Candy bar on the metro

[javasaurus]

The news has been spouting that a woman was detained for 3 hours for eating a candy bar on the metro. Sheesh! talk about bad reporting!

Reading WTOP's article about the incident, the woman was eating the candy bar while entering the station, and a metro cop told her to finish the bar before entering. She plopped it into her mouth and put the wrapper into a trash can. That would have been the end of it. But she felt the need to tell the cop to "go and take care of some real crime" -- WTH? No wonder she was detained. You don't mouth off to a cop who is doing their job, unless you're looking for trouble. Yet WTOP is making her out to be the victim here.

Comments

yeah

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

The Post story goes into a little more detail, but still only brushes past the mouthing off to the cop with the lightweight line, "Moments after making a remark to the officer, Willett said, she was searched, handcuffed and arrested for chewing the last bite of her candy bar after she passed through the fare gates." -- in other words, it really is written to paint the cop, AND the law itself, in a bad light.

If her comments (which probably won't come out unless there's a specific trial, which there probably won't be) were abusive or obscene, there's a little more balance to it, and it would repaint the situation as emotional escalation that got out of hand (on BOTH sides) rather than abuse of the law over a nitpick of negligable details.

Re: yeah

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

Didn't hear about the search initially. But more recent details certainly paint the woman in a less favorable light. Apparently she was warned repeatedly about the food, and walked away when the cop tried to give her a ticket.

As for the searching, the police dept. indicated that it's standard procedure to search anyone taken into custody regardless of the offence.