Corey Widen let her 8-year-old do the most normal, cheerful thing in the world—walk the dog around the block. After the girl returned home, the doorbell rang. It was the police.
The cops had received a call about an unsupervised child, and had to question the mom. After doing so, they quickly dropped the matter. But then the Department of Children and Family Services picked it up again—interrogating not just Widen but her kids, other family members, and even her pediatrician.
This was all due to the ridiculous assumption that one must leave no stone un-turned, even when the inciting incident was as benign as taking the dog for a walk—in my home town, of all places.
That’s right: Wilmette, Illinois, is where I would walk to kindgergarten, just like everyone else. I was just 5-years-old, and my crossing guard was a 6th grader. No one arrested my mom, or shut down the school for allowing a tween to direct traffic.
Can it be that the world has become so dangerous in the intervening years? Here are the Wilmette crime stats:
The overall crime rate in Wilmette is 59% percent lower than the national average. For every 100,000 people, there are 3.18 daily crimes that occur in Wilmette. Wilmette is safer than 83% of the cities in the United States.
