how could you vote foul? What is this.....finders keepers? Because a ball lands on hr property she now ownes it? cmon

It's foul because she's 89 and it's a ball. This does not require the intervention of law enforcement. The father should have rang her doorbell and asked for it back and apologized. If she says no, get a new ball and don't let it go on her yard anymore. Arresting an 89 year old woman is ridiculous.

tlk, you old grouchy bastard. 89 year old women have been taking kids balls for rolling on their lawn for probably 100 years in America. arresting an 89 year old woman is foul unless she's a cannibal or something. seniors get a free pass for stuff like this. get a new ball, she'll be dead soon, get over it. Why do you hate America? FOUL.

The nice thing about being liberal (as you two clearly are) is that you can flip flop on any issue you want and still feel good about yourselves. You change your ideals more times than most people change underwear.

She took something that didnt' belong to her. She REFUSED to give it back, even after the police made the request. What are the police supposed to do? Just walk away? Oh she's 89 so she gets a free pass and and the kids loses property that is rightfully his?

She brought this on herself. She was given an opportunity to return something that she took knowing it didn't belong to her. She refused. Age has nothing to do with this. Had the same scenerio been played out with a 30year old, you would be applauding the police because you don't have the balls to apply the same standards to everyone equally.

Kapauldo, I don't hate America and shame on your for suggesting it.

If she resisted, should we have tased her? I AGREE, had it been a 30 year old I would have applauded it, no doubt about it. The 89 year old lady gets a pass. Society must be compassionate to grouchy old 89 year olds yelling at kids to get off their lawn and taking their balls. Imagine the cop who cuffed an 89 year old lady for taking this kids ball. How demeaning to both parties. I mean, this is using a sledge hammer on a tack. She'll be dead soon, just let it go. The answer to both your questions is yes. The police should have walked away, and yes she gets a free pass. The ball rolled on her lawn, she's an old lady. This is what old ladies do. My compassion for miserable old ladies has nothing to do with my political persuasions, it's just being a decent human being. What if that old lady had a kid who was in Iraq? Then would you agree that you hate America? Wait, do I hate America?

I agree with kapauldo. If it makes tlk feel better, I'd be happy to support a law that says grannies can steal neighbors' kids' balls with no penalty. in fact there should be a whole different code of laws for grannies.

If she resisted, the arresting officer should have used whatever reasonable force (which I am pretty sure wouldn't call for a taser) was necessary to control the perp (yes, i just called your sweet little ol' granny a perp).

Not all grannies are sweet little blue haired ladies that only use the car to drive to church on sundays. They don't all sit in a rocking chair gently rocking while listening to the birds chirp and use an antique crochet hook to hold their hair in a bun all while leaving a hot apple pie cooling on the window sill allowing the fresh aroma to waft through the neighborhood.

It doesn't matter how old she is or how hard a life she has had. She should have returned the ball when asked by the police. She refused. Now she is paying the price. Same as you or I would if we had done the same thing.

i agree that she should have given the ball back, i just think the punishment should be proportional to the crime and discounted by the relevant personal characteristics of the perp. by quality adjusted life years remaining for example. if a 90 year old commits homicide should he or she be put into a maximum security prison for life or put in a supervised nursing home for old criminals? this woman is in the 'any day now' category for probable life span conditional on making it to 89, her punishment should be discounted accordingly. let's debate the second point of the first sentence. i'm sure we agree that punishments should be some increasing function of severity of crime. should punishments be discounted by personal characteristics? i say yes. what say you?

i say yes. A 7 year old stealing a ball and a 90 year old chasing the neighborhood kids off her lawn with a rake are different crimes than if a 40 year old person committed each. The 7 year old and 90 year old have special circumstances which warrant dramatically more compassion and mercy. This is a ball on her lawn. The kid can have it back when she dies, which will be any day. She's old. America should adopt a standard of forgiveness and compassion for old folks within reason. Taking a kids ball is within reason. It's so common that it's a cliche, just like "get off my lawn". Also, at 89, she gets some discount of her crime for mental health. Just buy another ball. randyc, why does tlk hate America?

this is a tough call. apparently, there was an ongoing dispute about the ball landing in the old lady's property. tangentially, i'd like to point out how much i love this old lady. she is so crotchety that the sound of children laughing incites her to the point of thievery. i bet she has an amazing back story. i also bet that one small child could change her attitude in the feel good movie of the century. back to the issue at hand, this old, mean lady should not get a pass for stealing but the penalty should not include jail time. perhaps it should include some ironic punishment like volunteering at a day care.

fine, i'll go along with that, but the point is an old lady should not be cuffed and hauled away in the back of police car. it's just ridiculous fascist stuff. we need to relax and not be so literal in interpretation of the law. an old lady taking a kids ball for it having rolled onto her lawn is not a crime that's worthy of being cuffed and hauled away.

Glad to hear there is at least one sensible person in the bunch!

Follow this story.....at the end of the day, she will be returned home to her miserable life on Elm St and will ultimately give the ball back....something she should have done in the first place.

for the record, i never said she should receive jail time. Unless she is so arrogant in front of the bench, i would be suprised if she received little more than a slap on the wrist.

She ABSOLUTELY deserved to be arrested for petty theft after refusing to return property that wasn't hers. So my FAIR vote, whcih was based on your headline (Edna Jester, 89, arrested for keeping neighborhood kids ball) stands. It was FAIR that she was arrested. Now if you want to create the same story and ask fair or foul for jail time, my vote would most certainly be different.

there's no confusion about your position tlk. no one thinks you are advocating jail time. where we disagree is the physical handling of an 89 year old woman. she shouldn't have been physically handcuffed and placed into a squad car. give her a ticket. i think that nothing should have happened, but if they sent her a summons in the mail, or issued her a ticket, i would be fine with that too. the physical handling of an old woman over a neighborhood kid's ball is what crosses the line of good reasoning. why arrest her? toward what end? so she learns her lesson? under what circumstance is it justifiable to physically man handle an old lady? if i understand you correctly, your answer to that question is 'when she refuses to give back a ball that rolled onto her lawn.'

you say "physical handling" like she was Rodney King. If the police take anyone into custody, the proceedure that they must follow is handcuffing the perp. Failure to do that would (I would expect) result in some disciplinary action from their bosses. They must treat the granny the same as a murder suspect. In order for those guys to effectively do their jobs, they must treat everyone the same. They cannot say "oh she's a harmless 89 yr old granny so we don't need to cuff her".

watch the video dude...she was barely touched by the officer when she was getting into the back seat of the cruiser. There was NO "man handling" that I or anyone else can see because it simply isn't there.

To be clear, let's look at Websters:
Man Handle
1 : to handle roughly
2 : to move or manage by human force

It simply didn't happen in this video you are presenting.

I concede the manhandling point. To distill this, you support police handcuffing an 89 year old woman for not returning a child's ball. Yes?

I believe in justice for ALL, equal opportunity and....all that crap.

I believe the police are obligated to treat everyone in the same manner when taking anyone (a priest, a drug dealer, a murder and a granny) into custody. If they don't treat everyone the same you can bet your last dollar that some idiot from the ACLU will cry foul when his coke dealing client who has already escaped three times wan't treated the same as granny.

Morally, the coke dealer should be cuffed and the granny should not, but the system breaks if you don't treat everyone the same.

mmmm.. that's a little too non-committal. You've dodged the question. Copy and paste the following into your next comment and I think we're done. "I support the police handcuffing an 89 year old woman for not returning a child's ball."

I FULLY support the police when they are doing their job unlike kapauldo. That includes handcuffing anyone they take into custody for their safety as well as that of the perp regardless of the crime they have been arrested for (petty theft all the way up to murder).

tlk's comments have now pushed me over the edge to agree with him fully. yes, the granny should have been handcuffed and hauled away to jail. if the police apply different standards to different criminals then they are acting as judges.

WOOT!

Now if we can just get a few more people to see it my way, we can change the results to at least 50-50 if not better (currently 30% Fair, 70% Foul).

It's time we make a change and stand up to the likes of kapauldo and his liberal washington chums........

I'm TLK and I approve this message

police make discretionary decisions all the time in their work. i'd be fine with codifying the moral sentiment that we all share. 1. check age. 2. if age>80 then no handcuffs. 3. if age>85 then no arrest, just a ticket.