Just so you understand where I'm coming from -- I've played in the big leagues - City of Atlanta ZRB and BZA, the city/county tax commissioner, and even the city council. I've not only fought City Hall -- I've won (and after I won, I moved to a more congenial rural area). I have no love for the petty zoning Nazis that you find in any city zoning department, because I dealt with them for 25 years.
With that said, my primary concern here is the way this story developed, and what it says about memes, prejudice, and knee-jerk reactions.
This is obviously a conservative, small-government, leave-me-alone type message board, and we self-select for those inclinations. But there's a danger in that.
Substitute for a moment "Trayvon Martin" here. We start with an inflammatory news article that doesn't give all the facts and uses a lot of buzz words that evoke a particular reaction. The target audience already has an inclination to sympathize with the named victim and to dislike the accused perpetrators, so they all go, "Yeah!" The accusations become wilder and wilder, to the point of organized conspiracies and even murder.
Then somebody says, "wait a minute, I know somebody in the neighborhood and this isn't how she says it went down." The response: "This is all a conspiracy. All government officials are conspiring to steal this guy's land. The congressman is in on it too because his wife's on city council." - "Wait a minute. These facts don't line up. And I know some of these people and they're not bad people." - "You're in on it. You're part of the conspiracy too!"
It's not just the media that has memes and automatically assumes facts to fit them.
These are real people. Roswell is a small town. I have a lot of friends there, my son went to school there, I live nearby. You don't. Where you see a monolithic faceless government, I see human beings that I have personally dealt with. That causes me to be concerned when people are throwing really serious accusations around about my neighbors.
All I'm saying is, let's make sure we have the facts and that this is the hill we want to defend. If we go ballistic on every sensational news story, then when there really is an example of overreaching and government bullying, we will have lost our credibility.
This is a tragic and complicated case. There is no doubt in my mind that Roswell Government officials acted honorably. A thorough investigation will be conducted. Chicken man might be much more a victim. May he rest in peace.
Facts matter so why rush to judgement?
The problem is that you are ignoring known facts. Wardes was first given zoning violations falsely and won in court both times. City officials were engaged in abusive enforcement against him from day one. That’s a fact.
It is also a fact that the city was dealt out a criminal punishment for a zoning violation (grading his lot in an attempt to protect it from flooding). Anytime a government punishes common sense self protection of property, tyranny is afoot. Your attachment to the “nice” people is blinding you to reality.
The truth is human evil is often so banal and pleasant on it’s face that people don’t even recognize it until they too are in its cross hairs.
Roswell first created a criminal and then it punished him.