70-Year-Old Pleads Not Guilty in Orem Brown Lawn Incident

By Christian Probasco, 9-24-07

Betty Perry, the 70-year-old woman who was bloodied in a scuffle with an Orem, Utah police officer and then handcuffed and imprisoned, plead not guilty to “having a bad lawn and resisting arrest,” according to a September 18th story by the Associated Press.  Said her high profile California lawyer, Gloria Allred, “I ask the citizens of Orem: How many of you would like to have your great-grandmother taken from her home with bruises and blood and placed in handcuffs for failing to water her lawn?”

Not to mention being held in jail until somebody in authority noticed her there and ordered her released.  Apparently, Perry had requested that her water be turned off nine months before the July 6th incident.  According to an article by Sara Israelsen in the Deseret Morning News, an Officer James Flygare appeared at her door to issue a citation for her brown lawn.  She refused to provide her name so he could write her a ticket, and tried to return to her house to call her son, at which point the officer “firmly grabbed her” and “(threw) her to the ground.”

According to Flygare, he “gently grasped her wrist to try to ‘comfort her and defuse the situation.’”

Mayor Jerry Washburn and the City Council apologized to Perry after her release but city attorney Paul Johnson refused to drop the charges against her.  Casting about for a lawyer to represent her, Perry came up with Gloria Allred, who represented Amber Frey in the Scott Peterson case.

Flygare, meanwhile, was “counseled” that there were “other ways” the situation might have been handled.  An investigation by the Utah Department of Public Safety, however, determined that he had done nothing illegal, concluding that his actions were necessary to “gain physical control of Ms. Perry and to prevent escalation of the incident.” Further, it noted, “Ms. Perry’s non-cooperation was the single most aggravating factor in the escalation of this incident.” Officer Flygare has since been returned to active duty as a “Neighborhood Preservation Officer.”