Elderly Lady “Obstructs and Delays”
If a frightened 73-year-old woman who answers her door at night wants to dial 911 to make sure that the person at her door really is a police officer, should she be able to? Um… do we really need to ask?
Marie Venezia, 73, lives by herself in her Raleigh home. Last Tuesday night, a Raleigh police officer knocked on her door and asked her about damage to a neighbor’s fence.
“I said ‘I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know who it was.’ He said, ‘You know who it was.’ I said, “I don’t know who it was.” He said you do,” she said. “And at that point, I began to wonder if this guy really was a policeman because I didn’t think officers acted like that.”
Venezia told the officer she was going to call 911 to confirm who he was.
“He said, ‘Don’t close that door.’ I said I am going to close it and then I went and called 911,” she said.
When Venezia came back, the officer charged her with misdemeanor obstructing and delaying, issuing her a ticket.
I wonder if you can still plead your fifth amendment rights anymore?
If this doesn’t get thrown out in court, I’m moving to china.
I love this quote from the local police: “when an officer is in full uniform and the car is visible, just cooperate.”
That just confirms what I’ve always known. Cops are filthy dirty lying pigs. Unless they have a search or arrest warrant, or are placing you under arrest, if you’re on your own property you do not have to talk to them, listen to them, or do anything they say. She should have simply closed the door, locked it, then watched some TV.
Pigs love perpetuating the myth that you must submit, but it’s a lie.
Man – your country is going to hell in a handbag
Caught you on TWIT finally got a second to check out your site.
Great content John!
As for the story… This kinda of moronic police action happens way to much. Granted most officers do a great job, and deserve to be commended… but dinks like this make all that hard work disappear.
Obviously she should challenge the ticket.
The officer’s sergeant should give him a dose of common sense.
Enough of this stuff. The sky is not falling, and this country is not going to hell.
I appreciate the difficult and dangerous job that the police do. I’m glad to see police officers around, and have been helped by them many times. I was a little wilder in my youth, and have been arrested a few times. Still, I cannot recall a single time that the police treated me in any way but fairly.
Having said all that, on the surface of it, it sounds like the lady got a raw deal.
Sounds like Imafish has had a run in with the law himself which is evident by his apparent disrespect for law enforcment. Not all cops are “lying pigs” and most are hard working respectfull members of the community. It Imafish’s anarcist attitude that causes some many problems with everyday society. Maybe he should re-evalute his attitude, or better yet maybe someday one of those “pigs” will come to his rescue in his time of need.
That woman has every right to protect herself, the police officer should be diciplined and the PD should definately apologize to her.
Now that the whole of Raleigh knows that she lives alone, what should she do?
This article was posted on 8/3, about an incident that was reported on 7/28.
Two seconds on Google News shows that the source for the article, WRAL, on 7/29, 5 days prior to John posting this, reports that the charges had been dropped.
This isn’t the government trying to destroy our rights, it’s one cop being a prick. There are some fabulous examples of our rights being whittled away at. This ain’t one of them. That John didn’t do two seconds of follow up on a story that was nearly a week old is a tad disheartening. And I say this as a huge Dvorak fan.
According to the WRAL website, “The Raleigh Police Department decided to void the citation given to a woman who got in trouble after double-checking an officer’s identity.
“A police officer knocked on Marie Venezia’s door at 9 p.m. last Tuesday night to ask her about damage to a neighbor’s fence.
“In the middle of the conversation, Venezia told the officer she wanted to call 911 and verify who he was. When she came back, the officer gave her a ticket for obstructing justice.
“The Raleigh Police Department told WRAL that the department will learn from the experience and use it in training sessions.”
I guess they took a lot of heat. Good. It doesn’t mention if the original cop was disciplined, but I would hope so. Bullying an old woman, living alone, just for protecting her own security. Despicable.
T.C. Moore, if this kind of story stops getting reported, it won’t be long and the sky will truly be falling.
Thanks John for a great site, I didn’t realize you had one until you talked about it on TWiT. It’s good to hear you again.
I think this women did the right thing in away. I would have called the Police Dept at the local no. and asked if they sent an officer out to her place. I live in southern Calif and some security guard uniforms look close to beign a police officers uniform. Home invasion robberies have taken place with the supects wearing such uniforms and jackets with the
Police insigina on the back.. A person has to be careful now days..
cops are human, but they get way toooo caught up in the “us v.s. them” attitude. The job does “harden” a person into thinking that everyone is wrong, and everyone is evil, and it doesn’t matter how old they are, how young they are.
The PROBLEM is the police departments don’t do enough to support the officers, or stress the importance of “interacting with the town-folk”. Some cops only socialize with other cops..at work and off duty. They get twisted…into thinking that ALL citizens are the bad guys (although, with people doing the same thing to cops…it’s pretty easy to see what the problem is.) Cops are people. But, the training they get just pushes the envelope of fear, and distrust…how the Little old Lady is going to burst out of the house with a handgun and shoot them, or how every traffic stop someone will pop out of the trunk…or how some kid will take their gun and shoot them. I’m serious. The cop training videos are enough to make ANYONE distrust EVERYONE.
What we NEED are “beat cops” to walk the streets and get to KNOW the people they are supposed to be “protecting”. And, we need people to get to know the cops….and see what a tough job they have.
I tend to think the little old lady was being difficult, and a bit of a bitch, and probably didn’t explain herself too well, and the cop was having a bad day, and annoyed by her. I’m sure the TRUTH is somewhere in the middle. Somehow, I think that she DID know something about the fence issue, and has had problems with the neighbors for a while. Gut feel.
We are living in a “Police State”.
Carl Winslow,
OK, let me explain something about this blog, based on my watching and participation since its inception. You’re not likely to see a headline here which reads, “Police Drop Bogus Charges because of Public Outrage: All’s Well Now.” You’re going to read about the bogus charges that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place, and how the department responded when told of them.
Dropping charges does not clear the department of wrongdoing, and it is the department’s wrongdoing which is the subject of the post– or didn’t you gather that??
Secondly, your timeline is conveniently incomplete. It omits the fact that the INCIDENT ITSELF TOOK PLACE ON JULY 19TH. The police, given a chance to respond, backed the officer and said that the woman should have obeyed him. The story then broke on JULY 28TH, and, amid public outrage, the charges were dropped like a hot potato.
Meetsy.
I agree with you right up to your last two sentences.
Whether or not she knew anything about the fence is irrelevant. She is under no obligation to talk to ANYONE while on her own property, including the police. She would have been fully in the right to have asked the policeman to leave if she wished to. At that point, the policeman could have gotten an arrest warrant if the circumstance warranted it. The policeman made a very bad call by issuing the citation and the department made an even worse decision in backing the officer.
This also happened in the evening, at 9:00 PM. Could the policeman not have come earlier in the day? As for her or the officer’s mood, that is only conjecture and I don’t think adds anything to the issue.
It is the situations like this that create the “us and them” attitude. And I fully agree with your post, excepting the last two sentences.
KB
Well said.
Citizens sleep in there warm beds because there are some rough men ready to do violence in their behalf…………you guys can say what the hell happened with the old lady.if you get second hand information.werw you there.