Free Republic

JEREMY HARMON/Daily Herald Betty Perry, 70, stands in her front yard in Orem and talks about her experience earlier in the day with an Orem police officer Friday, July 6, 2007. An officer stopped to talk to her about her dead lawn, the situation escalated when Perry refused to give her name to the officer and tried to go back in her house to call her son. Perry fell, getting various cuts on her body, and was taken to jail. Betty Perry's dry lawn is seen at her home in Orem Friday, July 6, 2007. Betty Perry's dry, desolate...

'He really abused me,' resident says after arrest by Orem police officer OREM - Two days after Independence Day, 70-year-old Betty Perry experienced an ordeal she said shouldn't be happening in America. The retired military and U.S. government employee answered the door at her home Friday morning to talk with a police officer about her bone-dry lawn and ended up getting arrested and suffering a bloody nose. "What have I done?" she asked. "I'm old now. I can't believe this." The Orem police officer, as yet unnamed by city officials, cited Perry for violating a city ordinance with her "sadly...