Thursday, July 12, 2007

Brown Shirting An Old Woman for a Brown Lawn

Zealousness can be channelled to achieve positive results.  Unfortunately, in many cases, zealousness often leads to abuses, even when it comes to an individual’s lawn.

Betty Perry’s dry, desolate lawn has put her in a spotlight that extends from coast to coast and even across two oceans.

The 70-year-old Orem woman was arrested and injured on Friday after a police officer tried to ticket her for not watering her front lawn. By Monday, the media frenzy had spread as far as Great Britain and New Zealand.

Newspapers from across the United States told Perry’s story, and Fox News interviewed her on Monday morning. The London-based British Broadcasting Corporation included the story about the incident on its Web site, as did sites in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Countless blogs also ran the story, along with headlines that criticized the arresting officer and the city.

“After what they did to me I want everybody in the world to know,” Perry said on Monday.

The incident began when a police officer assigned to Orem’s Neighborhood Preservation Unit knocked on Perry’s door Friday morning and said he was giving her a citation for her brown, barren lawn. Perry refused to give the officer her name and insisted on going inside her house first to call her son and ask his advice on the situation.

When Perry refused to give the officer her name, he decided to place her under arrest. Police said Perry pulled away from the officer as he tried to handcuff her and Perry said she “tried to sit down to get away from him.” In the ensuing struggle, Perry fell to the ground, bruising her elbows, knees and legs. She also said she was hit in the face with a handcuff, causing a prominent bruise on her nose.

"I want people to know that this is not American to handcuff and put somebody in jail because their lawn is brown. ... They could’ve given me a ticket or done something else,” Perry said. (bold added by Ed.)

As if arresting Betty Perry wasn’t rotten enough, check this statement uttered by one Lt. Doug Edwards, who is the spokesman for the cops.

"That’s where I think that we made a tactical error in that there were other options available as opposed to taking physical custody,” Edwards said.

Edwards said while the situation could have been handled differently, the officer’s actions were well within the law, which requires people to identify themselves to an officer who is issuing a citation. She was arrested, he said, because she refused to identify herself.

“What happened was not the way that we prefer to do business,” Edwards said. “But clearly she did some things that were wrong too in not just saying her name."

A “tactical error,” “arrested, he said, because she refused to identify herself,” “not the way we prefer to do business.”

There seem to be alot of tactical errors by local police departments these days.  Is this because so many police departments think every call they respond to or initiate is a matter of national security, or are the cops trying to justify all of the dollars they’ve pocketed from the Department of Homeland Insecurity?  And, why is it a crime to refuse to give a cop your name?  As for the cops stating that they prefer not to do business they way they did their buisness with Betty Perry, did you note that the statement does not say they will not do business that way in the future?

All this for a brown lawn.  Rotten.

Woman arrested in lawn incident meets the national press

Posted by John Venlet on 07/12 at 04:26 AM
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