Chicago Tribune:
When Martha Al-Bishara went on a walk near her home in northern Georgia last week, she was on a quest for dandelions. The stroll would end in her getting stunned by a Taser and arrested by police officers.
The 87-year-old woman often ventured outside – with a kitchen knife and a plastic bag in hand – to cut and collect the plants for cooking, her family said. She was doing just that last Friday afternoon when she crossed the street from her home in Chatsworth, Georgia, and arrived at a partially fenced lot belonging to a branch of the Boys and Girls Club. There, she began gathering the plants she needed.
Someone on the property, however, called 911 to report a woman in a blue dress and a brown headscarf on their site.
“She told me she doesn’t speak English and she’s walking up our bike trail with a knife towards me,” a man said in a 911 call obtained by WRCB News. “She’s old so she can’t get around too well, but … looks like she’s walking around looking for something like vegetation to cut down or something. She has a bag, too.”
The 911 caller added that the woman “didn’t try to attack anybody or anything.”
Soon afterward, at around 4:30 p.m., two officers and the chief of the Chatsworth Police Department arrived at the scene, according to a police report. There, a Boys and Girls Club staff member escorted them to the back of the property, where they spotted Al-Bishara standing on a hill, still holding a “a white plastic bag in her left hand and a steak knife in her right hand.”
It was unclear if the officers realized Al-Bishara did not speak English but, according to police, the woman did not respond to multiple verbal requests to put down her knife. Instead, she reportedly continued walking and collecting dandelions.
“While we were approaching the female she bent down to the ground and cut a weed and stood back up holding the weed in her left hand with the plastic bag,” the police report stated. ” We kept telling her to drop the knife. The female would look at us. Her demeanor was calm even seeing us with our guns out.”
The Chatsworth police chief at one point threw his own pocket knife on the ground “in an attempt to show the female that we wanted her to drop the knife,” according to the report. When Al-Bishara still didn’t respond and began walking down the hill toward the police, one of the officers turned on his Taser and pointed it at the woman, the report said.
When she about five yards away, with the same “calm” demeanor and facial expression, the officer shot his Taser, striking Al-Bishara in the chest and sending her to the ground, the report said.
If you’re afraid of an 87-year-old woman cutting dandelions, you may be a pussy. In fact, if you are prone to call the police and say something like this:
“She told me she doesn’t speak English and she’s walking up our bike trail with a knife towards me,” a man said in a 911 call obtained by WRCB News. “She’s old so she can’t get around too well, but … looks like she’s walking around looking for something like vegetation to cut down or something. She has a bag, too.” [she] “didn’t try to attack anybody or anything.”
You may be a pussy.
America is full of pussies, making it ripe for takeover by barbarian hordes. But the good news is that at least the old woman now knows her boundaries.
Don’t know the language – too bad. Can’t hear – too bad. Have dementia – too bad. You’d better be cognizant enough to obey the commands of the lords and masters, “Officer Safety!”
