[devane617]

I guess this can happen, but seems odd to be arrested for not paying a trash bill.

[databoss]

Debtors prison returns

[Varda]

Yesterday somebody posted that she ignored a court summons and that’s why she was arrested.

[bert]

So, she was not jailed for not paying her trash bill. The woman was jailed for not appearing before a judge. She was jailed for a warrant demanding her presence in court

[EEGator]

This story, maybe a different article, was posted yesterday.
Someone posted that it was for not showing to court about the bill.
Someone might wish to verify. Still a crappy story…

[BikerJoe]

I guess this can happen, but seems odd to be arrested for not paying a trash bill.

When I lived in a St. Louis suburb, a friend was arrested for having a car with no plates in her driveway. We'd been working on it to get it running for her.

[fuzzylogic]

...but the *arrest* isn't over "paying a trash bill".

"A warrant for Menefield's arrest was subsequently issued after she failed to appear in court, per officials."

She failed to appear in court. I'm not saying she is capable in mind to deal with the situation, or that the result is what a compassionate culture desires - only that the title is inaccurate. She could have been required to appear in court for any reason.

[catnipman]

SO much easier to issue an arrest warrant for an 82 year old grandma for a $78.00 trash bill than to go after actual criminals like drug dealers, thieves and con artists ... but hey, the “justice” system has to prioritize what’s important ...

[MarMema]

Did anyone pay it yet? Does anyone know how it can be paid?

[Georgia Girl 2]

Pretty shameful all the way around but that is what our society has devolved to.

[Sirius Lee]

She should have just burned down a building or stolen a tv or carjacked or clocked another senior in the head with a brick. You don’t have to go to jail for that.

[silent majority rising]

That is how the story was written, but the charge was “Failure to Appear” in court, which is a jailable offense. The author was trying to embellish to sell the story, which it certainly did.

[Gaffer]

Not so much the trash bill but the FTA for not showing up in court. Regardless, she shouldn’t have been perped, IMO. I don’t care what court orders say about FTA arrests.

[Java4Jay]

As of the 2010 census Valley Alabama had a population of 9,524

[Tell It Right]

How about just suspending her trash service? That seems a lot simpler, gets the point across to both her and others in the neighborhood, and is just an overall nicer way to handle things.

[apillar]

Sounds like she might have gotten caught up in the same deal my community has. It used to be if you failed to pay for a public service (Trash, Water, Sewer) the city or county would just terminate the service. But around a decade ago, some court ruling in my state said that terminating public services posed a public health hazard (on the assumption that those whose service would be cut off, would just be throwing trash over the hill somewhere or letting sewage run into a creek.) So public services could no longer be "shut off".

The problem with this was that some people quickly learned there was not much reason to pay for a service that could never be turned off whether you paid or not. So quite a few just went cold turkey and stopped paying for everything. Too crack down, the county started implementing tougher collection practices. First reporting debts to credit bureaus, then putting liens on property, and eventually civil and criminal proceeding against the worst offenders.

[jagusafr]

She wasn’t. She was arrested for failure to appear in court after receiving a summons.

[clee1]

For what it’s worth (nothing) I sent a really nasty email to this dorf’s mayor.

[jagusafr]

She wasn’t. She was arrested for failure to appear in court after receiving a summons.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

This should be a lesson to us all:

Keep your ducks in a row, because Mother Government is duck hunting and we are the target.

[waterhill]

I just compost and burn the rest. I had Alliance and they never sent a bill until was was past due. Told them to pound sand. Freaking racket. Screw them.