Woman, 70, Bloody nose for having a dry lawn

sltrib.com ^ | 07/07/07 | Julie Espinosa

[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.

[zeugma]

Which demonstrates that age-old saying: An armed internet forum is a polite internet forum.

You must not have gotten involved in any internet discussions of 9mm vs. .45 :-) 

[mamelukesabre]

I don’t water my lawn. That just means I have to mow it. My front yard looks like a #2 buzz-cut right now, and I haven’t mowed it in a month. It can’t get much shorter, and it won’t burn. Go ahead and drop a match.
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Ok, I’m confused. I think this poor old lady was arrested for not watering her lawn. I think you were in favor of her arrest. Yet here you indicate you do not water your lawn. So what gives? And why do you think a short cut dead lawn will not burn while a long cut lawn is a fire hazard?

BTW, it’s considered common sense to set your lawn mower on the tallest setting if you want to conserve water. Short grass dies faster than long grass. I too try to conserve water. My mower is on the tallest setting in the hottest part of the year. But I give it just enough water to keep a little bit of green tint to the brown blades of grass. And, in the harshes, un-shadiest areas, I have zoysia planted. You can’t kill that stuff. But it wont grow in the shade, and fire is good for it.