Posted on 07/07/2007 3:40:24 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
'He really abused me,' resident says after arrest by Orem police officer
OREM - Two days after Independence Day, 70-year-old Betty Perry experienced an ordeal she said shouldn't be happening in America.
The retired military and U.S. government employee answered the door at her home Friday morning to talk with a police officer about her bone-dry lawn and ended up getting arrested and suffering a bloody nose. "What have I done?" she asked. "I'm old now. I can't believe this."
The Orem police officer, as yet unnamed by city officials, cited Perry for violating a city ordinance with her "sadly neglected and dying landscape," which resembles dry hay.
When Perry refused to give her name and tried to walk inside to call her son, the officer tried to arrest her, police say. According to a police news release, while she was struggling, she tripped and fell on her doorstop, cutting open the bridge of her nose. But Perry maintains the officer split her nose when he hit her with the set of handcuffs he was trying to restrain her with.
"As far as I'm concerned, he really abused me - he brutally abused me," Perry said. "For what?" The officer called for backup, because he was driving a truck, and the now-handcuffed Perry was taken to a holding facility in Orem. She was not given water or allowed to wash her hands or call her son, she said.
"After being booked, supervisors became aware of the circumstances and immediately released the woman and returned her to her home on the basis that there were other options available to handle this situation besides making an arrest and holding the woman in jail," Orem police Lt. Doug Edwards wrote in the news release.
(Excerpt) Read more at sltrib.com ...
You have no clue as to whether he was in an “official” vehicle or not. Many agencies use pickup trucks.
I guess where you live, cops and deputies can not walk a foot beat or use bicycles or horses. Quite frankly, I don’t believe you.
This cop may or may not be a bully or he may just lack common sense. I don’t know and neither do you, just like you have no clue about the condition of his lawn, and/or any other motivating factors in this case.
Handcuffs will cause the same injury to a person whether they are warranted or not.
What does use of excessive force have to do with “official” transport, or the condition of the cop’s lawn?
Your comments are disjointed, and illogical.
Ok, lets play... Was she a repete offender? Yes...
Perry said she has owned the house for 11 years. The first time she ever had a problem with her lawn, she said, was last summer when city officials came by and asked her to remove the large weeds from her yard. The weeds have always been a problem, and she said she plans to sell the house because it is difficult to maintain the yard.
Did she have problems even before the previous year... YES... She has found that ignoring the problem results in others doing the job for her... The Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS or Mormons) did the last clean up job on her yard several years ago.
David James, Perry's neighbor and former bishop, said members from her LDS ward got together several years ago during an Orem Blitz to help her clean her yard.
So the excuss of not knowing this was a problem is a lie. She idea of a police officer blinding her with this problem out of the blue is a lie. She knew for several years her yard was a problem and suggested that she even planned to move because her yard was a problem with local ordinances.
Perry said she was accidentally hit in the face with a handcuff while the officer was trying to arrest her, giving her a fresh bruise on her nose.
She admits she was accidentally hit with the handcuffs here. But she denys resisting... but adds this tidbit...
"He had one [handcuff] loose on my arm and he was trying to get my arms back and of course, you know, I'm resisting. I don't know what he's doing. I said, 'What are you doing?' And he hit me with those handcuffs in my face," she said.
She claims later she did not resist here. But claims she did "sit down" and tried to "get away for him"... I don't know about you, but when I try to get away from someone, I don't do it by sitting down.
"No, I tried to sit down and get away from him. I wouldn't be doing anything like that. He's just trying to cover his tracks, as far as I'm concerned.
Now the officers claim of she fell on the floor and pulled her arms under her to avoid arrest does jive with her own statements... (She would do better to not comment IMHO if she is considering a lawsuit, cause she seems to be her own worse enemy contridicting her own testomony)...
He also said she rolled onto her stomach and put her hands underneath her body to keep the officer from handcuffing her.
"He had one [handcuff] loose on my arm and he was trying to get my arms back and of course, you know, I'm resisting.
Now, if you knew your yard was a problem for SEVERAL years, and even considered selling it because of it, you knew you were in violation and had considered the day would come when your resisting to do anything about it would cause police trouble. This woman panicked when finally the piper came for its due (with only a durn citation). Instead of giving your name like a big boy does when caught (and if your not a big boy by age 70 when are you?), this lady pitches a hissy fit.
I don't know about you, but my wife's 84 y/o grandma keeps a loading gun, and allowing her (in her state of mind) to go back into a house is not the wisest thing for a person to do when she is pitching a fit. She bleeds a the slightest abrasion and falls at the drop of a hat.
This woman just liked to shut out the world with a front door and when it opened to reality she flipped. In this case the ordinance had been knocking for several year before someone finally did something it looks like. Woe be it to that officer that had that responsibility it seems, he did have a right to protect himself too and to deny that someone in that frame of mind is safe to go back inside to arm themselves is a Libertarians dream arguement it seems (if you ignore the facts and focus only on poor little old lady parts).
She was a member of the mormons.. she probable knew her Bible and some other weird documents... which includes this tidbit...
* "Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge hand you over to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny. Mat. 5:25-26
Bzzz! Thanks for playing.
Article source for quotes: http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/228029/
Clarification... Bible not weird, Mormon additions are weird.
Yes she was... article tidbits I posted above say she was warned the previous year by city officials. She not only had been personally advised, but several years earlier had a mormon church crew clean her yard. She even suggested that she was gonna sell her house because her yard.
She was more than aware, she was in denial. Also mentioned was she had a son, location not given but he was able to give the media information (he leaked her name out to the press)... so he probable lived close enough to do something about his mom's yard (or he lived there).
Maybe you want to re-read my post.
It had more to do about “how” the city handled the issue.
You brother has been getting a lot of rain.
I don't doubt you, but is there any question that this was a civil infraction of a local ordinance?
It's quite possible that the city in question has an ordinance making it a criminal matter to refuse to ID yourself to LE when you are in violation of any other city ordinance.
The existence of such an ordinance would be very helpful both for Orem and Orem PD about now. I would think they would have brought it up.
Note that the police say nothing about anger or storming back into the house. She was trying to walk back inside. This was not a criminal investigation, and the officer had no warrant.
On what basis was he arresting her in the first place?
It would seem that a “violation” of this sort would be a civil infraction like most traffic violations, but I have no idea what it is in that particular town. There have been many instances of state legislators or city council members making criminal violations of pet peeves.
I’m only guessing here, but either the city has an ordinance making it a criminal violation to refuse to ID yourself when contacted by LE for violating the law(quite common)or the cop was ad libbing.
Regardless, they’ve got a serious PR problem and perhaps a legal problem.
You expressed amazement that they sent the police to cite a woman for a dried-up yard. I don't see what's unreasonable about that.
Fair enough. As someone who tries to be rational, I change my conclusions to fit changing data. Medical attention is a non-issue, and I take back what I said about that in the earlier post.
In 20-20 hindsight, no one would want this situation to turn out the way it did. Not the cop, not the old lady, and not the neighbor who dropped dime on her. With that hindsight, and confronted with press attention, the department sent her home.
They did not say that the officer acted inappropriately. only that it should have been handled better. Which it should have, from the superiors who assigned the officer to serve the citation to the officer himself to the jailers he handed them over to.
I have a friend who was arrested for failure to appear on a minor infraction. He had already cleared it up with the county cops, but the city cops apparently didn't get the word. Some mess like that -- I don't have all the details.
This was on the Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend, so he coulndn't see a judge until Tuesday for a bail hearing. Three nights in city jail is not something a law-abiding guy like he, or I, would want. A mutual friend called me, I called in a friend who's an attorney. She knew the solicitor, got my friend a quickie hearing and ROR, and had him out for the weekend. Everything was straightened out the following week, no further damage done.
Was that a foul-up? Definitely. Should the authorities be embarrassed? Absolutely. Was it a mistake? No question. But it wasn't an atrocity, and it wasn't police brutality.
You see if you'd read the article, you'd know the local police department already had previous contact with the woman. In addition, it should be clear to any police officer that obtaining the name of a home owner is not a difficult task.
Obtaining the name of the homeowner is easy. I'm sure he had it in his hand when he drove up. Ascertaining that the person on front of him is the owner is a whole 'nother matter. She could have been a guest, a tenant or a squatter. When she refused to identify herself, he was stuck -- you can't just serve legal notice on an unidentified person who happens to be standing round.
Her refusing to identify herself is one issue, and not the important one. The officer could have radioed back for advice on how to handle this, but he did not have a chance.
When she tried to go back into the house, she escalated the situation. When she refused to stop, she escalated the situation. When she physically resisted the officer's attempt to stop her, she escalated the situation. Then she fell. And that's how things came to be where they were.
As I said earlier, there seems there was no common sense discretion used in this incident.
As I said earlier, that is not at all clear to me. I'll go a step further and say that if ther was a lack of common-sense discretion, it was lacking on both sides of this incident.
Unfortunately, it's incidents like this that really make those in law enforcement look bad.
This incident -- even under your interpretation and even accepting all of your assumptions -- is a nothing-burger. Cops beating innocent (or presumed innocent) people, or shooting an elderly widow in the face in a no-knock "drug raid" on the wrong address, those are a serious stain on law enforcement. A woman suffering minor injuries in a pointless altercation is no more of an indictment of the police than a sorority slap-fight is a stain on all of academia.
The article said she'd been warned twice. Things had progressed past the "... or we'll have to cite you" phase to the "I'm here to cite you" phase.
3. Waited to his truck while she called her son (to protect himself from a shotgun-wielding 70 year old)
So you let a belligerent individual go back into the house, where you cannot see and have no control, and you walk back to your vehicle and roll up the window to protect you. I hope you don't train cops.
4. Called his dispatcher, got her name, and left the citation in her mailbox
1) See #1.
2) A local cop can't leave anything in the mailbox. It is a federal offense for anyone but the USPS or the recipient/sender to put anything or take anything out of the mailbox, or even to open it.
That's why there are separate newspaper receptacles on mailbox posts in rural areas, and why flyers are usually tossed in the driveway or stuck on the outside of the box.
It's rarely prosecuted because violations are rarely reported, but it's the law.
They did not say that the officer acted inappropriately. only that it should have been handled better.
LOL! Your spin is speeding up the rotation of the earth.
They knew exactly the ID of the old lady who live there, or could easily obtain it, and taking her to jail over this was a total embarrassment to their department.
Not to mention the injuries to Grandma, and having to take Grandma to the hospital first to be treated for injuries.
I don't know the provenance of the photo -- when it was taken, by whom, or whether the lawn was cut between the citation and the picture.
In the article that began this thread, the lawn was described as looking "like dried hay." I've never seen half-inch hay. So there's a discrepancy between what was reported and what the photo shows.
If the house looked like the photo when the complaint was made and when the citation was issued, then I agree that the citation was stupid. If it looked like that when the officer showed up to serve the citation, he should have -- or should have been granted the authority to -- confirm that the problem had been fixed.
That is based on the assumption that short dry grass doesn't effectively spread wildfires. Not my area of expertise.
English is my native language, and I've known how to read since Nixon was barely into his second term. i don't need the repetition, nor the repeated emphasis. I'm disagreeing with you, but not because I failed to understand you.
It's stunning to me that you're absolutely convinced that a street officer for the Orem PD is stupid and cruel and everything but a Son of God, but an Orem PD PR flack cannot be anything but fully-informed, honest, open, and beyond reproach. And, more importantly, that your interpretation of their comments is similarly Gospel.
>>They did not say that the officer acted inappropriately. only that it should have been handled better.
LOL! Your spin is speeding up the rotation of the earth.
Very nice turn of phrase. I appreciate wit. But nonetheless, my statement is an accurate and factual description of the police statement. there's nothing wrong with wisecracks that don't address the substance of the argument -- I do it all the time -- but it's worth noting.
You built heavily on your claim that the cop's own department said the cop was wrong. That is not what the department said.
They knew exactly the ID of the old lady who live there
No. They knew exactly the identity of the old lady who owned the house. Many people spend most of their lives living on property they do not own. Many others spend most of their lives owning property they do not live on. Are you going to say that the cop's misdeed was that he failed to assume enough, or that he guessed too little?
I can walk up to any house in the country with the owner's name on a piece of paper in my hand. Property deeds and property tax are a matter of public record. But when I knock on the door and someone answers, I do not know if the person in front of me is the person named on the piece of paper.
or could easily obtain it, and taking her to jail over this was a total embarrassment to their department.
Taking her to jail was not the officer's call, if Orem is like most police departments. His job was to serve a ticket and, if necessary, pick up and bring in. Someone more senior took it from there.
Not to mention the injuries to Grandma, and having to take Grandma to the hospital first to be treated for injuries.
I almost mentioned that in the last post, because I knew you'd make much of the word "hospital."
The police take any injured person in their custody to a hospital as a matter of SOP. They don't have doctors in the precinct. There are at least two reasons for this: 1) because whatever you think of those eevil cops, they don't like folks dying on their watch; and B) they want the most complete record possible of the injuries, from which their cause can be determined.
Anyone arrested and injured is likely to go to the hospital before going to the station. It's a document to refute the claim, made hundreds of ties a day, that the injuries were delivered in the interrogation room.
As surely as night follows day, anyone who's both arrested and injured, not necessarily n that order, will claim that the wounds came after the arrest. A little police CYA is not out of line. If I were a cop, a drop of blood would be enough for me to have a suspect checked out.
If the hospital docs say that the injuries are inconsistent with a fall as described,, that would change the case. The mere fact that she was seen at a hospital does not.
THEN she can AFFORD to water her lawn. How ridiculous is this? What’s going on in this country?
If you think that the home invasion, physical roughing up, cuffing and arrest of a 70 year old woman because her LAWN WASN’T PRETTY is acceptable than I don’t know what else to say except Bzzz...your a moron and I hope I never have to live in a town where YOU write the rules.
I was there. I can tell you a few things the media is missing. She is 70 years old, but she claims she doesn’t water the lawn because the water is shut off for money reasons. This is not true. I have personal knowledge of 3 very nice vacations she has already taken this year.
Next, I personally know that the officers have been asking her for months and months to bring the nuisance property into compliance to local codes. The officers have been getting demands from dozens of neighbors due to the sever neglect and failure to maintain the property.
I saw that officer be totally professional with her. As he spoke to her, she became agitated and irrational. She refused to fix the problem at any time, citing money problems however we’ve discussed that issue and it doesn’t hold water. To repeat, she looked at the officer and said that she would not bring the property into compliance at anytime.
I watched as the woman dashed into her house. The officer was then obligated to keep her from doing so. She had no information to proceed with writing a citation and in that 1 chance in a million, she returns with a loaded shot gun.
So he grasps her arm and asked her to sit down, please. I heard the officer repeat PLEASE CALM DOWN. She then flipped out into hysterics. He explained that if he was not able to get her identity he would only have the choice to bring her to the station for prints and a photo. Then she could be realease with a citation. Unfortunately for everyone, she tripped, banged her nose and the fell to the grough, tucking her arms below, refusing to be compliant. The officer calmly asked her to comply and he clearly stated the reason for the actions he was taking.
I stood nearby and felt worse for the officer than the woman, because she was yelling police brutality from the get go. It was clearly a case of a small situation that got worse because of the womans failure to cooperate in many different phases of the investigation.
The spin put on by the nedia is unreal. This cop was doing his job and he has helped clean up many nuisance houses nearby and he also is currently working on a “drug’ house down the street. I love them and I support them,. I feel bad for the officer getting a bad wrap.
I live across the street. I’ll testify that the woman it crazy. I guarantee she has money as I know of several vacations. From the beginning the woman was confrontational and threatening to the man. All he needed was her name and date or birth, as required by law in any police report case. She refused to give it to him and ran into the door jam trying to get away from him. Then she flopps down (like Karl Malone did) and she screamed for help. The officer very calmly asked her to calm down so he could help her. She continue to scream and was very non-compliant. I saw no other way deal with the situation. They took her to the station to get a booking photos and finger prints, that will be used to identify her.
Being a first hand witness, I can tell you that the woman caused this herself. It’s too bad it went down like this, but she holds the blame.
That woman has plenty of money to water her lawn but she doesn’t and her neglect ruins the value of my property to the point I can’t afford to take such a loss and move.
Ask around, we all know she’s a fruit and the family comes around when there is a smell of a lawsuit against the city.
Law suit for what, following policy. Lawsuit for beinging allowed to leave after getting printed and photoed as requested. I think there is thee more yards on the same block that need attention too, but I am scared to death that they all have a free pass nowadays.
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