MADD: Child Endangerment Program

Video Transcript

"The child endangerment program, I'll give you an example. Typically that focuses around when we're working with law enforcement and drunk driving. When they are actually doing checkpoints, for instance, or they stop someone that may be impaired on the side of the road, and you look in the back seat and you see a toddler in the back seat. Sometimes they are restrained and sometimes they aren't restrained. But that toddler is at risk. They are not able to go in and make a decision, or actually get themselves around. They're driving with an adult that is impaired, and so one of the things that we do, I've actually got three small children myself, and so this one kind of touches close to home for me as well. I've seen, when we do these checkpoints, I'll give you an example. We did a checkpoint a couple of weeks ago, and it was on the anniversary of the death of lady that was killed at this certain intersection. At about ten minutes from the time from when she was killed, we had a gentleman that come through the intersection that was stopped. He blew a .27. At that same instance, if it wasn't for our lights and all the law enforcement out there, there was another car coming from the opposite side of that intersection that had two small children in it. If we weren't there, if we weren't making the difference and working with legislators to do child endangerment to where if you have a child in your car, the penalties are going to be much stiffer. We've had the same results here in North Carolina of making the fines, making the charges even more stiffer to help those that cannot protect themselves, and that's the children. "