Two Pepper Sprayed Over Phone Call At Fla. Movie

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Pair Arrested At Theater

POSTED: 6:47 am EDT July 27, 2004
UPDATED: 6:50 am EDT July 27, 2004


ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- A college student who took a cell phone call from her mother in a movie theater was pepper sprayed by an officer and charged with disorderly conduct, along with her boyfriend.

Warronnica Harris, 23, was at the Muvico theater at BayWalk Saturday night, watching the opening credits to Catwoman when her cell phone rang.

"It was my mom calling me," Harris said. "It was a family emergency."

Harris said she spoke so quietly that her mother couldn't hear her. Then Officer John Douglas shone a flashlight in her eyes.

He asked Harris and her boyfriend, Terrell "KC" Tolson, 25, to leave. He pushed Harris in the hallway, then pepper sprayed both of them in the lobby, the couple said. Neither Harris nor Tolson has a criminal record.

Police denied their account, saying Harris refused to end her cell phone conversation, yelled at the Douglas and refused to leave the theater. Her boyfriend also refused to leave and threatened the officer, police said.

Witnesses said the pair did nothing wrong.

Marcia Gray, a 49-year-old Tampa accountant, was in the lobby when the couple were pepper sprayed.

"The man turned and asked the officer why he was making them leave and the cop just maced him in the face," Gray said. "They weren't yelling or touching him. The man bent over and the girl asked why he maced her boyfriend. Then the cop maced her, and she dropped her soda."

http://www.local6.com/news/3581522/detail.html



What the hell is going on in this country???????? :cuss:
 
If a cop tried to unjustly pepper spray me he or she is gunna have some trouble... :fire: :uhoh:

I could see anyone asking her to step out of the movie, but to pepper spray her that blatantly? Either we arent hearing everything or he needs to be thrown off the police unit. And a witness said what the "victims" also claim. :confused: :scrutiny:
 
What the hell is going on in this country????????
Click to expand...

People have lost the capacity for critical thinking and ergo, they beleive everything the press writes as long as it fits their own personal weltanshauung

WildyouaskedAlaska
 
This reminds me of the cop, shown on a cop show, believing that a cashier at a Wendy's had short changed him tried to arrest her and maced her when she tried to call her mother. She didn't short change him and was awarded 60k in damages. Sherriff John Bunnell still would not admit that the officer was wrong

Some have not seen the "I'm better than you" attitude that nore and more cops are assuming but it is there and getting more frequent.
 
Wow.

This is awesome. If only more people were empowered to pepperspray jack-jawing morons in movie theaters.


But then again, I despise rudeness in a movie theater.


</But I also happen to think that they should invent candy packaging that doesn't make that annoying "CRINKLE" sound too.>
 
And the point behind the posting of this article is........??????

THR has become a national clearing board for anything involving LEOs??
 
And the point behind the posting of this article is........??????

THR has become a national clearing board for anything involving LEOs??
Click to expand...

This is the legal & political forum. You're certainly entitled to post your comments as I am. :rolleyes:
 
</But I also happen to think that they should invent candy packaging that doesn't make that annoying "CRINKLE" sound too.>
Click to expand...

I happen to like that sound and thinks it goes great in a movie theatre. Just like the sound of popcorn being moved around and sodas being slurped.

There have been times I've nearly done violence to an idiot talker. But these situations took a lot longer to develop than what this sounds like.
 
Sounds like two black folks too. There's gonna be some fireworks if the officer was white.

On another note. The world doesn't stop just cuz you have a personal emergency. The appropriate thing to do was to put the phone on silent, walk out of the theatre or atleast to the aisle on one side of the room and then take your darn phone call. Or dial the number back since apparently the phone had caller ID if she knew it was her mom. Pompous moron.
 
On another note. The world doesn't stop just cuz you have a personal emergency. The appropriate thing to do was to put the phone on silent, walk out of the theatre or atleast to the aisle on one side of the room and then take your darn phone call. Or dial the number back since apparently the phone had caller ID if she knew it was her mom. Pompous moron
Click to expand...

I agree completely. BUT does it justify getting pepper sprayed by an LEO?
In addition she was already in the lobby when she got the spray.

I know we dont have all the info, but the fact witness say she didnt do anything wrong doesnt look good for the LEO
 
Warronnica Harris, 23, was at the Muvico theater at BayWalk Saturday night, watching the opening credits to Catwoman when her cell phone rang.
Click to expand...

The real question is, would the officer have been justified in macing the director of "Catwoman"?
 
I have largely quit going to movie theaters precisely because of idiots with cell phones.


In the past, I have fought urges to snatch the cell phone away from an idiot and beat him to death with it.


Good Lord, I would personally love to pepper spray some moron who had a phone ring in a movie that I shelled out $7 to see.

Only, I would first gag them so their screams of pain wouldn't further annoy me as I tried to watch the movie.

If you have a personal situation so serious that you need to always carry a phone with you, then you have a personal situation you should be somewhere attending to, not at a movie.

hillbilly
 
"If you have a personal situation so serious that you need to always carry a phone with you, then you have a personal situation you should be somewhere attending to, not at a movie."

So I we hire a sitter to stay home with our daughter I should not take my cell phone with me?
 
Oh yeah....here's a follow-up article on the "innocent" pair who did "nothing" to justify being maced by that evil, arrogant cop.



http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/28/Southpinellas/Police__Belligerence_.shtml



Police: Belligerence led to couple's arrest


An off-duty officer's version of the cell phone incident in a movie theater differs from that of the pair.
By TOM ZUCCO, Times Staff Writer
Published July 28, 2004
------------------------------------------------------------------------


ST. PETERSBURG - The couple arrested Saturday at the Muvico theater at BayWalk repeatedly refused to end a cell phone call, used profanity toward an off-duty police officer and physically threatened him, St. Petersburg police say.

A police report released Tuesday sharply contradicts the accounts of Warronnica Harris and Terrell "KC" Tolson, as well as two witnesses, who claim Officer John Douglas acted without provocation when he used pepper spray to subdue the couple in the hallway of the theater.

Harris and Tolson were later charged with disorderly conduct.

The report, written by Douglas, says he was working off-duty in the BayWalk plaza when an unidentified woman complained about someone using a laser pointer in the theater.

Douglas, 41, entered the theater, saw people talking on cell phones and asked them to turn them off. Among the people he saw was Harris.

"She (Harris) said she could talk as much as she wanted on her phone," the report said. Douglas again asked Harris to stop, and again she refused.

Douglas told Harris to leave and that he would get their money back.

The couple got up, but Tolson "started to yell at the audience," the report reads. "He (Tolson) also started to yell at me. ... He stated ... I needed to keep my hands off him. That he would not go to jail because he would beat my a--."

As Douglas was escorting the couple into the hallway, Harris and Tolson "were yelling the entire time. (Tolson) kept escalating the situation."

When Tolson came at Douglas with a clenched fist, the officer wrote, he used his pepper spray. "Then (Harris) said she was going to "hit this cracker upside his head', and she swung her drink at my head."

Douglas said he then used his pepper spray on Harris.

Ray Weil, named as a witness in the report, was working as an usher in the theater that night. He entered the hallway just as Douglas, Harris and Tolson were walking by.

"As the cop was trying to get the guy to calm down," Weil, 20, told the Times, "the woman hit the officer in the back of the head with the soda. Then he (Douglas) maced her."

Two women, including one who knew Tolson, said Monday they agreed with the story presented by Harris and Tolson.

Harris and Tolson, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday, said Monday that Harris' cell phone conversation ended before Douglas arrived, that Douglas pushed Harris, and that they made no threatening remarks to Douglas before he used pepper spray.

Harris, 23, has no adult criminal record.

But Tolson, 25, was convicted of petty theft and resisting arrest in Hillsborough County in 1999, both misdemeanors.

He also has a juvenile record that includes convictions for assault on a school employee in 1996, and grand theft and battery on a law enforcement officer in 1995.

Douglas, a 14-year veteran of the police department, has no formal disciplinary actions in his personnel file.

Douglas declined comment Tuesday.

Police spokesman Bill Proffitt, who could not be reached for comment on Monday, said Tuesday that the matter now rests with the State Attorney's Office.

"We (the Police Department) were halfway expecting a complaint to be made. And there is potential a complaint may be made. But no complaint has been made."
 
ID_Shooting...

Are you saying that you absolutely cannot leave the cell phone in the car for the two hours or so that a movie lasts, and that you absolutely have to be constantly cell-phone tethered at all moments, including the two hours that a movie lasts?

You know, people were hiring sitters and going to the movies for a long time before cell phones ever showed up.

And most of us who were children in the pre-cell phone era seem to have survived it somehow.

I don't know anything about you or your family.

If your daughter has some sort of medical condition (which I hope she doesn't) that makes it dangerous for you to leave the house even long enough to enjoy a movie, then I'd say yes, you probably need to be with your daughter and not at a movie.

But if your daughter is otherwise healthy (which I hope she is) then I would wonder why you must be cell-phone tethered at all times, including the two hours or so it takes to watch a movie.

What if some sort of "emergency" happens at home anyway?

If it's truly serious enough to require you to actually flee from the theater, you will probably arrive at home slightly behind the ambulance and the fire truck and the SWAT team and the FBI HRT guys and the local news trucks and CNN, and everyone else. You won't be allowed on the scene by the pros until after the situation is over.

Maybe I'm just a heartless bastard, but no, I see no reason why any customer legitimately needs to take a cell phone into a movie theater.

If you can't be untethered for just two hours, your life is too busy and you have more important things to attend to than merely watching a movie.

Again, I think if you really, truly, legitimately "need" to be cell-phone tethered to someone else even for a two-hour movie, then that person is in such bad shape that you probably need to be with him or her and not at the movies.

hillbilly
 
Sounds like a good spray to me. :D

Once again, we see that the media in the orifinal story quote the one witness they could find that has a version of "did nothing wrong" that is not quite the same as what my definition would be.
 
Hillbilly, if people would just get cell phones with vibrate functions and leave the theater when they get a call, it wouldn't even be an issue if they had them in the theater.

Heck, I was on call this weekend and went to the movies. However, I am a courteous patron and kept my pager on vibrate so as not to disturb anyone else if I got paged (a shame that could not be said of the senior-citizen couple behind me who insisted on maintaining a steady conversation for the duration of the film, finally forcing me to move before I made unkind comments to my elders).
 
"When Tolson came at Douglas with a clenched fist, the officer wrote, he used his pepper spray. "Then (Harris) said she was going to "hit this cracker upside his head', and she swung her drink at my head.""

Sounds like a "hate crime" to me.

In the immortal words of Steve McGarrett, "Spray 'em, Dano.".
 
ID_shooting...

"So I we hire a sitter to stay home with our daughter I should not take my cell phone with me?"

You can take your cellphone anywhere you like. But you should have the decency, smarts, and common courtesy NOT to bother everyone else in the world with your personal life.

That's the editorial you, not the personal you.

That's about as calmly as I can say it.
 
Hmmmm......
Who to believe.
A couple in a theater talking on a cell phone, One with priors?
Or the off duty with little or no complaints in 14 years?

The one time I had to take a cell call during a movie (was on call network tech) I immediatly took it out of the theater. NOT to avoid disrupting the other viewers, but just to be able to hear the person calling.
Movies are so loud these days, no wonder these inconsiderate idiots have to yell at thier phones. (doesn't make it right, tho')
 
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