I miss rednecks

A few days back my mother sent me an article titled Bloodied 70-year-old woman cuffed for having a brown lawn. To quote:

Betty Perry is charged with resisting arrest and failing to maintain her landscaping, both misdemeanors.

She was arrested July 6 after failing to give her name to a police officer who visited her home.

During a struggle, Perry fell and injured her nose. She spent more than an hour in a holding cell before police released her.

“Let’s bring sanity back to law enforcement,” [attorney Gloria Allred] said.

Sounds bad, eh? Well, too bad there’s no sanity on the horizon:

The mayor and City Council apologized, and the police department said the situation could have been handled differently. But the city attorney still is pressing charges, and Perry is due back in court next month.

A state investigation found that Officer James Flygare acted properly in arresting Perry after trying to get her to cooperate.

Read the full story

Ouch. OK, let’s try another! Today I found a wonderful tale of police impropriety (don’t worry, the headline was nearly so euphemistic): Wheelchair-Bound Woman Dies After Being Shocked With Taser 10 Times. Not from the Onion. I swear.

Family attorney Rick Alexander said Delafield’s death could have been prevented and that there are four things that jump out at him about the case.”One, she’s in a wheelchair. Two, she’s schizophrenic. Three, they’re using a Taser on a person that’s in a wheelchair, and then four is that they tasered her 10 times for a period of like two minutes,” Alexander said.

Read the full story

Normally I like to rip on lawyers, but these guys have it pretty much together. Except Rick can’t really count, as the article said the police reported stated it was actually more like three minutes of tasing. God that would suck so hard. Although I guess if you’re schizophrenic, it might be a blast, I don’t know. Was that insensitive?

One last fun article: Cops: Man dies after armless artist’s headbutt.

Police are investigating the death of a man who collapsed after he was head-butted by an armless man in a fight over a woman. [...] Known by the nickname “Rusty,” Redfern made a name for himself in the late 1980s for pen and ink drawings he does using his foot.

Read the full story

As if I didn’t already know not to fuck with people named “Rusty.”

Sorry for all the links, blockquotes, and linebreaks. I’ll follow this up with another post about the Eisbach in a bit.