Mom jailed for failing to mow her lawn

A single mother of five was arrested and briefly jailed for failing to mow her lawn, an encounter with the law she says happened just two weeks after a code enforcement officer's verbal warning about her grass and other city housing code violations.

"I understand I violated a code but take the channels, give me a ticket first, make me appear in court," Ebony Conner of Cahokia, Illinois, told local news. "I know there's gotta be channels other than, 'If you don’t cut your grass, we're arresting you right now.'"

Conner was home with her children when the arrest occurred, and she was forced to leave them with an officer she'd never met while she was arrested and held in jail for about half an hour. Had she realized arrest was an option, Conner said, she would have cut her grass by hand if need be to avoid going to jail.

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