Brattleboro police nabbed eight senior citizens last week, including one nonagenarian, charging each with a single count of disorderly conduct.
According to police, Ellen Graves, 72, of West Springfield, MA; Priscilla Lynch, 61, of Conway, MA; Linda Owen, 73, of Brattleboro; Patricia Wieland, 69, of Northampton, MA; Anneke Corbett, 70, of Florence, MA; Frances Crowe, 94, of Northampton, MA; Marcia Gagliardi, 65, of Athol, MA, and Susan Lantz, 72, of Northampton, MA, were arrested at about 7:35 am on Wednesday, June 12.
In an uncharacteristically vague press release, Brattleboro police failed to mention a victim, location or nature of the alleged conduct, however, the same band of renegade grannies have been arrested in Brattleboro before. Several are habitual offenders and have been arrested on multiple occasions while protesting at Entergy Nuclear/Vermont Yankee corporate headquarters at 185 Old Ferry Road in Brattleboro.
The streets of Brattleburgh may be safe from these maniacs for now, but who knows when this menace will strike again?
Our tax dollars at work
It’s reassuring to know that while drug related crimes are apparently alive and well in our town we can sleep better knowing that our taxes are paying to have 94 year old women arrested. Thank God the police force is on top of things.
I find it disturbing that
I find it disturbing that multiple people can disobey the law repeatedly over the years/decades, and every time, nothing is done, and charges are dropped… they have a noble cause, but their means of bringing about a change are wrong… if this was a group of random people protesting at price chopper or hannafords (for who knows what reasons) again and again, i seriously doubt that it would have gone on this long without major legal repercussions… why are we being lenient with these scofflaws? how many thousands of dollars have been wasted on arresting/ticketing? could that time/money had been better spent on other problems plaguing the area?
What should be done with
What should be done with them? Would you have elderly women -some of whom are in their 90s- put in prison? There ‘crime’ is a victimless one – unless you consider Vermont Yankee a victim. Vermont has a disturbing history of letting
actual criminals – drunk drivers who have repeatedly injured or killed other people, child abusers; drug traffickers, repeat offenders of robberies and assault- walk free or be on probation. Should we then arrest and imprison a group of women who are fighting for something they feel is worth fighting for?
I agree that too much money and police time has been wasted in the repeated arrests/bookings/court appearances of these women. How about we stop arresting them? What is it accomplishing?
i would have the police
i would have the police enforce the laws, like they have been… doesn’t matter to me who you are, if you do the crime, you do the time… should we allow a group of people, no matter how old they are, flaunt our laws, no matter how just they feel about their cause? it sets a bad precedent… their crime is not “victimless” either… we live in modern society… to have a modern society, we need laws to tell people what is and is not acceptable, and we, as a society, have determined that trespassing is NOT acceptable… if we start picking where and when certain laws are enforced, what kind of freedoms do we really have? modern civilization suffers if we selectively enforce these laws…
look, i’m not a fan of VY either, but it really grinds my gears to see people arrested time and again for the same crime, and not face any penalties… like i said, if a group of random joe’s were protesting any other business out there like this, i would be really surprised if there were no repercussions…
as far as what to do with them, maybe we could have them wear anklet GPS’s and have weekly check in’s with a probation officer? or, since they have so much free time on their hands, have them do community service at a food shelf, or shelter, or even litter picking on the side of the road…
Community Service
Protesting at the nuke IS community service!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I understand what you're
I understand what you’re saying. However, this particular group of citizens obviously expect to be arrested (since that happens every time they protest) and, having participated in many instances of peaceful civil disobedience in my life- I imagine they WANT to be arrested. Do you honestly think putting ankle gps devices or having them don orange vests and pick up trash or any other community service type activity -will stop them from doing what they (and many others) believe is their right to do? To expand on your comment about people picketing outside a Hannafords or any local business- if that business was -year after year- doing something or producing a product that was endangering the communities around them- yes…I would expect people to demonstrate against them. And to continue to demonstrate against them. Making our voices heard against those who endanger our lives is the responsible thing to do, in my opinion.
And as far as them having ” so much free time” – they are elderly citizens who,I imagine are probably retired (or at least some of them are) Of course they have free time. What a much better use of their free time than sitting at home watching reality tv.
Civil Disobedience
This is civil disobedience, and it’s not something that a free society, one with any notion of free speech anyway, should take steps to further criminalize. They should pay whatever price society determines is appropriate for trespassing, but any kind of “three strikes” law for protesting would certainly be a violation of, if not the letter of the First Amendment, at least the spirit of free political discourse under the Constitution.
Personally, I’d prefer to see the police stop responding to calls to intervene in such matters on the behalf of corporations.
If the grannies were violent or damaged property, it would be another matter.
Fuckin' old people, always
Fuckin’ old people, always practicing democracy! I’ll bet they care about privacy too!
One of the things about being older
One of the things about being older is that there is a lot of stuff stored in memory. For instance, I can easily remember a time when it simply wasn’t acceptable to use certain words in public. One didn’t use them in front of women or children either. I suppose that was sexist, and treated children as immature, but you know what? It made for a slightly nicer world.
I have to admit, I was all for the change which allowed what was considered “adult language” to be used with greater freedom and without social stigma. But the key word was “adult”. To be used by adults when speaking with adults. There was a certain shock value to such words once. Now their use is simply ordinary, cheap, degrading, and vulgar.
Friggin’ old people, using their friggin’ memories to take the fun out of everything.