The “Lawn Lady” Protest
You may have heard about the 70-year-old woman in Orem, Utah who was arrested and roughed up by a policeman because (1) she hadn’t watered her lawn for months, and (2) she refused to give her name when the policeman demanded it. I was reminded of the case on Monday, and found out that her trial on charges of interfering with an arrest and violating a zoning ordinance would be held this coming Monday, Feb. 11. I decided to take some action on this case and organize a protest activity in the prosecutor’s neighborhood. The plan was to circulate a flyer to the prosecutor’s neighbors before the trial, protesting his action in prosecuting Mrs. Perry, and calling on them to persuade him that what he was doing was wrong.
From news reports I found the prosecutor’s name: Andrew Peterson. While searching the web for his name I ran across a document that listed the salaries of Orem City public officials, which gave me his middle initial: Andrew F. Peterson. I also went to a Utah County government website that provides access to land records, and searched for his name. This gave me his address.
My initial attempt to verify the address was a bust: the listed address was slightly incorrect (the street name was incomplete), and I spent an hour or so trying to find an address that didn’t exist. I went back to the land record website and found another document that gave the full street name. I drove out to this location on my lunch break. I noted a nearby church parking lot where activists could park for the protest. I parked half a block from the address and walked to it. There was no name on the mailbox, so I went down a few doors and said I was looking for Andrew Peterson. The person there directed me to the house that matched the land records. At this point I was pretty confident I had the right house.
I then found every news story that the Deseret News and Daily Herald (two local newspapers) had written on the story, by searching their websites. I used this information to write the following one-page flyer:
It’s Not About the Lawn—
It’s About Keeping the Rabble in Line
Once America was known as the land of the free. Now it resembles a police state more each year. Your neighbor, Orem City prosecutor Andrew F. Peterson, is helping continue that trend.You may have heard about 70-year-old “lawn lady” Betty Perry. Orem police officer Jim Flygare came to her door in July to cite her for not watering her lawn. He asked for her name, and she refused to tell him, as is her natural right. Then she tried to go back into her home to call her son for advice on how to handle the situation.
That’s when the **** hit the fan. Within moments Mrs. Perry was bruised, bleeding, and handcuffed, and soon the bewildered woman was sitting in a jail cell.
As Mrs. Perry later said, “Don’t ever say no when the police tell you to do something… You’ve got to do what they tell you or they will hurt you.” Mrs. Perry made the mistake of acting like a free woman. She didn’t realize that the code of today’s policeman is not to serve and protect; it is to command and control.
In yesterday’s America, Officer Flygare would simply have gotten Mrs. Perry’s name from the land records and mailed her a citation. There was no need to arrest her, as she was no danger to anyone. Even Orem Police Chief Mike Larsen concurs: “Clearly there were other options available. [The officer] should have taken those.”
And yet Andrew Peterson insists on prosecuting Mrs. Perry for interfering with an arrest; she faces up to 6 months in jail and a fine of $1000. Peterson has made it clear that her failure to obey is the main issue: “By far the more serious charge that she’s facing is interference with arrest…” But heaven forbid the jury should find out that the arrest was both unnecessary and unreasonable. Peterson has objected to proposed jury instructions that would include information about use-of-force protocols at the Orem Police Department and what kinds of options police officers have in certain situations.
As friends and neighbors of Mr. Peterson, please speak to him—politely—and express your concerns about this prosecution. Help him understand that he is contributing to the destruction of American freedom. Perhaps he will reconsider his actions. And perhaps we will take a small step back from the road to serfdom.
Just as I was finishing up the flyer, I got the news: Mrs. Perry and the prosecutor had reached a last-minute agreement in which he dropped the original charges and she plead guilty to the lesser charge of disorderly conduct and agreed not to sue Orem City. At this point the original protest became pointless, and so it was canceled.
Rather than let all that work go to waste, I have revised the flyer to use as a recruiting tool. I, and perhaps a few others, will be leaving copies in various places where free literature is distributed, and maybe passing some out door-to-door. Here is the revised flyer.