NEWS AND OPINION: This police officer (one of three) captured on his body cam the moment before he arrested an elderly lady, Beverly Roberts, 86, who was performing a public duty conducting TNR in a public place. The still image from the video taken by this officer’s body camcorder is, I think, brilliant.
CLICK THIS FOR THE STORY IN DETAIL: RIDICULOUS prosecution of two elderly women doing TNR on public land
It is a photograph, for me, which conjures up the oppressive authoritarian state abusing innocent citizens performing a public service in a public place. These are compassionate, decent Alabama residents. They deserved praise not arrest for a non-existing crime.
It’s probably the first time that any volunteer has been arrested for conducting a TNR program in a public place and the arrests were baseless despite the fact that they led to a conviction in a court which was subsequently overturned.
Nathan Winograd said that they were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to jail in Alabama and their crime which was compassion! They were found guilty of “committing misdemeanours in their efforts to feeding trap stray cats”.
How they could have been convicted in the first place is beyond me. Their appeal was successful (case dismissed) because it is not illegal to feed cats on public property. The two ladies were feeding feral cats as part of a TNR program.
At the time, their attorney maintained that “the arrests are baseless and that the women were performing a service by working to spay or neuter the animals and prevent the stray cat population from growing”.
That’s a correct assessment. And here’s the clincher: these two wonderful ladies are now suing the authorities for compensation for their improper arrest. They have filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city, the mayor, the police chief and his assistant chief and the three officers involved, one of which captured this image we see on the page.
You can read about the story in some detail by clicking on the following link:
In short, it has transpired that the mayor held a grudge against the ladies and he abused his authority.