THIS MUST END: NO MORE HARASSMENT FOR LEAVING KIDS IN THE CAR A MINUTE OR TWO!

Unfortunately, no amount of statistics is going to change people’s fear. It’s trauma based, post 9/11, pushed by financial interests in a fear-based economy. Fear of disease, fear of kidnapping, fear of death is what it comes down to. Those living under fear are easily controlled but those who profit from it. Increased military spending, more prisons, more police, more vaccinations, more medications. The solution? I think Timothy Leary was on to something. Or how about a million kid march on Washington? Leave the parents home.

Rick is right. It’s the Hysteria-Media Complex that’s scaring people to death.

Because in a small town like that with virtually no crime, busybodies and Barney Fife have to give themselves something to do, so lets jump on the poor young woman taking one minute to walk into the gas station to pay for gas.

There is nothing wrong with using common sense and not dragging three small children in and out of a car to pay for gas.

What I would have done is confronted the Bad Samaritan who called the police and harassed you. Call out her interest in these children, turn the attention on her- is she a pedophile? Why is she distressing these children with her paranoia? Is she in need of medication or a mental health evaluation?
Yes, lets wait for the police. I want to report your bizarre, concerning behavior for creeping on my kids and file a report against her.

No one should be treated like this. Stand your ground against harassing behavior.

Do-gooders are so annoying. One time I was walking to the park when I was 10 and this stranger came up to me and started telling me to be careful and don’t talk to strangers and I was thinking,” to late I’m talking to you and you are a stranger”.

There’s a good possibility that the busybody has connections to someone in law enforcement. which makes placating her concerns more important to them than someone else’s.

I mean, there ARE the very rare cases where somebody leaves the car idling with the keys in the ignition, and a child in car, and some car thief sees an opportunity but not the child. But for those, the problem is leaving the keys in the car, not the kid.

So… there’s a law enforcement agency that should have one of its members reported. (If it’s worth it to make waves.)

James,

Take your inflammatory comment and shove it. You are again attempting to admit facts not in evidence for your own personal agenda. No where is it mentioned that the cop called the parents.

I would love for the cop to insist on calling the parents. How would he/she get the info out of the kids? None of the cops business what the parents think. The parents have put their trust in this nanny, and it is not the cops place to question that or second guess it.

James,
Stop your BS. Again, trying to twist the facts. The keys were not in the car, and it was not idling. Two comments trying to sideline the site.

I know online you will continue to be an arsehole. That is the nature of cowards like you. Because in person you wouldn’t get away with it.

James,
Unlike you I admit errors, and I did miss the call. My bad. Doesn’t change you being a goof.

I have never understood why people put up with this crap.

With a cop standing there lecturing you, “Am I being detained?”. When the cop says no, tell him/her to get lost. It is that simple.

With a busybody, you just push past them and tell them to eff off. It is that simple.

With people like James, you give the blowhard a quick shot in the yap, with your dozen friends swearing on a stack of bibles that James tripped and you tried to catch him.

One option is to tell the cop he/she has nothing to go on, but I like Lollipoplover’s idea better.

Confront the busybodies. If you see something like this unfold, and see someone about to call the cops on a young nanny like this, confront him or her. Let them know the facts, let them know that you have obtained their license plate for the record, etc.. Make the BUSYBODIES feel like the criminal (without any threats or violence of course). We need to shame people right back in the way that others have been shamed (and way worse) for knowing the facts about the dangers to their kids and acting accordingly by giving them the freedom they need.

If you see someone calling the cops on parents/guardians engaging in sensible behavior, say something.

“I have never understood why people put up with this crap.”

Amazingly, some people don’t default to “confrontational”.

“With a cop standing there lecturing you, “Am I being detained?”. When the cop says no, tell him/her to get lost. It is that simple.”

If your goal was to be detained.

“With people like James, you give the blowhard a quick shot in the yap, with your dozen friends swearing on a stack of bibles that James tripped and you tried to catch him.”

Seriously, this obsession, where you keep fantasizing about doing violence to me, has got to stop.

“If you see someone calling the cops on parents/guardians engaging in sensible behavior, say something.”

Even better: Record it. Preserve a record of what, exactly, happened.

Most police are professional. The ones that aren’t subvert the reputations of the ones who are, and their worst enemy is the video recording showing them doing something their official report says they didn’t.

Pay attention, Warren. The nanny DID say in her letter that the cop called the children’s parents.

We take this crap from cops because we prefer not to be arrested or have a $200 ticket written on specious charges, or having a gun pulled on us.

Cops can make your life miserable if they choose to. And it’s especially easy for them if you’re young, or don’t have much money, or are not white. The nanny in the story above is in the first two of those categories; perhaps the third too, though we can’t tell.

Maybe you can get away with telling a cop to get lost (your words) but I assure you that not everyone can.

As a parent who employed a nanny for over a decade, I want to say that I would be in complete agreement with my nanny’s judgment if she had made the same decision here. And it’s sad that this caregiver has to worry about her job it a situation like this.

This Nanny did everything right. She showed exceptional judgement in leaving the kids in the car, which is much safer than wrangling 3 kids across a gas station parking lot. I have 3 kids of similar ages, and I would have done the exact same thing.

Even though this poor woman was being bullied by the busy-body and the police officer, it sounds like she kept her cool and did her best to de-escalate and diffuse the situation. A confrontation could have had serious consequences.

I hope her employers have her back. They should all have a good laugh about the absurdity of it all, then the parents should file a complaint with the police chief about the officer’s attitude. I mean honestly, 3 young kids loose in a gas station parking lot (the nanny has but two hands, after all)? What was he thinking?

vinc,

We do not fear cops here. As a matter of fact I am good friends with cops on various forces, through business and recreation. And they are the first to tell you that you do not have to put up with a cop being a jerk. They only enforce the law, they are not the law.

I have, and will tell a cop to get lost, when they are over stepping. I do not have to take crap from them. You want to be a coward, go for it.

Telling a cop to get lost is not against the law.

I was in court yesterday where someone pleaded guilty to reckless conduct for leaving a child in a car. It was not my case so I don’t know the details, but it attracted my attention. Nothing else was given for the facts that supported the conviction – no “it was 112 degrees” or the car rolled into a ditch or anything similar which would possibly make this a valid charge. Based on the reckless conduct charge, I would bet that the woman either left her child in the car intentionally in a perfectly safe situation or forgot her child in the car and remembered before any harm came to the child. No she has 12 month probation.

Though we can’t change the culture of fear immediately, we can stick to our guns and support one another. We can also personally educate and encourage others in our community to grant our kids some independence. Community support is the key…think nationally , act locally, right?

I have been allowing my young boys (ages 5 and 8) to wander around my very safe hood and knock on people’s doors to see if anyone wants to play. They are loving their freedom (as am I 🙂 and the other parents love that their kids are being entertained. It’s also inspiring them to go out of their comfort zone and give their kids a bit more freedom (though truthfully it’s slow-going).

I actually look forward to the day when law enforcement second-guesses my parenting decisions. I have my responses ready and am prepared to use them. I know my local laws and am ready to fight for my right to parent my children as i see fit.

In my youth, being sent to the car was the usual punishment for failing to behave in public. Then again, we didn’t have bike helmets and mostly didn’t have car seats for kids, yet, either.

@M- While I agree that kindness and gratitude goes a long way with social interactions, the difference here is that the Bad Samaritan already called the cops.
Who thanks someone for calling the police for no reason???
Not me.

Cell phones are a lot like guns- they can fire quickly and cause considerable damage and escalate confrontations that are best handled rationally and civilly.
So when this lady fired off that 911 call, she choose not be a good citizen and harass this nanny. Anyone who was truly concerned with the welfare of the children would wait by the car for the adult to return and then go about their business without escalating this to a police situation and traumatizing these kids with their caretaker being belittled.

We have to stop this mental illness of parenting police. I am not a confrontational person. I am a mama bear, though. Mess with my kids, you will receive my wrath. Creeping around my car with irrational, paranoid thoughts will bring on that wrath. I can whip out a phone and tape your crazy, especially if it frightens my children unnecessary. What about the children????
They should not be subjected to stranger-induced stress and harassment.

“it is not a fantasy, just stating a fact that with your mouth constantly running, someone will shut it.”

If it makes you happy to devote your time to imagining this, knock yourself out.
Long-term, your obsession with me is… sad, really. How frustrating for you it must be that all your bully-talk can’t change what I do or say in the slightest aspect, leaving with only imaginary responses.

Have a nice, day, anyway.

“if the alternative is a six-month jail sentence”

Yes, 12 months of probation is probably preferable to 6 months in jail, but six months in jail is not the usual sentence for leaving your kids in a perfectly safe situation. Do the judges in this jurisdiction feel otherwise? Are the juries unusually likely to convict? Is it a case like the one in Pennsylvania where the judge was sentencing kids to the private prison that was giving him kickbacks?

Meanwhile, there’s a story in this week’s News of the Weird about the Virginia woman who was charged with leaving her kids in the hot car as she was inside the courthouse appearing on a charge of leaving her kids in a hot car.

My most recent comment was in reference to this quote by James:

“Avoiding confrontation vastly increases your odds of getting what you want in encounters with the police, just as it in most other things. When you go LOOKING for a confrontation, you’ll probably find one, and might not like the results. You might be in the wrong, and have to admit it later.”

Lenore, don’t know how to stop this except to keep the topic alive as you do. For what it is worth people outside this community seem to be taking up the topic and researching. Yahoo has an article right now with no indication they even thought of you, but the title sounded just like our arguments: “There’s No Such Thing As ‘Free-Range’ Parenting — It’s Just Parenting”

http://news.yahoo.com/theres-no-thing-free-range-parenting-just-parenting-192722019.html

I think in that is half of the ultimate solution. Keep sewing the seeds of calm and rational though, and keep pushing back, until the panic is doused and free range parenting is “just parenting” again.

The other half is in the hands of people with the courage to fight it through court and your legal allies, to get the backing of some precedent that reasserts the clause about ‘substantial risk of harm’ that still exists in most places, and make prosecutors prove ‘substantial’. If they start loose that battle in court, it will put the cops and prosecutors on notice that putting forward a *theoretical* ‘risk of harm’ is simply not sufficient.

…. of course there is the NJ appeals court that shows getting judges to quit imagining a “parade of horribles” and deal in facts, may be difficult.

Anna July 2, 2015 at 10:02 am:

I don’t know what logic or reason can do about this.

I don’t either. Just for comparison, if these stupid and malicious busybodies were around when I six years old or so in the late 1940s, they’d be laughed out of town. But with today’s laws and busybodies, countless parents would have died in prison serving LWOP.

On Saturday mornings my father routinely sent me to the store, about a mile walk which included crossing some RR tracks. Sometimes I even walked along the RR tracks. Both ways. Not the best idea, but all the trains moved about walking speed, and every kid knew to always look behind as well as ahead when walking along the tracks.

Compounding the crimes, my father usually gave me a dollar, and said “Bring me back a pack of Camels. Buy yourself some ice cream. And bring back the change.” So I did. That’s worth several felonies today for my father and the shopkeeper.

In first grade, I and my friends walked about a mile to school both ways, but not quite the same route, so no RR tracks. Just cut through some undeveloped woods instead.

By the time I was 10, I routinely mowed a big fraction of an acre with an electric mower. Had to be careful not to cut the several hundred foot power cord, which happened more than once.

We also routinely played in the woods, climbed trees, swung from vines playing Tarzan. Came crashing down more than once when the vines broke loose. Kids played around big ponds without direct adult supervision. Caught critters and crawlies in tin cans with sharp edges. Fished with cane poles, worms and sharp hooks. Jumped off farm buildings into plowed ground playing cowboy (or something). Nobody drowned, died from falls or snakebites, or even came close. We learned what not to do from a little parental common sense talking and a lot of running around without direct supervision.

Result: at a young age my friends and I could identify every venomous snake and insect by sight (and there were plenty, rattlesnakes, copperheads, water moccasins, scorpions, wasps, etc.). We knew not to reach under rocks and logs bare handed. We knew how to clean fish for cooking using sharp knives without slicing and dicing ourselves. We knew not to eat berries we didn’t definitely recognize as edible. We learned a whole host of things that kids are quite capable of learning without serious injury, but with a little parental cautionary talk and a lot of running around playing without an adult watching every move.

Worst bad consequences in my recollection: sometimes being miserable a day or two from ticks or monster chigger rashes inflicted when playing in blackberry patches. Chiggers are larval mites that hatch in berry patches and then crave blood. A good dose of chiggers will make anybody miserable for a day or so. But a nice swab bath with ammonia after picking berries usually keeps them down to a dull roar. That’s probably another few felonies.

Three felonies a day? More like thirty if somebody allowed kids to play that way today. You can thank stupid legislators, power-mad cops, maliciously asinine busybodies, and the abominable popular belief that children today face unspeakable dangers that no other children ever faced, much less survived. [/end rant]

I’m beginning to think it’s not so much age, but the mentality of people. I know some elderly people gripped by the paranoia of today as well. You’d think they’d understand better than most, having lived through at least 2 generations before this one, and all the things that entailed them. Now some fear like everyone else. Just like there are strong willed people, there are weak willed ones.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with what this young lady did. And the cop and busy body were over analyzing, and over reacting. What they told her was based purely on their own opinions, and not facts. One would think a cop should know better. But in reality, they are people too. Susceptible to all the flaws and misguidance some of us fall prey too. It’s the human mind that controls what we think, feel and do. Sometimes, some people get easily manipulated, and what they think, they think is truth. Common sense and reason goes out the window in place of unsubstantiated fears.

I hope you that the parents of the children are one of the smarter ones, and saw that the nanny did in fact did nothing wrong. At the very least did nothing the parents wouldn’t have done in that situation. Does she still have her job?

A related topic of busybodies calling the police about is hot cars.
A quick search for actual peer-reviewed science experiments of non-sunny days had few results.
Most were trying to use fear to prove their a bias so they could sell something or gain ratings.

The only study was in Florida on the effectiveness of a window sun shield was inconclusive for cloudy days.
(Where I am seldom has many totally clear days.)

Asking what conditions are actually dangerous on here and elsewhere can help determine the relative risks of cloudy days, in the shade or vehicles having few windows.
Mythbusters showed that the difference between black or white cars in the sun was only 10 degrees.

I just sent this to my state rep:
I wanted to write and ask you to take action against the laws in our state that make it an arresting offense to leave a child under the age of 12 in a parked car for any amount of time.
As it currently stands, Connecticut has no minimum age for a child to be left alone in a home, because children mature in their own ways and nobody knows when a child is ready better than a parent. It is completely contradictory to then turn around and tell the parents that they do not know best when their child is ready and arrest them for it. Arresting a parent is traumatic to the child, as would be having a parent in prison. These are not cases of abuse or neglect, nor even of “forgetting” a child in a car. These are parents and caregivers making a conscious choice for a short period of time. And these are not infants, these are 10- and 11-year-old kids. Saying to the parent of the 11-year-old “you’ve got to wait until they turn 12” is completely insane. What magic happens on a child’s 12th birthday that makes them instantly able to work door locks and handles, so that they can either lock out someone or get out of the car if there’s a problem? Frankly, this is insulting to both the parent and to the child.
I am writing this with my 7-month-old on my lap. I would never leave him in the car, but he might be ready when he’s 10. Shouldn’t I be the one to make that choice?
Thank you for your time.
-Elizabeth
203-798-2173

@dancing on thin ice and @Liz,

I started compiling data on kids in car deaths. 2014 showed none that paned out to a hot car death under 70deg, or under 15 minutes (those cars hadn’t been driven and were pre-heated), no child over the age of 5 (though one mom did die along with her kids), and as far as I can tell all wandered or forgotten. Slight problem is I have two holes in that data set. One of the holes is a set of parents arrested on “zero tolerance” with the cop claiming that kids can die in “seconds if it is hot enough.” Which I will assert is demonstrably false.

I would love to expand the info, and cover every death pointed to for these, but it is a fair amount of work, and I don’t know how to get the court records.

“One of the holes is a set of parents arrested on “zero tolerance” with the cop claiming that kids can die in “seconds if it is hot enough.” Which I will assert is demonstrably false.”
Let me start by saying “what’s the other one?”

But then I’ll take the cop’s side in an allegedly humorous way.
It IS possible that kids can die in seconds if it is hot enough. Cars, on their own, do not get that hot, but some places, such as blast furnaces and nuclear bomb test sites do. So if you park in a blast furnace or at a nuclear weapon test site, take your kids with you when you get out of the car or risk arrest.

Talk about taking a knife to a gunfight. James is going to take on Donna.

James= plastic picnic knife

Donna= .50 cal. gatling gun

Donna,

It would be fair to say that jury trials are not so much about the law, as they are about what the people on the jury feel is right.

I’m embarrassed to say that I’m from Brecksville. I disagree with the commenter calling it a small town, as it’s a suburb of Cleveland in a metro area of 2.7 million. However, many moved there to escape the dangers of living near a big, bad city, so it doesn’t surprise me that some of the residents are completely paranoid about crime. I mean, my parents have all doors dead bolted there, all with different keys, and keyed locks on the INSIDE as well, completely in spite of the fact that there is zero crime there.

That said, the police used to truly serve the community. They’d give residents the benefit of the doubt and were actually helpful. If this is the norm now, I’m glad I moved. That said, I’ll write the mayor on behalf of the poster who was harassed. Totally ridiculous.

This exact thing happened to me minus the police, but she threatened to call them.

First the woman was 1000% out of line, second the police officer should have know the law & told the Busy body that the children were fine & safe & that no laws were broken, but thanks for her concern & went on his way to catch a speeder or something.

Another time I was getting my phone checked at the store & was less than 50 ft away, my 4 & 8 yr old were in the car, buckled in their seats in a locked car, windows cracked on a not hot day playing on their tablets. I was parked right by the door & came out every 5 min to check on them & was watching through the window while waiting to be helped then some busy body woman & her teen daughter gave me an ear full & told me they thought about reaching in an unlocking the door & taking the kids to teach me a lesson. I informed her that she would be breaking the law & I would call the police if she made such an attempt.

Anyone that thinks that three children are safer running amok at a busy gas station with toxic & flammable chemicals vs buckled safely in their car seats in a locked car with the window crack in not hot weather for 5-10 minutes while their caregiver is less than 100 feel away, needs to have their head examined.

There are times I don’t take my children out of the car because they are safer inside. If that woman or the officer knew how long it takes to get young children unbuckled from a carseat they wouldn’t make such a stupid remark.

Pretty much the exact same thing happened to me this year, except I am the kids mother, rather than nanny.

This situation is a case where the actions of the few punishes the many. I know how it feels to be a caregiver, trying her best to be the best parent possible, and get accused of being neglectful. It feels terrible. I sympathize with the do-gooders and police, however, to a certain extent, because kids do die in hot cars. I hear you that the day wasn’t hot, but unfortunately, laws don’t consider circumstances. They are blanket statements.

I don’t know what the answer is but I don’t think it’s as simple as right vs wrong. The laws are there to protect us and the nanny in the story (as well as myself when this happened to me) was doing her best to make good choices regarding the children. They all had good intentions, and ultimately, all had the same desire, to keep the children safe.

I’d like to think our police officers are trained enough to use their best judgement when determining whether or not a situation is truly dangerous, but several stories in the news lately have me questioning the training procedures for our police force.

Anyway, I could continue rambling about this, but my main point is that I sympathize with all parties. How can we, as a society, use laws to keep people safe without over-generalizing those laws to situations that aren’t truly dangerous?

I so truly agree with you, it’s ridiculous my mom also left me with her a lot of times as back then they pump the gas so we don’t have that problem but she always ran into the store just to get a few groceries.Are into the church and she was a Sunday school teacher she could pick up a few things anything my aunts house stay there Kids be right back gotta talk to Aunt Jane is for a minute I mean really let’s get real I’m truly sorry how they treated you, yes it’s important to pay attention but like you said its probably you more dangerous to unbuckle them go across the gas station parking lot with people are pulling in and out to get gas to run them in there to pay and come right back its two trips across the parking lot where people going in and out to get gas no fret don’t even give it time a day you’re awesome. It just shows how responsible you are to even give it a second thought to do inquiries and blog about it I have you for a babysitter anytime thank you!

James, many people find it advisable to accept a plea bargain even when the evidence is relatively weak. Sometimes, there is information about the defendant or how he appears when testifying that increases the chance of conviction regardless of the strength of the evidence. For others, even a small risk of conviction is less acceptable to the defendant than the deal being offered. For many defendants certain probation is way better than even a small chance of even a short custodial sentence for financial or family reasons.

A gosling that views the first living thing will identify it as its mother. Upon coming out of their eggs, they will follow and become attached (socially bonded) to the first moving object they encounter (which usually, but not necessarily, is the mother duck, goose, or hen) This phenomenon is know as brain imprinting. If a human is the first thing gosling sees, they’ll follow him around and treat him like the mother goose. This may sound ridiculous but that’s what happened to Austrian naturalist Konrad Lorenz (1903 – 1989), one of the founders of ethology (the study of animal behavior).

http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n14/experimento/lorenz/index-lorenz.html

I think this is the same thing as danger and children in cars. Some people have thought so long about ‘what if’, that kidnappers and pedophiles have been imprinted on their brain.

Next time you see a hysterical person that’s livid about kids waiting in a car for 5 minutes, quack at them.

“One out of six should be sufficient.”

One out of six, at best, only gets you a second trial. I say at best as it is not uncommon at all for the one to join the five to resolve the case. juries get a pretty forceful “make a damn decision” instruction from the judge before a hung jury is declared.

“I assume defendant was represented by counsel who knows how to negotiate a plea deal, who wouldn’t have advised taking a plea deal with probation attached unless there was a high likelihood of conviction on the original charge,”

Well your first mistake is in assuming that the attorney advised the client to take the plea. My advice is exactly that, advice not a mandate. My clients are free to take it or leave it and some choose to leave it. Whether to plea guilty or not is one of the extremely few decisions in a criminal case (there are really only 3) that is totally under the control of the Defendant. I am obligated to honor my client’s decision and make it happen to the best of my ability even if I think it is the dumbest decision in the history of decisions. You have absolutely no idea whatsoever what the attorney’s advice was in this case.

But yes many people plead guilty regardless of the likelihood of conviction for a myriad of reasons. The inability to bond out of jail is the most common. Very few will sit in jail for 1-2 years waiting for trial when they are handed the keys to the jail door via a guilty plea for probation. Other reasons include: family considerations, jobs, mandatory minimums and sentence enhancements after trial.

Your second mistake is in assuming that only cases with a high likelihood of conviction are advised to plea. I often advise people with moderate and even low likelihoods of conviction to plea. Again for many reasons, but in particular, mandatory minimums and recidivist sentences can be a bitch. I can’t think of a defense attorney I know who would sit with a 25 year old facing life without the possibility of parole after trial who would not advise them to at least consider taking a deal that will allow them to one day see the outside of a prison, regardless of strength of the case. In the alternate, I’ve also advised clients with almost no chance of winning at trial to go for it because they were totally screwed either way so we might as well try for the Hail Mary.

“The very high statistical ratio of “people who leave their kids in a perfectly safe situation:people who are not sentenced to six months in jail as a result,”

If a person is being sentenced for a crime, it has already been determined – either by an admission via a plea or a trial – that the children involved were not in a perfectly safe situation. You can’t both plea to endangering a child and yet deny that the child was endangered. The fact that you, I and Lenore may believe that the child was in a perfectly safe situation is completely irrelevant to the equation. So we are not talking about the usual sentence for people who leave their kids in a perfectly safe situation, but the usual sentence of people convicted for endangering a child.

Further, the proper input is not all people who leave their kids in a perfectly safe situation, but people who leave their children in a perfectly safe situation who are then arrested since people who aren’t arrested have no usual sentence. They have no sentence at all. And this is not a group that doesn’t exist. Lenore has posted many stories of people arrested for their children playing safely in parks, walking safely home and sitting safely in cars. And those are just the ones the media reports. I’ve personally seen others who never made the paper.

It is impossible to give the usual sentence for ANY crime as sentencing is determined not just by the charge, but also the criminal history of the defendant. It is quite possible for one defendant to get 12 months probation, while another gets 6 months in jail and a third gets 12 months in jail for the same crime. And that doesn’t even consider the jurisdictional differences. I can get different sentences for the exact same defendant committing the exact same crime in each of the 6 different counties I am contracted to work in. Heck, I can probably get two different sentences in front of different judges in the same county.

“I assume that there was a significant chance of conviction because there was some meaningful element of putting the kids at risk”

Meaningful element of putting kids at risk to whom? Millions of people – some of whom are prosecutors, judges and jurors – believe that leaving a child alone in a car for even a second puts a child at risk. Most of us here disagree.

“That the person is guilty, and has received a just sentence, should be on the list of possibilities but you left it off. So… what led you to omit it?”

Because the only facts given to form the basis of the charge of reckless conduct were that a child was left alone in a car. Absolutely nothing else was said. If the reckless conduct charge was actually based on some other conduct – say it being a 100 degree day – then those facts would have to be stated.

See when a defendant pleads guilty to a charge, the judge must find a sufficient basis to believe the charged crime occurred and that this defendant did it. Either the ADA or the defendant (depending on jurisdiction) must state enough facts on the record during the guilty plea to allow the judge to make that determination. The judge can’t just infer that other facts must exist or the ADA would not have brought charges and the defendant would not be pleading guilty. The facts MUST be specifically stated. Since the only facts given were what I stated, both the ADA and the judge believed that the mere fact that a child (of an unspecified age) was in the car alone (for an unspecified amount of time) provides a sufficient basis for a conviction for reckless conduct.

Now I suppose that it is possible, albeit unlikely, that in this case there were many other facts that showed that the child was really at risk that the ADA just didn’t mention. It is still extremely scary that all the judge needed to accept a guilty plea for reckless conduct was a child alone in a car.

“Meaningful element of putting kids at risk to whom? Millions of people — some of whom are prosecutors, judges and jurors — believe that leaving a child alone in a car for even a second puts a child at risk. Most of us here disagree.”
Both the prosecutor and the defense are paid, in part, to assess the likelihood of success of the prosecution. This means having an idea of how the local jury pool is likely to view things (ultimately, they’ll either find the facts are that child was in danger, or they won’t, if you go to trial… if you decide not to go to trial, there is, of course, absolutely no way to know how it would have come out.

The prosecution knows when it has an unwinnable case, and such a case will almost never see the light of day. Prosecutors are judged on conviction rate, so they don’t like to lose. On the other hand, the defense knows when they have a case they cannot win. In between, you have the wide range of cases that could go either way, with lawyers on both sides assessing the odds (and adjusting accordingly as the motion practice proceeds).

Criminal law is only slightly of interest to me… I didn’t even take Criminal Law, even though it’s a double bar course… but thank you for your time and effort in explaining things for me.

James, you started out this thread looking pretty sensible, but you are ending it looking pretty ignorant.

Plenty of prosecutors worry about number of convictions rather than percentage of convictions. Enough low probability prosecutions still result in some convictions.

Most sensible, law abiding parents would likely take probation over a 5% risk of jail time. Going to trial, even if you are certain that you are in the right, generally entails a risk of more than 5%, due to the unpredictability of juries.

I think you would be extremely lucky to get a single free range parent in the jury pool, let alone on the jury. Most people in the jury pool are not parents at all, let alone free range parents.

Here’s a case the prosecutor probably thought he was going to win:

A News of the Weird Classic (August 2010)

Mark Seamands, 39, went to trial in May (2010) in Port Angeles, Washington, accused of second-degree assault and two lesser charges for the hot-iron branding of his three children, aged 13, 15 and 18. Each of the kids bore the mark “SK,” for “Seamands’ Kids.” At trial, however, the kids testified that they not only consented to the branding but thought it was cool (despite the second-degree burns), and as a result, the jury dismissed the assault charge and deadlocked on the two lesser ones. [Associated Press via KIRO-TV (Seattle), 5-14-2010]

James your post barely made any sense so we will leave it at that. I will answer:

“How to plea, whether or not to fire you, whether or not to testify? Or were you substituting whether to take the 5th for one of these?”

How to plea, whether to assert the 5th (which includes the decision to testify) and whether to have a bench or jury trial.

I only do appointed criminal work so my clients only have the ability to “fire” me if they hire someone else, not a realistic option for 99% of my clients. That said, you are correct, I did forget a 4th decision (because it is largely made before I enter the case) – criminal defendants do get to choose whether to retain counsel or represent themselves.

James, in rereading your post now that I am fully awake:

“What, in your estimation, is the ratio of people who plead guilty because they can’t win, even though they’re innocent, people who plead guilty because they can’t win, because they’re guilty and the prosecution can prove it, and innocent people who plead guilty even though they had a good chance of winning?”

I don’t really understand what you are asking here. Are you asking what percentage of my clients tell me that they are innocent and then plea guilty. 100% of those who plea guilty (and I am only being slightly facetious). The majority of my clients profess innocence to a certain extent to their grave.

Are you asking what percentage of my clients are truly guilty? How the heck am I supposed to know that? The only way to know the answer to that question is for me to be a witness to the crime and that kinda removes me from also being the defendant’s attorney.

I don’t function in a world of guilt or innocence. It is completely irrelevant to me. In fact, definitively knowing my client’s guilt handcuffs my representation of them somewhat. My sole consideration is likelihood of winning at trial.

Now if you are asking the ratio of cases that plea out that I had a high likelihood of winning vs ones I had a high likelihood of losing regardless of guilt or innocence, I can’t answer that in simple terms. This is largely a function of jurisdiction. The competency of the police force and DAs office determines the answer. In my home county, I get very few cases that have a high likelihood of winning. The police force is very competent, thorough and only brings charges it thinks it can win and the DAs office is very experienced and reasonable. Most of my current cases are winnable, but none are slam dunks for us.

In the county I have worked in for most of my criminal career, I have a much higher percentage of cases that have a high likelihood of winning. The various police forces are largely incompetent, at best, and corrupt, at worst, with the exception of one. The DA is completely unreasonable. She is also miserable to work for, and as a result, the only people who will work for her are fresh out of law school and not particularly adept at evaluating or trying cases. But, most of these cases still plea out because the DAs office tries to make up for the incompetence by slamming every recidivist and sentence enhancement it can onto any defendant that goes to trial and the judges are off the chain and revel in screwing anyone who loses.

The other counties I predominantly work in fall somewhere between these two extremes to various degrees.

Puzzled,
motor vehicle camper is an motorhome of any size, and I assume it is worded that way to include conversion vans.

Julie
Thanks. I was assuming during the drafting, they were trying to cover every vehicle, other than personal daily vehicles. There are jurisdictions that do that, to keep people from using the streets as driveway overflow. Thanks for the update.

“so this law would technically have criminalized my grandparents, apparently.”
No, it wouldn’t.
Parking on (public) roadways is different than parking on private land. Many communities impose a time limit on how long a vehicle may be parked on the road without some kind of special permission. This has been a challenge for a special category of motor vehicle locally… food trucks. There are a couple of “pods” of food trucks, where the same truck stays parked in the same place all the time. This has the nearby restaurants bothered, because food trucks are regulated differently than are permanent restaurants, but a food truck that doesn’t move IS (they say) a permanent restaurant.

The CCR in my neighborhood prohibits parking an RV where it can be seen clearly from the street. This restriction is not enforced, AFAIK.

Well I don’t know if I’m missing the Elephant in the room, or not.
The woman in the story is a nanny.
The complainant is…………some other who maybe has a bias against that.
Nannies are traditionally – subordinant ( to some people.)
What kind of people?
The kind of people who would make a mountain out of a molehill, now, wouldn’t they?
Which maybe fits a pattern, I don’t know.

As long as kids are spending their lives in cars (far more than my generation ever did)
then automobilia (otherwise know as somebody’s fair nation) had better get its head of out (you know where)
and figure out some sensible protocols pretty quick –
or the nation will ‘drive’ itself to insanity.

“Fear is not something I know.” – Warren (last name unknown)

You’re a liar and you’re stupid, Warren.

Yeah, I live near there, and while my kids are a little older now, one of them is scared of being left in a car because a cop berated me for similar a couple years ago. It is ridiculous, but most people just say “you shouldn’t have done that, don’t do it again if you want to keep your kids.” Discouraging.

Someone told me she heard that this will be the first generation of kids who doesn’t live longer than their parents – because they aren’t ever allowed to go out and play. (I know a car isn’t “out to play” but the fear-based hysteria is the same.)

I actually thought about this yesterday, and wondered if I were going to be targeted as I left my two kids (3 and 5) in the car to grab a couple of drinks from the gas station. The car was right outside the door and I had visual contact the whole time, but there ended up being a huge really slow lineup (lottery tickets) and it took several minutes to get our apple juices.

The most danger the kids were in was from me, as I could see them hitting each other the whole time.

AmyO – but that would involve thinking, not flying into a moral panic. The latter is more enjoyable and rewarding.

It just occurred to me that maybe sometimes people are afraid that unsupervised young children will get out of the car and be in danger in a parking lot rather than are afraid of them being in the car, hot or not, alone. Come to think of it, if I saw children aged, say, six and under in a car with no parent in sight, I would wait and watch out for them for that reason alone.

@FreedomForKids,
With modern child safety seats, I have zero concern about the kid getting out of the vehicle…except in so far as their not being able to get out. To think a 6 year old would go darting across a parking lot is pretty insulting. My neighbor’s boy was a persistent darter always running into the street. He stopped that to the point of being totally trustworthy before he turned 4.

If the child was prone to inappropriately getting out, the parents would have found out from them inappropriately getting out of their car seat while the car was in motion. And since driving around with the kid unbuckled is a crime in addition to a hazard, and since you can now get a 5pt harness for seats that can take 4’9″ and 110lbs, I expect the vast majority of parents have the child as restrained as the child needs to be to protect them from the hazards of moving cars.

I might be concerned if I spotted a young child alone and out of their 5pt harness, depending on circumstances. But a 6yr old in a lap positioning booster seat would not concern me at all. I actually think I spotted such a child last month. (The child was calm, the windows were all the way down, the location indicated a quick trip, and the car was next to the curb so the child could safely get out and get to the parent if needed.) Aside from the safety of a booster seat, it was no different than I remember being left as early as age 3. I said a quick prayer that no one would call the cops on that parent for that safe situation, and drove on.

CONTACT Info: This is directly from the official Brecksville website. If you would like to contact police via email to air your thoughts: police@brecksville.oh.us

For those who prefer ink and paper:

Brecksville Police Dept
9069 Brecksville Road
Brecksville, OH 44141

One minute we’re talking about being community-minded and looking out for one another’s children, and the next we’re saying we should mind our own business at all times.

I’ve become weary of reading here.