Shame On You, Utah!

    I don't know why, but this story just really popped a fuse in the part of my emotional circuit breaker that normally tolerates stupid people enforcing stupid policies. 

Woman Arrested for Not Watering Lawn

July 6th, 2007 @ 10:00pm

Sam Penrod Reporting

A widow and grandma spent the morning in jail, arrested for refusing to give a policeman her name when he tried writing her a ticket for failing to water her yard. The woman hasn't watered her lawn in more than a year, and the condition of her yard violates an Orem zoning ordinance.

Tonight, the woman says she is traumatized and shocked that she was hauled to jail, just because she says she can't afford to water her lawn.

[...]

"I didn't want to tell him anything until I talked to a lawyer or my son. I wanted to see what he'd tell me to do. I've never had any experience before with the law, ever in my life," she said.

As the enforcement officer started writing her a ticket, she tried going back in her house. That's when the officer tried to handcuff her for refusing to give her name and resisting the ticket. She tripped on the steps, scraping up her nose and elbows, leaving blood on her door, her porch and her clothes. Perry was handcuffed, fingerprinted and put in a jail cell, where she sat for more than an hour.

"I laid down in there. I never seen the inside of a jail before. I didn't know how it looked, I was really scared," she says.

[...]

When police brass learned what happened, she was immediately released.

Orem police spokesman Lt. Doug Edwards said, "Every officer in his career has situations they find themselves getting into, at the end of it they scratch their head and say, ‘gosh, how did this happen?' Today, I think, was one of those days. Clearly there were some other options available."

After being arrested, Perry is now scared of the police. She says, "Don't ever say no when the police tell you do to something. You better do what they tell you no matter what, even if you don't have anybody to help you. You've got to do what they tell you or they will hurt you."

The officer was sent home for the day and placed on paid administrative leave. Police are not pressing any charges against Betty Perry for either neglecting her yard or resisting the ticket.

    Seriously.  How screwed up does a person have to be to toss around a 70-year old woman and haul her off to jail for not watering her lawn? 

    Even worse:  How screwed up does a police force have to be to just send this asshole of an officer home with a freakin' paid vacation?  He should be scrubbing toilets in the nearest prison with a toothbrush since it's pretty much clear he's not mentally equipped to handle anything more challenging than that. 
   
    Obviously, the city of Orem has taken care of homelessness, guns, drugs, robberies, and freakin' jaywalking, and now they've moved onto cleaning up the blight on their city that is the water-thrifty elderly crowd. 

    What's next for these twits?  Are they going to grab some hatchets and go all Carry Nation on the plague of lemonade stands in the Orem area?

-DP