For What It’s Worth

Greenwich Time has come up with the story about the man arrested to picking up campaign signs. He was exercising his free speech but two Greenwich police, fresh from saving our town from unbelted drivers, arrested him, handcuffed him and brought him to jail. This is a family friendly blog, but what a pair of assholes.

A 71-year-old former Marine fighter pilot said he was trying to clean an eyesore as he gathered about two dozen political signs on the Lake Avenue traffic circle Halloween morning.

But police called it theft, and slapped Timothy V. Conner in handcuffs and charged him with sixth-degree larceny.

Conner, who lives nearby at 6 Meadow Drive close to the traffic circle, said the signs irritated him and he decided to pluck them out of the ground and move them nearby.

“It has nothing to do with politics, it is an eyesore,” he said about the Republican and Democratic signs for today’s election. “It sure isn’t larceny.”

He said he cleans the area occasionally when he notices garbage. The political signs were no different for him.

“I wasn’t stealing them, I have no use for them,” he said. “I’m not a rebel and I wasn’t even trying to make a protest.”

He took a small wagon to collect the signs around 8 a.m. Saturday with the intention of dumping the signs in an area nearby. But a police officer who drove up had different take on the situation.

According to the police report Conner said: “This is my park and I’m taking the signs they have no right to be here.”

The report further stated that Conner was “agitated and uncooperative and kept yelling: ‘Are you going to arrest me,’ ” according to the report.

Conner disputed that and said he was surprised he was going to be arrested.

“They weren’t abusive or anything,” he said

about the two officers present at the scene. “It was just overboard. They didn’t have to handcuff me.”

 

But police officers have to ensure their safety and the safety of arrested individuals, spokesman Lt. Daniel Allen said.

“We have to take care of the people we arrest. If someone who wasn’t handcuffed were to away and get injured it would be our responsibility,” he said.

Conner said the officer acted professionally but couldn’t resist unleashing a zinger.

“He did everything by the book, I guess, if the book is called Dirty Harry,” he said referring to the Clint Eastwood police detective character.

Conner runs his own firm The Conner Group, specializing in crisis and media communications primarily for corporations, and realized the irony of his own predicament.

“I guess I am in crisis,” he said with a chuckle.

Conner had an up close and personal view of the new police headquarters that opened last Thursday as he waited for close to an hour to be processed for fingerprints and photographs.

“It was nice, it was clean, kind of spartan though,” he said. “Plus there was no breakfast or coffee or even a doughnut.”

He is scheduled to make his first court appearance Monday.

The two brave policemen who made this daring capture of a 71-year-old will no doubt be memorialized when Chief Ridberg passes out his “cop of the month award”. I hope we all remember them when union negotiations come around again and the pansies in blue start moaning about their dangerous jobs, arduous labor and paltry salaries of $100,000 per year. Bah humbug.