Child Protective Services, police and prosecutors run amok
Bookworm on Mar 12 2008 at 1:14 pm | Filed under: Crime and punishment, Parenting
Do you recall that, a couple of months ago, I wrote a lengthy post about the fact that the apparently benign sounding Child Protective Services has become a vicious scourge assaulting good parents because they’re easy targets? If you don’t recall that post, I recommend that you read it either before or after you read this news story about a good, middle-class Chicago Mom who did nothing wrong by any normal standards, and who certainly didn’t do anything tons of us haven’t ourselves done because we know it’s not the wrong thing, but who is nevertheless being dragged through the criminal justice system, with all the horrible threats that entails:
Treffly Coyne was out of her car for just minutes and no more than 10 yards away.
But that was long and far enough to land her in court after a police officer spotted her sleeping 2-year-old daughter alone in the vehicle; Coyne had taken her two older daughters to pour $8.29 in coins into a Salvation Army kettle.
Minutes later, she was under arrest — the focus of both a police investigation and a probe by the state’s child welfare agency. Now the case that has become an Internet flash point for people who either blast police for overstepping their authority or Coyne for putting a child in danger.
The 36-year-old suburban mother is preparing to go on trial Thursday on misdemeanor charges of child endangerment and obstructing a peace officer. If convicted, she could be sentenced to a year in jail and fined $2,500, even though child welfare workers found no credible evidence of abuse or neglect.
The hysterics who support her prosecution are waffling on about the fact that there are kids who are abandoned in cars and who are kidnapped or die as a result. The problem with that kind of “logic,” if you can dignify such nonsense with that term, is that the facts of this case show that the child was not abandoned and quite manifestly was not at risk:
On Dec. 8 Coyne decided to drive to Wal-Mart in the Chicago suburb of Crestwood so her children and a young friend could donate the coins they’d collected at her husband’s office.
Even as she buckled 2-year-old Phoebe into the car, the girl was asleep. When Coyne arrived at the store, she found a spot to park in a loading zone, right behind someone tying a Christmas tree onto a car.
“It’s sleeting out, it’s not pleasant, I don’t want to disturb her, wake her up,” Coyne said this week. “It was safer to leave her in the safety and warmth of an alarmed car than take her.”
So Coyne switched on the emergency flashers, locked the car, activated the alarm and walked the other children to the bell ringer.
She snapped a few pictures of the girls donating money and headed back to the car. But a community service officer blocked her way.
“She was on a tirade, she was yelling at me,” Coyne said. The officer, Coyne said, didn’t want to hear about how close Coyne was, how she never set foot inside the store and was just there to let the kids donate money, or how she could always see her car.
Coyne telephoned her husband, Tim Janecyk, who advised her not to say anything else to police until he arrived. So Coyne declined to talk further, refusing even to tell police her child’s name.
When Janecyk pulled up, his wife already was handcuffed, sitting in a patrol car.
Crestwood Police Chief Timothy Sulikowski declined to comment about the case. But he did not dispute the contention that Coyne parked nearby or was away from her car for just a few minutes.
He did, however, suggest Coyne put her child at risk.
“A minute or two, that’s when things can happen,” he said.
These self-righteous, self-serving busy-bodies are evil, super-duper idiots who are using vague ideas about societally achievable perfection to prosecute and persecute the good guys. I’ve talked before about the ridiculous trend of “legislating to the fringe,” by which I mean enacting far-reaching legislation that hampers people and business severely, and that is enacted merely because of a story about something bad that happened to (or could maybe have happened to) a handful of people.
The Coyne case is a perfect example of arresting and prosecuting to the fringe: people with the power of the government behind them have taken some extreme and unrealistic scenarios of bad behavior and applied them to a manifestly different situation. This is the gross tyranny of petty bureaucrats and power-mad prosecutors, wannabe Spitzers in the making. I am, as you might have guessed by now, disgusted, angered and, as a good and loving parent, very, very afraid.
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8 Responses to “Child Protective Services, police and prosecutors run amok”
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Surprise. Surprise. Bookworm, I agree with you 100%. Must be a conservative.
The woman did nothing wrong, nothing unsafe. She should not be in trouble over this, and a few years ago, she wouldn’t have. This is meddling in a person’s private life. A grown woman should be able to decide which is more important to let a child sleep, uninterrupted, or have her close at hand. She can’t do both. I suppose she could have staying in the car with the smallest child and let the other two go un-escorted. But then someone would have complained about that.
This “‘legislating to the fringe,’ by which I mean enacting far-reaching legislation that hampers people and business severely, and that is enacted merely because of a story about something bad that happened to (or could maybe have happened to) a handful of people” has filled our jails with nonviolent law-breakers. Part of the reason (not all) that our jails are so full is that we have too many laws. Most of the people who are in jail due to drugs should be out, also.
Who are “the good guys”? Probably more people than we think.
And I, Helen, am in complete agreement with you, including the fact that we fill our jails with people who committed petty acts that shouldn’t rise to the level of criminality. Our society should be rewarding good, ignoring silly, and limited its police efforts to bad.
What is amazing to me is that none of them even seem to realize what the potential risk is all about. It’s about kids left in cars, in the summer.
Astounding stupidity.
What baffles me is that there are actually people in this country who protest and scream that the Feds are usurping our libeties because they want to listen to terrorists phone calls to/from overseas.
Wake up, the coffee is perking. It is the Nanny State “do gooders” who are turning this into a modern police state.
I made it successfully through child-hood and my wife and I (often just her while I was off pursuing our Imperialistic foreign policy) raised two daughters who, except for frequent falls from, and with, jumping horses, never suffered any harm; nor did they cause a moment’s trouble. Thank goodness we functioned in a different time; and in so many ways, in a different country. Nevertheless, I am saddened.
Oldflyer — your recommend about “a different country” really hit home. It’s not just that technology and clothes have changed since my childhood, it’s that values have shifted in a profound way that may not be reversible. Although I was a little child in the 1960s, so witnessed all the anti-War riots, the country’s emotional rot didn’t really begin to set in until the late 1970s/early 1980s. Before then, there was still a concept of counter-culture, with the culture pretty much being what it had always been, only in modern dress. As of about 1980, counter-culture became the dominant paradigm and, voila, we were a new country.
These self-righteous, self-serving busy-bodies are evil, super-duper idiots who are using vague ideas about societally achievable perfection to prosecute and persecute the good guys.
I got the perfect solution for these people.
Just like dogs and cats that misbehave, they need to be trained to sit and heel. And if that means they need to be whipped like dogs, then they will be whipped as dogs.
That specific police officer should be made an example of.
This is the gross tyranny of petty bureaucrats and power-mad prosecutors, wannabe Spitzers in the making.
Immediate execution solves such things perfectly well in my opinion. A few strung up along public roads will teach the rest to keep in line. I am quite willing to support such things, but it is unlikely they will ever be necessary given that lower orders of punishment will keep corrupt bureaucrats and wannabe storm troopers in line. The only reason why immediate execution would become necessary is if nobody applies the correct escalating punishment and violence to these offenders. After awhile, these people start doing more and more things their way. If they think your child is in danger from you, they will eventually kidnap your children and lock them up for their own good. And if those children die or are otherwise assaulted by people the police weren’t watching, then that will be your fault.
Leniency, mercy, and compassion are traits that shouldn’t be wasted on government and its bureaucracy. Which is why I have no problem supporting or personally conducting the execution of corrupt bureaucrats. Unless they have some extenuating circumstances as an excuse, these people must be made examples of; it is the price of trying to become your own little godling. They ain’t no godling, yet alone a god. And their death will prove that beyond a doubt, since gods are hard to impossible to kill.
Most of the people who are in jail due to drugs should be out, also.
Most of the people who are captives of the United States military should have their Geneva Convention rights revoked, since that is obviously legislation that extends beyond the standard of reasonable protections for spies and terrorists.
The attempt to create legislation and law in order to make war “safe” and “humane” only serves the cause of evil.
In a way, I will only support the liberation of drug addicts and users, or even sellers, if the Libertarians (or anyone else that supports this policy) agree to execute at least 25% of captured terrorists and various other serial killers like McVeigh and Tookie. I don’t trust anybody that says they will free criminals, if they are also not willing and eager to put to death the evil. Without the latter, freeing drug addicts ain’t going to do anything good for society given the leniency present in a political body that won’t execute people for crimes against humanity.
Both parts of the equation must balance. If people do not harm humanity, then they should be released. But the corrollary is also required. Those that harm humanity must be destroyed or rendered ineffective. If a person is only willing to do the first one, meaning free people from prison and punishment, but not the second, then their cause is bust and they’re going to unbalance the equation of justice.
Which is not a good thing, btw. As people can already see in Britain. Leniency and mercy is nice, but not for serial killers and psychopaths and their religons.
Suppose your a wife at home, and you take this infant to the store, inside with you, purchase groceries, drive home. You park at the curb, and now you have a choice, because, you see, you have to unlock the front door.
Do you carry the baby in one hand, and with the other hand drop your purse to the ground, fiddle for the keys, unlock the door, and through all of this risk dropping your infant? Or do you go to the door unlock it, walk in, put your purse on the kitchen counter, and return to the car for the child, still sitting securely in the child seat?
The first choice will apparently get you arrested for endangerment.
What a country.