because they could. Nothing worse than a local official hell-bent on proving their “authority”
Considering this is a very small place—probably no more than a few hundred—I’m sure everyone in town knew of the situation. I could understand if this happened in a huge system, but in this case it seems unnecessary.
If the local official was hell-bent on throwing his weight around, Fry could have been arrested on charges of threatening the life of a peace officer - something which he openly admitted to in print. But the people whose lives he threatened decided to let that slide. When he broke into the pound with a bolt cutter, though, they kind of had to arrest him. He did this to himself.