What ever happened to common sense?
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
If you read the Associated Press account of the arrest. injury and incareration of a 70-year-old woman in Orem, Utah over a brown lawn, you’d have to agree we’ve lost our common sense. If there is one thing authorities should teach in police academy is common sense.
I am not demeaning the police who face untold dangers every time they leave their home for police duties. But come on, we are not all hardened criminals.
According to the AP report, Betty Perry, 70, refused to give her name to an officer who visited her home to issue a ticket for failing to take care of her lawn. In my opinion, the police officer, who was not named in the report, had a great deal of other options to determine the woman’s name and issue a citation in that name.
He knew the address, obviously, and surely if the city of Orem wrote such an ordnance to require lawn upkeep, it must have had records with the name of the party living at that address. A citation could be served by registered mail.
Instead he chose to arrest her and in the struggle to handcuff her she fell and injured herself and he hauled her off to jail. City officials using common sense had her released after deciding custody was inappropriate. The officer who arrested her was suspended. I would assume for stupidity.
Orem Mayor Jerry Washburn apologized to Perry and explained the city law requires residents to maintain their yards and keep them free of junk, but even so, he said, tickets were rarely issued for brown lawns.
That said, the police aren’t the sole entity without common sense. Recently, I was asked to stop by the Rite Aid pharmacy in the Roseburg Valley Mall to pick up a prescription for my wife. There was no one at the counter when I approached, but the officious clerk informed me I had to stand behind the roped off section until I was called.
I wanted to know why I had to wait behind the rope barrier. Her reply was it is a HIPPA rule.
Common sense would have told her the rule is enforced to protect privacy of people at the counter picking up prescriptions, not as a punishment for shopping at Rite Aid.
Needless to say, I don’t shop at the pharmacy there any more and that is because I have common sense.
Lately, this lack of common sense seems to be pervasive regardless of where one encounters the lack of it.
As a reporter, I was covering the national convention of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) in San Antonio, Texas some years back. One of the speakers was Hugh Downs,
former anchor of television’s 20/20 program and author.
His appearance brought an overflow crowd to the auditorium where he was speaking. A late comer, a lady in her 80s, attempted to enter. A San Antonio police officer informed her the hall was filled to capacity and she could not enter.
She insisted she had paid her money (the price to attend the conference for all three days was $10 for AARP members) and she was there to hear Downs. When the officer stood his ground to block the door, she struck him with her cane.
Using common sense, he stepped aside and said:
"Lady you go right in because I am not going to explain to my sergeant that an 80-year-old woman assaulted me with her cane."
Now that is using good common sense.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)