C-5, section (b)
“(b) A trier of fact may infer that a child 6 years of age or younger is unattended if that child is left in a motor vehicle for more than 10 minutes.”
Sounds like they were left in the car JUST long enough to trip the statute. (The real violation, on the other hand, seems to be that one of the infants was left to cry unattended.)
The bond seems high, but then again, since there were two kids in the car rather than just one, it elevates the offense from a misdemeanor to a felony.
So what you are headed to in the USA is that all children will be, from birth, wards of the state and will be raised in hatcheries.
You should read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to get some idea of your future.
@Donald
“The internationally best selling book, Emotional Intelligence spent over one and a half years on the New York Times Best Selling List. Needless to say, it’s a good book. However the actual title of it is under criticism. That’s because it’s a contradiction in terms. Most neuroscientist agree that emotion has no intelligence!”
So like ‘military intelligence’ then.
>>”Can we please call this a war on moms?”
Sure, if you want to be sexist about it.<<
I think this is legitimate, because moms get criticized more harshly than dads. I mean, if a dad takes his kids to the park, the general reaction is, "What a great father to take his kids to the park!!!" If a mom does the same thing, it's "Why is she on her iPhone instead of being 100% focused on playing with her kids?!?!?!" If a dad gets his kids ready for school in the morning, he's Father Of The Year. If a mom does it, she gets lambasted if little Susie's pigtails aren't perfect. A dad who feeds his kids PBJ's on white bread for dinner in a pinch will be lauded for pitching in with the cooking, but a mom doing the same thing will be berated for imperfect nutrition. The only place where dads get judged more harshly is situations like sleepovers, but that's just a variation on the same theme–when it comes to childcare, men are bumbling, incompetent fools at best, and potential pedophiles at worst, while women are required to be perfect 24/7, and provide constant supervision throughout every moment of the children's scintillating, educational, nutritionally balanced, curated, Pinterest-worthy lives, or else face the wrath of the police, CPS, or some random sanctimommy who, deep down, probably doesn't want to have to parent that way either, but hey, if she has to do it, then dammit, so does everyone else. So, no, I don't believe in sexism, but I do believe in calling a spade a spade……and, I believe that the "mommy wars" are exactly that.
Maybe what’s needed is a war on busybodies. If you see a busybody stalking a car full of kids, intervene, accost them, distract them, prevent them from looking at a license plate. Prevent them from using their phone to call police. Prevent them from accosting the parent when they arrive. Explain to them that a good healthy human being, seeing kids in a car, would simply, from a distance, watch to make sure everything stays alright. If someone arrives at said car, watch the kids behavior. Do they behave like it is their mom or Dad, or someone they don’t know. Explain to the busybody that being a good neighbor is being watchful, from a distance. They will resist this fact, it will make them uncomfortable because watching from a distance does not put them in the spotlight.
In this age of narcissism, people are feeling so empty but they don’t know why. They are even afraid to look for the answer to that within themselves. They all want to be important. They are all clamoring over each other to be “Special” or MORE special than the next person. They righteously proclaim their speciallness to their audiences every day on facebook, on blogs, on youtube channels and to their friends, other competitive parents. Being special is being important which means that they believe they must report to an authority (conditioning picked up from schooling) because then they will get a gold star for doing the right thing. The world will love them and fill them up from being so important. This is the root of many problems these days, not only the busybody problem, but also helicopter parenting, but THAT is a completely different discussion.
First off, this is an I-bond. That means that the mother pays NOTHING to get out of jail. If she fails to appear for court, she is liable for $25,000. If she appears for all her court appearances, she never has to pay a dime. That is why the bond is so high for 2 misdemeanors.
Second, electronic home monitoring can be set to different standards. It doesn’t have to be house arrest. Defendants are often allowed to work, go to school, go to the store, etc. while on monitoring devices. It seems like great overkill here for the charges involved – electronic monitoring is very uncommon for misdemeanors even in my harshest county – but my guess is that electronic home monitoring is given in many I-bond cases since there is really no bond being paid. It may have even been something she asked for. I will often ask for ankle monitors in exchange for much lower bonds for clients that think that they can come up with the weekly cost of the ankle monitor, but will never be able to come up with a large lump sum for a bond.
“This is also a class issue.”
Yes, but not in the way described. Public defenders are extremely overworked and underpaid. Those things can have great impact on cases in the long run, but not a particularly great impact on bond hearings where the things for consideration are risk of flight and risk to commit new crimes while on bond and not an in depth analysis of the facts and law of the case. In fact, I’m not even present for 95% of my client’s bond hearings as bond is assigned before I’m appointed.
However, private attorneys are able to get deals that I could never get in a million years. Not because they are better or even better prepared, but because their clients have attributes that my clients don’t. I have never had a client who was a middle class champion swimmer with a bright future who is studying at an elite college and has respectable parents and friends who are articulate and can write letters using proper spelling and punctuation and all appear in court properly dressed. If I did, I might be able to get him 6 months probation for rape too. Instead my clients are high school drop outs with minimal prospects for future employment and friends and parents the judge has known for years, and not in a positive way, who all come into court looking like they slept in the sewer the previous night even when out on bond. Membership has its privileges and that is alarmingly evident in the criminal justice system.
“when it comes to childcare, men are bumbling, incompetent fools at best, and potential pedophiles at worst, while women are required to be perfect 24/7, and provide constant supervision throughout every moment of the children’s scintillating, educational, nutritionally balanced, curated, Pinterest-worthy lives, or else face the wrath of the police, CPS, or some random sanctimommy”
Which part of this is the “not sexist” part?
Warren: I am back. I had to deal with other f’cking idiots on other sites, but I did nor forget you. You will cease all publications and communications and go back to the hole that you came from. Crawl into your hole fast; I am back to save this site from your verbal crap.
People must know — Warren must shut up / be silenced / no longer communicate
Warren: the only moral outrage are you comments. STOP THEM. FOR THE SAKE OF THIS COMMUNITY AND THE WORLD. YOU MUST STOP
@trollbuster: I see nothing in Warren’s comments in this thread to justify your attitude.
Harrow
My appreciation.
I picked up this fan/stalker some time ago. I believe it followed me from another board that was discussing a story that also appears here.
It seems to have some emotional or mental health issues. Maybe both.
@James Pollock
A subsequent conviction would be a felony. The proper charge, if this is a first offense, would be two misdemeanor counts, which is what indeed was charged, according to the article.
“The proper charge, if this is a first offense, would be two misdemeanor counts, which is what indeed was charged, according to the article.”
That’s not the way the statute is written.
“(d) Sentence. A violation of this Section is a Class A misdemeanor. A second or subsequent violation of this Section is a Class 3 felony.”
I think even a misdemeanor charge is iffy, considering that they were alone for just ten minutes, the minimum time required to trigger the statute. On the other hand, if one of the children was crying and not attended to, that’s an aggravating consideration (at least, to me.)
But notice that they statute doesn’t just say “subsequent violations escalate to a felony”, it says “a second OR subsequent violation”, which suggests that leaving multiple kids under six in the car can escalate the offense to a felony. I don’t think you could convict on a felony on these facts, but A) I’m not familiar with Illinois juries, B) I’m not a criminal lawyers, and C) I didn’t do any research on how this statute has been interpreted by actual courts, which, of course, would potentially have precedential value.
James,
I have not researched this specific statute, but in general in order to be a second violation, it must be an actual second incident separate from the first.
“in general in order to be a second violation, it must be an actual second incident separate from the first.”
That’s what I would have thought, but they wrote “second or subsequent”, not “second and subsequent”.
“That’s what I would have thought, but they wrote ‘second or subsequent’, not ‘second and subsequent’.”
Yes, it is a felony for the 2nd violation or any violation subsequent to the 2nd (ie 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc.).
We have the same language in our battery statute allowing for the second or subsequent conviction for family violence battery to be a felony and it means that your first conviction for family violence battery must be a misdemeanor and every conviction thereafter can be for a felony (actually under the plain reading of the statute, it must be a felony, but in practice many courts give a few bites at the apple before they go felony unless the actions are just exceptionally bad). Under no circumstances has it ever been construed to be hitting two family members in the same fight elevates it to a felony. That is simply two counts of misdemeanor family violence battery.
“We have the same language in our battery statute allowing for the second or subsequent conviction for family violence battery to be a felony”
So, you ALSO have a poorly-drafted statute.
In Oregon, DUI can also elevate from a misdemeanor to a felony. But the wording of the statute (ORS 813.010(5)) is very different.
Not to mention that for most people $25,000 would severely limit their ability to properly care for their children in the foreseeable future.
“So, you ALSO have a poorly-drafted statute.”
Yes. Many of them.
The Village of Alsip is clearly insane and paranoid to begin with. They do not allow Canadians to visit their website!
All I get is a plain white page that says “Users from your country are not permitted to browse this site.”
Who knows what evil could happen if a Canadian were allowed to view the town’s website!
“All I get is a plain white page that says ‘Users from your country are not permitted to browse this site.’
Who knows what evil could happen if a Canadian were allowed to view the town’s website!”
Strictly speaking, the interception might be coming from either direction. Meaning, it could be that the town’s servers are seeing our Canadian source address, and blocking them. Or, it could be that your Canadian ISP is seeing the response from the American government source address, and blocking the packets from coming into Canada.
And, most likely, the town doesn’t maintain web servers at all, and is paying the hosting company for US traffic only. The hosting company would charge the town more money to make the site available worldwide.
Or (tinfoil hat mode) the city of Alsip is on to your Canadian plans to invade the United States, you Canadian dogs! (tinfoil hat mode off)