Post by KC on Aug 31, 2006 20:02:15 GMT -5
February 14, 1997 -Sylvia Slayton is a 63-year-old grandmother of 10. She is also a criminal. Her crime: Feeding parking meters.
Slayton broke the law in Cincinnati when she put 15 cents in two expired meters as a glorified meter maid was about to ticket the vehicles. She was convicted of a misdemeanor offense for interfering with Officer Ed Johnson as he was preparing to write up a couple of wayward motorists.
Johnson said Slayton became loud and difficult and refused to identify herself, so when he nabbed her, he put her in handcuffs. A 63-year-old granny in handcuffs. Nice. I think I might become loud and difficult and refuse to identify myself if an officer of the law told me I had committed a crime -- with my implements of destruction being a dime and a nickel -- by innocently attempting to assist two people I didn't even know.
"I tried to do what I thought was the right thing," Slayton said. She said she was trying to help out two strangers by giving them a little bit of extra time to return to their cars.
Not so in Cincinnati. In Cincinnati, apparently, you better watch out if you ever find yourself allowing kindness to get the best of you.
Slayton could be sent to the slammer for 90 days and faces a potential $750 fine, but the astute prosecutors said they wouldn't seek jail time for Slayton. That would be a pretty sight -- a shackled older woman being led away to the tank for trying to be a good Samaritan.
They say no good deed goes unpunished.
Back on the streets and in the neighborhoods -- far from the sober granite edifices and supercilious parvenus of officialdom, where real people, some of them starving for a glimmer of human decency, operate on the unsophisticated, primeval, and probably antiquated, idea that if something feels wrong, it probably is -- Slayton became a kind of minor heroine following her capture and incarceration. She also got $350 in donations to help with her defense.
Meanwhile, a church group that had been anonymously putting money in parking meters for years had T-Shirts made that read "Sylvia Slayton ... guilty of kindness."
Slayton won't say if she'd commit the same crime again, but she thinks others will be unlikely to do what she did.
"It is really going to make people wonder whether they should stop and help someone," she said.
Nobody but judges and lawyers ever said common sense plays any part in making law.
www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/1997/02/17/editorial2.html
Slayton broke the law in Cincinnati when she put 15 cents in two expired meters as a glorified meter maid was about to ticket the vehicles. She was convicted of a misdemeanor offense for interfering with Officer Ed Johnson as he was preparing to write up a couple of wayward motorists.
Johnson said Slayton became loud and difficult and refused to identify herself, so when he nabbed her, he put her in handcuffs. A 63-year-old granny in handcuffs. Nice. I think I might become loud and difficult and refuse to identify myself if an officer of the law told me I had committed a crime -- with my implements of destruction being a dime and a nickel -- by innocently attempting to assist two people I didn't even know.
"I tried to do what I thought was the right thing," Slayton said. She said she was trying to help out two strangers by giving them a little bit of extra time to return to their cars.
Not so in Cincinnati. In Cincinnati, apparently, you better watch out if you ever find yourself allowing kindness to get the best of you.
Slayton could be sent to the slammer for 90 days and faces a potential $750 fine, but the astute prosecutors said they wouldn't seek jail time for Slayton. That would be a pretty sight -- a shackled older woman being led away to the tank for trying to be a good Samaritan.
They say no good deed goes unpunished.
Back on the streets and in the neighborhoods -- far from the sober granite edifices and supercilious parvenus of officialdom, where real people, some of them starving for a glimmer of human decency, operate on the unsophisticated, primeval, and probably antiquated, idea that if something feels wrong, it probably is -- Slayton became a kind of minor heroine following her capture and incarceration. She also got $350 in donations to help with her defense.
Meanwhile, a church group that had been anonymously putting money in parking meters for years had T-Shirts made that read "Sylvia Slayton ... guilty of kindness."
Slayton won't say if she'd commit the same crime again, but she thinks others will be unlikely to do what she did.
"It is really going to make people wonder whether they should stop and help someone," she said.
Nobody but judges and lawyers ever said common sense plays any part in making law.
www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/1997/02/17/editorial2.html