Tales Of The Happy Valley “Gestapo”

March 30, 2014


Residents of Utah’s Provo-Orem Metropolitan Area live in a valley blessed with breathtaking mountain vistas and a dynamic local economy. Unfortunately, one of the major local industries involves manufacturing “crimes” out of trivial incidents, and processing harmless people through the criminal “justice” system.

Several weeks ago, a diminutive 48-year old woman named Ginger Anderson, who is a student and employee of Utah Valley University in Orem, was assaulted and abducted by campus pseudo-cops for the supposed offense of fixing incorrect instructions on a campus sign. Although this was described as “criminal mischief,” it was actually within her job description: as an employee of UVU’s information center, she is assigned to direct students to their classes.

A wall map inside the school’s Browning building was being displayed upside down, resulting in delays, confusion, and other avoidable problems for the students and their teachers. Ginger pointed this out to a fellow employee, who used a magic marker to make appropriate changes to the map, as did Anderson herself shortly thereafter.

This wasn’t vandalism; it was an act of customer service by a university employee. However, a complaint was made, and a brace of predictably self-important campus officers – each of whom was roughly twice the small woman’s weight — were dispatched to ambush the woman outside a classroom. Ignoring her entirely reasonable explanations, the officers demanded that she accompany them to sign a citation at the campus police office. Assuming that this was a matter warranting police attention (which it clearly was not), it could have been handled by quietly issuing a citation outside the classroom. But this would have denied the officers the opportunity to make an intimidated woman do a humiliating “perp walk,” and deprived them of a chance to invent another “offense.”

When Ginger quite properly refused to participate in the officers’ juvenile charade, she was thrown to the ground, slammed against a wall, shackled, and then left handcuffed for hours in their office and denied access to the bathroom. Now, in addition to being battered, traumatized, and humiliated, Anderson faces prosecution for “resisting arrest,” an act of self-defense against criminal aggression that is unaccountably treated as if it were a crime of some kind.

Because Ginger Anderson had the temerity to speak out in defense of her individual rights and personal reputation, she has been hit with a gag order by the presiding judge, an official of the Orem City Justice Court. Those who fill that august position body are appointed from a pool of applicants by a six-member panel. While it’s true that academic credentials are overrated in practical terms, it’s worth pointing out that the selection criteria for appointment to the Orem Justice Court are less rigorous than the admissions standards for DeVry University. No law degree or legal experience is necessary to serve as a Justice Court judge; in fact, any city resident with a GED and an advocate on the municipal panel would qualify.


 Published on Mar 15, 2014
When Ginger Anderson, a Utah Valley University employee and student, made a small change to an incorrect wall map inside of one the school's buildings, she had no idea it would result in her being manhandled and arrested by police officers.
The 48-year-old, who works in the information center at the university, says she marked on the map with a marker because students were having trouble getting to classes. In fact, it was literally depicted upside down. She claims she corrected the map's compass, and wrote in marker that the map was upside down.

That was in January.

Two days later, two officers with the UVU police department confronted Anderson and informed her that she would be issued a citation for "criminal mischief." What happened next was caught on one of the officer's lapel cameras.

KUTV

When Anderson refused to immediately comply with the officers' demands to come to the police station, one of the cops grabbed her, pushed her against the wall and took her to the ground.

Police say Anderson resisted while the UVU student and employee claims the officers used excessive force. Anderson also claims officers tried to handcuff her hands behind her back while she was wearing a large backpack, making that task difficult.

"Let me take my backpack off!" the woman can be heard shouting in the video.

An independent review found that Anderson did indeed resist — both passively and actively — and therefore officers did not break any laws or act inappropriately, KUTV reports.

Anderson says she's more shocked that the police department decided to take such extreme action over a marking on a map that was intended to help students.

Watch the uncut video of the arrest below:



The arrest has sparked a contentious debate in KUTV's comments section, some siding with Anderson and others siding with the officers.

"This woman is what is wrong with people today," one user wrote. "She feels so entitled that she is above the Law!"

"Bending a 48 year old women's arm with her backpack on is an absolute assault. she was wiling to cooperate yet these officers clearly shown brutality," another user argued.

Others had no problem with officers issuing Anderson a citation, but wondered why a simple citation required her to come to the police station or face arrest.

"If they were sent there to give her a citation, why didn't they bring it with them? There was no need for her to go to the police station to receive her citation," a user commented.

"I'm not sure I want my children going to a school where they make such a big thing out of nothing," another wrote.
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Orem, a city of roughly 90,000 people, consistently ranks among the top twenty “safest cities” in the United States – meaning that residents and visitors are safe as long as they don’t come to the attention of the city’s over-sized and extravagantly well-funded police department. Despite a near-absence of violent crime in Orem, the docket of the “Justice Court is always full.

That court, like most others of its kind, is a profit center. Its chief business partner is a young and pathologically ambitious assistant city prosecutor named Jake Summers, who receives $104,054 a year in compensation from Orem’s tax victims to feed hapless and generally harmless people into the prison and probation system. Utah County’s sole public defender is Grant Nagamatsu, whose relationship to Summers is akin to that of the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters.

Tales Of The Happy Valley “Gestapo” [continued]

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