Woman, 89, who kept boy's football, sues parents

From http://shesoghetto.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/elderly-woman-arrested-for-keeping-rude-kids-ball-thrown-in-her-yard/

The woman was gardening at the time the ball landed in her yard. Should she have to worry about ducking errant toys? She doesn’t look particularly strong in her photo and apparently lives alone. How frightening it must’ve been to be taken from one’s home over a stupid football she didn’t remove from the Tanis family’s possession. Other neighbors are siding with her, even the prosecutor to threw out the charge.

.........The football feud had simmered on Myrtle Ave. for quite some time. This wasn’t the first time that Mrs. Jester had confiscated toys. In fact, the $15 football was part of a larger collection — including a Frisbee and three other balls — which Jester had collected from the five children of Paul and Kelley Tanis. (Mrs. Jester later explained her rationale, commenting: “That’s my only way of getting through to these children…I’ll give it back to them later, but not right now.”) The children’s mother disagreed with her elderly next-door neighbor’s approach to discipline. She said: “This time it was a ball that my son had just bought with his own money. He works and he makes his own money, and he bought that ball, and six days later she took it.” Mr. Tanis called the police. The great-grandmother was unimpressed. Mr. Tanis agreed to settle the matter the next day, when a police officer whom Jester was more accustomed to returned to work.

But when Officer Brandon Taylor arrived, Mrs. Jester didn’t believe that he was old enough to be a police officer. Eventually, Sgt. Dennis Whitman responded. Whitman’s radio transmission was: “Tell her if she doesn’t give the ball back, she’s going to be charged criminally.” In an incident videotaped by a neighbor sympathetic to Mrs. Jester’s plight, the twice-warned Mrs. Jester refused to comply. Officers tried to give her a citation, which she refused to sign. Finally, they arrested her, after Mrs. Jester said: “Go ahead and arrest me. Handcuff me if you’d like, because I said I’m not guilty of anything.”

Jester, who has no criminal record, was due to appear in the Blue Ash Mayor’s Court on November 12, facing a possible sentence of up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000. It’s been a busy week for the gardening great-grandmother, who described her arrest as “a terrible ordeal.” The video of her arrest received national attention. “Inside Edition” came calling, and Oprah’s spawn, “Dr. Phil,” wants to fly her to California for a TV appearance. A defense fund was set up for her at Key Bank. Mostly, Mrs. Jester just wanted everyone to go away, although she was relieved to hear about the defense fund. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) got into the act, donating two leather-free footballs to the Tanis family. In an e’mail to the [Cincinnati] Enquirer, PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman wrote: “These kids will get hundreds of hours of enjoyment from this durable synthetic ball—as long as they keep it out of Ms. Jester’s yard, that is…With today’s high-quality non-leather athletic gear, there’s no reason that touchdowns should cost a cow an arm and a leg.”

The Blue Ash police department was swamped with calls from all over the country. Yesterday, Police Sgt. Jim Schaffer said: “We’ve been catching a lot of it from all over the country. They are saying we are idiots. How could we do that?” You said it, Sgt. Schaffer, not me. At last, excitement in Blue Ash (population 12,513). Residents mobilized. An area gas station sported a large sign asking for donations for footballs. A plan was hatched to pack Mayor’s Court with at least 200 people carrying footballs for Mrs. Jester’s court appearance.

Are cops so g-d damn stupid that they just follow the law like Nazis?! Sick of hearing this garbage!

Common sense has been AWOL for quite some time ...been replaced with knee-jerk reaction. It’s difficult to get used to, eh?

"Their football had ended up behind my fence and they wouldn’t go into the yard without permission."

As they should have.

These kids you site here have parents who have taught them some basic respect for others property. You see there is a difference in how parents rear their children, and the very fact that you sited as to how one of those kids is now attending West Point, proves the point.

We had older neighbors like Mrs. Jester that would keep your toys if they ended up in their yard. Our parents didn’t call the police on them or get them arrested though. They told us to knock it off and leave them alone. That was the sixties though and parents didn’t act like spoiled children making excuses for their spoiled brats for the most part. We got our stuff back if we straightened up our act for a while.

We had a neighbor like that too...and we were forbidden to play anywhere near their yard where our stuff would end up on their property. It worked b/c we obeyed our parents.

I recall the neighbor complaining to my folks about how the beautiful dogwood trees that lined our property were dropping leaves and berries on their driveway ... and suggested that my parents cut them down. Happens my mom loved those trees and the trees grew on the property as a fluke of nature. After many complaints, mom who was the least confrontational person on the planet, told the cranky guy after the umpteenth time, that no, they wouldn’t be cut down, b/c God put them there. That was the end of that.