Did you (Otto) or did you not complain when I compared removing the piss sprayer to taking out the trash? If you were not defending him, then you were merely attacking me — that is to say, you were hijacking the thread for no reason other than to lob a rhetorical grenade at me. If you were defending him, then you are his advocate.
I worked for many years in a high-end retail neighborhood of Chicago: eight years in a pet shop, 6 years in two branches of the same bookstore. Especially in the bookstore, stinky “browsers” were a constant problem. A problem that I had to deal with every day.
And what is all this crap about him grabbing the cop. That’s not why he was arrested. He was arrested for obstructing a government observation. That would be grabbing the vagrant & attempting to eject him from the building. Grabbing the cop would be assaulting a police officer.
Arguing this point is not relavant. It’s beating a horse that never lived.
This reminds me of several years ago, when a bum/er, homeless person was grossing out the patrons of the Morristown NJ, public library! This guy smelled so bad that people got sick…so he was barred from the library. He sued, and was awarded $250,000!
I’ve often wonderd what he did with the money…that kind of cash will buy you a LOT of Ripple or MD20-20!
[QUOTE=Lissa]
That’s just assinine. I am literally astounded that someone would equate spilling a cup of coffee with pissing on the floor of a food and beverage establishment. Please justify this belief.
He is within his rights in escorting a vandal from his premises, cop or no cop.
You were taught wrong, at least as far as the law goes.
I suspect the owner was thinking some bad shit had already happened. Why let it go on?
I agree.
Actually, assinine again to assert that after all he had been through his next move would be to attack a cop. I see no more reason to assume that than to assume that all cops are assholes.
Learn the difference between defending someone’s personhood and defending that person’s actions, you dumbass.
Look closer - the cops were talking to the owner. That sentence seems to be tripping up a few people.
The story states that the vagrant was attempting to sit down next to the police officer who was discussing the issue. He was not trying to get away with something unnoticed, he was joining the dialog. While he could have been there just to give his side of the story, I can imagine that he did it just to aggravate the owner (which it did).
A reporter is telling the story from the shop owners point of view. The owner is the principal source for the information. The whole story is spun to generate righteous indignation at the outrageous idea that a man is arrested for trying to protect his place of business. It was meant to spawn threads with titles such as “the inmates have overtaken the asylum”. Really, I believe that the “reporter” was trying to make a piece for Reader’s Digest’s “Anecdotes that America is going to hell-in-a-handbasket” or whatever they call it.
He did get physical with the police–he even says so. His excuse was that he stumbled and fell. There is no indication that he attacked a cop in order to do harm, but there is an indication that he was agitated enough to get physical with officers in the pursuit of his goal. While the cops were there he attempted to physically remove the vagrant. They tried to stop him. Coincidentally at that very same moment, he stumbled and had to grab a cop who was in his way. Possible? Certainly. Probable? Not likely.
Okay, you’re being cynical. I can accept that given that the article probably isn’t a first-hand account.
trandallt is doing an admirable job of arguing the rest of your post so I’ll step aside.
Apparently, though these two were.
It’s possible but there is no indication that he was trying to give his side.
I’m hoping this story will turn up somewhere with a more impartial slant.
[QUOTE=JKilez]
Most of the article is background information that is not in dispute. Pertaining to the incident in question, the owner gave his side and the police gave theirs. How can you possibly know that the “intent was to spawn threads with titles such as…” If you cannot justify this then I suggest you are talking out of your ass.
Please show me where he says he “got physical” with the cop, or stop making that claim. And why is it unlikely that as he attempted to remove the pisser and the cops “got in the way” that physical contact would result? And more likely that he was trying to interfere with the cop than that he would stumble as a result of that contact?
I will ask you again to address the issue of the pisser being asked to leave three times while the cops did nothing. Why are you ignoring this?
I’m talking about physical damage to the store and its furnishings.
I understand that there was damage done in that the customers were grossed out-- but that had already happened when the guy pissed himself.
Actually, as a customer, I might not have noticed a guy with wet pants if I’m sipping my coffee and reading a paper, but I sure as hell am going to notice a brawl. The owner himself made the situation worse by making a huge scene. I might shrug off seeing a man in my favorite coffee shop with wet pants since nuts are everywhere, but I probably wouldn’t return to an establishment where I had witnessed a scuffle and arrest involving use of force.
Perhaps, but when the cops intervened, probably saying something like “Whoa! Let him go!” the man should have backed off. To do otherwise was disobedience to authority-- pretty much the same thing the homeless man did.
Yes, but what is legally right doesn’t always matter when it comes to a civil suit-- which is probably one of the reasons we were taught to let the police handle it. What if the homeless man sues, claiming he was injured by excessive force? He may not win, but the court costs and lawyer fees might potentially harm his business even more than the cost of cleaning up a puddle of piss.
More importantly, why make it worse? He became physical with the homeless man, and then the police, resulting in him being slammed into a counter and handcuffed in front of God and everybody. As I said, if I was just minding my own business, I probably wouldn’t noticed a man’s wet pants. The owner, however, made sure everyone noticed.
If it was just a harmless trip, why feel the need to explain his actions? Why even mention that incident at all?
I imagine that the owner was probably getting very agitated and frustrated as he waited. The homeless man re-entering his resturant probably further angered him, and when the cops didn’t do anything when he sat, the owner probably lost his temper. He most likely grabbed the cop as he was lunging for the homeless man again after they had been seperated. Hell, the homeless man may have been taunting him-- who knows? The story doesn’t give enough information, and it’s certainly not objective.
Do not confuse a newspaper column with news. There was no attempt to be fair and balanced here, nor was that the intent. The writer implied that he had a previous relationship with the store owner and was providing a forum for his voice to be heard. The police did not describe what occured, the Chief simply gave a terse response defending the charge and noting that the owner was arrested for taking the matters into his own hands after the officers were there.
As other posters have stated, it would interesting to hear an account of events from the officers present. The story as it stands is blatantly one-sided. This is not an issue as it does not represent itself as news, but readers should be cognizant of the bias.
From the story is states: “[the owner] grabbed the officer in front of him”. I would say that is being physical. Since it goes on to state “At that point, DuCharme says, he became the focus of the officers in his store,” it would appear that the grabbing was aggressive enough to alarm the cops and not just a minor nudge.
What response do you want? The police has been there previously that day and had routed the vagrants as requested–why would they ignore a request at this point? Just because the cops do not immediately back up the fiat of a belligerent shop owner does not mean that they are going to do nothing. His issue was that they were not acting quick enough.
[QUOTE=Lissa]
Pissing on the floor of a resataurant is a violation of health codes as well as a public nuisance. A urine soaked floor is nasty, while a coffee soaked floor is unfortunate but understandeable. To quibble about which of these causes more “physical damage” is to be disingenuous to the extreme.
Don’t be absurd. When did someone pissing on a floor become “a guy with wet pants”? A 10k runner is a guy with wet pants. Someone coming in from the rain is a guy with wet pants. This has absolutely nothing to do with “a guy with wet pants.” This is about an idiot wet brain jerkoff deliberately fouling someone else’s nest.
.I’m laughing as I write this. This fuckwad pisses on the floor and it’s the owner’s fault? Did you read the part of the story where the owner used to give the beggars coffee and bagels? His kindness is repaid with disgusting behaviour and he’s the bad guy. Give me a break.
OK now you are just making shit up. You have absolutely no basis for this assertion.
It is fair to assume that a homeless man lacks sufficient funds to retain a lawyer, so he would have to find one willing to take his case on a contingency basis. Since the police slammed the owner against his counter within seconds of his attempt to escort said homeless man from the premises, and subsequently charged the homeless man with trespassing and being a public nuisance, I think this “what if” has about as much efficacy as a fart in a tornado.
I’m getting a little tired of the phrase “becoming physical.” As a descrition it fits literally millions? billions? of possibilities, many of them quite pleaasant. How about carving a little finer point on it for me.
Because it is the event that immediately preceded his getting smashed into his computer bar and handcuffed. Do you really not see this?
(Bolding mine) If you grant me that many probably’s and I imagines and who noses and such I wager I could make the case that Charles de Gaulle wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays, but it would certainly not be objective.
The question here is whether the owner’s use of force was justified. His property was not permenantly damaged by being soaked in urine.
It’s not as if the lights flash and sirens go off when someone pisses themselves. Unless someone yelled, “Oh, God, he’s pissing!” how would I know? I’d be reading my paper and sippin’ my cuppa joe, not monitoring all of the crotches in my vicinity for wet spots.
Sure, maybe he did it intentionally, but I doubt if he did it in his right mind. Pissing one’s pants is not something a “normal” person will do. Studies have shown that our taboo is incredibly strong on this subject. There have been a lot of experiments in this area in which reveal an icredibly strong sense of social shame-- moreso than other embarassing acts. (Such as picking the nose.)
This man obviously has serious mental health problems, and needs help. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely he’ll get it.
No. It’s the owner’s fault for forcefully grabbing the man (and a cop). He had no legitimate reason to do so, especially after the cops apparently tried to stop him.
This was an incredibly kind thing to do. I think he was very nice for doing so. However, just because someone used to do something nice, it doesn’t excuse current bad behavior.
What can I say? It’s a shitty world.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to think that the cops would have said something like that. “Hey! Dude, let him go!” or “Stop that!” or even “Hey, hands off!” would have been a perfectly natural statement for the officers to make. Do you think they just got up silently and jumped into the fray to resuce the homeless man?
The statement in the article “[The cops] got in the way”, (which is an incredibly stupid thing to say) indicates that the officers tried to pull the two apart, or at least tried to stop the owner from pulling the homeless man to the door. Either way, the instant the cops indicated that they wanted him to stop, any further action on the part of the owner constitutes an act which is disobedient to the authorities.
Ergo, I imagine that the cops probably vocalized, then attempted to physically seperate the two men. At this point, the owner grabbed the cop. He claims it was accidental. I think that’s untrue. I’ve read way too many witness statements for his version of events to ring true.
There’s always a kid fresh out of lawschool waiting to make a name for himeslf. Finding a lawyer might not be as hard as you might think.
Indicating fault on the part of the owner, a lawyer could argue argue. I can almost hear it: “His acts were so eggrigious that the cops instantly arrested him! He was so violent and out of control that the police had to wrestle him down to the counter to restrain him!!!”
I’m not saying it would be right. I’m just saying it could possibly happen.
The trespassing charge may not affect that: (at least in Kansas, anyway 
)
Morris v. Atchison, T. & S.F. R.R., 198 Kan. 147, 422 P.2d 920 (1967).
Jones v. Hansen, 254 Kan. 499, 867 P.2d 303 (1994).
It looks like once you’ve discovered the trespasser, if he gets hurt (or you hurt him) afterwards, your goose is cooked.
Okay, how about “forcibly grabbing”?
I see it fine. I just thought fromt he question that maybe others didn’t see it this way. He grabbed an officer, the officer reacted (properly) by restraining the person who grabbed him, and then cuffed him and put him in the cruiser. The DA or the cop decided not to press charges-- not unreasonable, because the cop was not hurt. Shoving the guy down and arresting him was perhaps punishment enough for this particular act.
They did decide to charge him with obstructing a government observation, which is one of those charges which generally indicates that your conduct was disruptive and obnoxious and that you were a pain in the ass to the cops.
Amusing. Had I made definite statments, you would have pounced on me for making assertions I could not have backed up.
None of us will ever know for certain what happened, because we’ll have at least four versions of the story out there. And I imagine that they differ wildly. I just think that this particular version smells mighty fishy, and from the experience I’ve had with reading witness statements, it sounds like the guy isn’t being entirely truthful.
According to the article the owner was cited with the oblique “obstructing government operations” charge. Just to add a nugget of knowledge, here is the definition from the Columbia Code of Ordinances:
His troubles were due to his conflict with the police officers who he called in to take care of the situation, not his desire or efforts to remove the vagrant from his premises.
I am going to notice someone in the establishment who reeks of piss, who has just pissed on the floor, and who is currently trying to infest a chair with piss, and you know what? I’d never go back to that coffee shop again.
I’d much rather see that the owner has respect for the cleanliness of his establishment and his paying customers enough to escort out someone who is pissing on the floor.
When the cops are wrong, you have to do shit yourself.
So next time he wo’t call the cops, he’ll just throw the pissing bum out.
Or, he can just control his anger and let them do their job like they have done on previous occasions.
By leaving the bum in his establishment to piss all over the place?