In that case, I guess it comes down to two things:
What is the legal definition of permit?
What might the legal definition of permit be as understood by the six year old?
The reason I include number two is this: In the situation I just described, the kid is begging his brother to stop. Since the brother continues drinking, by default the 6 year old is permitting the brother to drink (i.e., the drinking hasn’t stopped–it’s still going on). I can see where a 6 year old might understand this situation as permitting his brother to drink.
(I realize, however, that I’m now stretching things pretty thin with this example).
Hopefully not every crime. Like a bank robbery, a kidnapping etc. Most criminals do not emit a sphere of evil that contaminates by-standers. I certainly agree that underage drinking is a problem, but surely there are better soultions than to arrest everyone withing a fifty foot radius.
That said, all they’ve stopped is kids having parties in Naperville. Next thing they know, they’ll be picking up dead bodies from the Fox Valley Mall parking lot. This isn’t really helping anything.
Are they trying to make Naperville safe for the community college kids who pack the Riverwalk every night?
The Naperville police routinely arrest under this statute teenagers who offer to drive their intoxicated friends home. Julie Beata has been cited twice under this law for doing just that. So your statement is simply false: this law does affect anyone (under the age of 21, at least) who offers to drive home a drunk friend.
Amanda (age 14) has parents who are going to be out of town over night, and who allow her to sleep over for the night at her friend Belinda’s house.
Belinda has a big brother Chas (age 18) who drinks a couple of beers that evening, while Belinda and Chas’s parents are out late visiting some other people. (They have left Chas in charge, because they think he would be responsible, and he is, except for taking a couple of beers).
So Belinda is fine, because it’s her home.
However Amanda has these choices to remain legal:
(1) Ring Belinda and Chas’s parents and tell them what is going on.
(2) Ring the police and tell them what is going on.
(3) Leave the house and walk back home, in the dark, five miles, to a house where she will be alone without permission from her parents to be alone.
The six-year-old can’t permit anything. It’s not his house, nor is he of legal age to permit or deny his sibling anything.
And sure, if he leaves the house, and the bad things in question happen to him, the parents can sue the city. You can sue anyone for anything if there’s even a smidgen of fault perceived. But if we’re talking hysterical lawsuits, far better to sue DARE for irresponsibly creating a situation where a six-year-old would feel morally obligated to do such a thing.
(Man, would I ever love to see that. Caffeine is NOT cocaine, DARE. Jeez.)
And, KellyM, if they are arresting sober kids who drive drunk friends home, then I stand corrected, much as I’d wish not to. Maybe that isn’t criminal, but it is pretty damn stupid.
Your cite doesn’t say that. It says that some girl claims she was twice ticketed not for driving drunk friends home but while she was picking them up. In other words, she got busted at a couple of parties and tried to say after the fact (and I have no reason to believe her) that she was only there to pick people up and give them rides. I don’t particularly believe her but even if it’s true, my point still stands. She was busted for being at the parties, not for driving people home.
My feeling is that this can’t be constitutional. Of course, not being a lawyer my opinon isn’t terribly well informed. If any legal experts would weigh in on the constitutional aspects, I’d appreciate it.
Can we PLEASE stop refering to a group that includes 20 year olds, Veterans, College graduates, Parents, Married couples and Full-time Workers as kids?
OK then, say we’ve got a group of siblings, all under legal age, but old enough to be left in charge of the house while the parents are gone. The parents leave, and so some of the kids drink at the house while they’re gone. Some of the kids don’t drink, but they don’t mind the fact that their siblings are doing it.
The police come, charge the drinkers with underage drinking, and charge the non-drinking siblings under this statute.
Do the police have a case against the non-drinkers? After all, they are not of legal age to permit or deny their siblings anything.
For that matter, when the law is referring to instances occuring in the home, why even have the clause regarding permission, since any such underage person would not be of legal age to give permission anyway?
I’m not even sure what area of law this falls under (Municipal Law?), but whatever it is, I didn’t take it in law school.
However, in my analysis, the first major issue, which I believe you mentioned before, is what constitutes a “permit?” As someone said, a 6-yr old is not in the position to permit anything, and arguably, neither can a sibling permit one thing for another sibling. I remember reading about how drinking parties in Naperville were a nusiance. I recall some story about parents leaving their children and their children’s friends to drink while they went out, and then called the cops to not ticket any of the cars parked outside their home, on the street, because of the party (the parents somehow alluded that there was non-supervised, underage drinking at the home). When the parents arrived home, they were charged.
So, imo, that last part of the law is directed towards that scenario. However, I see your point in the confusion/interpretation, but I don’t think it’s enough to strike down the law.
I do agree, however, that it does place the sober teen driver in a precarious position. By enforcing this interpretation, drunken teens are forced to eitehr drive home drunk, incriminate their friends, or (obviously the preferred method) call home and get their parents to drive. Naperville cops must have a lot of time on their hands.
I can see how the parents may be charged with something under these circumstances, but I don’t see how they could be charged under this particular statute. The statute seems to apply only to “persons of nonage”; I’m not seeing anything that could apply to the parents.
Naperville also has a “parental responsibility” law that makes parents liable for certain forms of “misconduct” carried out by minor children. Note that none of this has application to 18, 19, and 20 year olds, who are not minors under the law but are “persons of nonage” under this “proximity of drunkenness” law.
The way to prevent standoffs like that one is to teach the cops how to enforce the law without violating the Constitution. The “standoff” was the result of stupid law enforcement behaviors, and nothing else.
If a party can “hunker down” to the point of not exhibiting any overt violation of the law sufficient for the police to enter the property without a warrant, then why are they there in the first place? Seems like a police driveby was enough to “maintain public order” (hell, half the kids were asleep) and there was no need to intrude on the sanctity of the home.
You don’t solve the problem with stupid cops by adding even stupider laws.
KellyM, I agree with you. It’s a poorly-thought-out law and enforceable in cases that no thinking human being would consider to be out of the ordinary. I’m just trying to sound out what the writers of the law were thinking.
And the Rye standoff was stupid. The cops should have come to the door and, when they were refused entry, rather than getting up in arms about the punk kids, they should have threatened to check registrations and write tickets, or some other ploy to get the kids thinking about trouble and going to sleep.
There are some behaviors you can’t legislate away. Is that a bad thing? Who knows? But regardless of whether it’s a good thing or not, it’s true. I’m sure Naperville has bigger problems than this.
Don’t you guys wonder why teenagers have no civic spirit? Why they have such low voter participation rates? Why they feel so much antipathy towards authority? Why our schools have so many behaivor problems?
It’s because we make them that way. We pass rediculous laws, and make them jump through rediculous hoops. We applaud when what is considered a gross rights violation for any other group of people in the world passes for them. We treat them like criminals or toddler, but never like the inexperienced humans they are. We make them feel like the world is against them- because often (the harrassing police officer, the guy trailing them at the mall, the teacher suspending them for wearing a beanie [hats are gang signs, y’know] on a cold winters’ day) they are.
This is yet another law that makes it legally unsafe to be a kid. We already have loitering laws that make it illegal to be in public (unless, of course, you are buying crap…we don’t mind kids so much when they are consumeing). Our schools are full of draconian and totally absurd rules banning just about everything- under the guise of stopping gang violence. We passed so many underage drinking laws that it’s become a legal liability to hold an all-ages concert or other all-ages event, and nobody wants to take the risk. They can’t “hang around” outside. We shut down any events they go to or ban the things they do (like skateboarding) and we wonder why they spend so much time sitting around at home or doing drugs. It’s all thats left for them to do!!
Don’t think these laws are isolated. One of my friends’ was once picked up by his friends. He was walking to the car- maybe a five minute walk- when he was ambushed by cops and arrested. His crime? The car he was walking to had (unopened) alcohol in it…a totally legal thing for his over 21 friends to have in their car.
Instead of just making everything that kids do illegal, we need to focus on making a place for them in society. I think we’d see a lot better behavoir from our youth if we did.
I’ve been to parties where I didn’t know if someone was underage or not. When you’re in college, especially, you go to house parties that have all sorts of people there. I didn’t drink, usually, because I drove. I stuck to cola, but under this law I would have been arrested. Not cool, methinks.
Are you kidding? The “sanctity of the home” does not include a bunch of underage teenagers throwing a crazy sex and drugs party (ok I’m exagerating, but the point is still the same). The problem was a bunch of stupid kids who thought they were too smart for their own good. I also grew up in the affluent mass of suburbs that stretch from NYC to Hartford. If the cops came to a party, everyone shuts up and the host who lives in the house goes and greats them at the door. They were most likely called on account of the noise so all they can do is ask you to quiet down, provided they can’t see what’s going on inside and have no probably cause to enter. If you have drunk naked people running around, well forget it. They can see underage drinking so you are screwed.
EVERYONE knows that if you fuck with the cops or make their job difficult, they will make your life as miserable as they can.
I can understand the intent of the law. It’s basically to act as a deterrent. If you are at an underage party, everyone there is fair game to get busted. I don’t agree with it as throwing a party is not a crime and a single underage person drinking should not be able to put the entire party at risk.