A recent incident involving a woman and police officer in Indiana is a prime example of law enforcement run amok. The woman was arrested and faces charges of resisting arrest — a felony in Indiana — after she failed to immediately pull over her vehicle on a dark country road at night, and instead chose to drive less than a mile down the road to a lit, public parking lot. The woman, acknowledging the police officer with a wave, also put on her hazards as she made her way to a safer area.
The offensive officer, Porter County Sheriff’s Department Patrolman William Marshall, initially flagged her for speeding, but when he approached her in the parking lot after she stopped her vehicle there, he chastised her for not stopping immediately. Reason reported the officer saying, “What in the hell are you doing? I could arrest you for this.” She explained her rationale was safety, but, according to the officer, after she “refused to listen to how her actions put her and others in danger, Marshall said he arrested her.”
The woman, with no prior criminal record, now faces felony charges, while Patrolman William Marshall is being fully supported by his county’s sheriff’s department. The department “cited state law requiring motorists to yield to emergency vehicles and said Marshall was driving a fully marked squad car and used the lights and siren.” Never mind that the woman did acknowledge the officer; her crime was that she picked a safe, public, and well-lit parking lot instead of a dark, isolated, country road for her interaction.
Patrolman William Marshall deserves to have disciplinary action taken against him for this egregious incident. To arrest someone for not immediately pulling over a vehicle in order to ensure personal safety and liberty is contemptuous, audacious, and just plain spiteful. Such behavior is not honorable and is unbecoming of any officer. Patrolman William Marshall must be held accountable for his actions.
Alan Joel, the Indiana incident between the woman motorist and the police officer ought not to be blamed entirely on the patrolman who was just enforcing the law as it was written. The real blame should be heaped upon the sheriffs department and the state law requiring motorists to yield in all cases and for threatening to bring felony charges against this hapless woman. This is just another example of government flexing its power without using any common sense. The Indiana incident is merely a microcosm of the federal government gone amok passing laws without careful consideration of “unintended consequences”. One can only hope that the court system (should this case be brought) still retains a modicum of sanity and would summarily dismiss this trumped up case.