Well Now Isn’t This Special
Seems as if the town of Clover, SC, wants to keep its streets and yards tidy and clean. No real problem with that, I suppose.
Even if it means a 79-year old Korean War vet living on a fixed income has to go to jail.
I wish I was kidding. But I’m not.
His original crime? Apparently it was not cleaning up his yard to the satisfaction of the town code enforcement officer. No one else complained.
So what if he collects items in order to supplement his income so he can pay for medicine for his disabled wife? After all, he did violate the law – at least in the eyes of one local bureaucrat. And he did fail to pay the $500 fine he was later assessed for not cleaning up his yard.
He started serving 30 days in jail, on weekends, yesterday evening.
Two millenia ago Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote: “I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog.” If I didn’t know better perhaps I’d wonder when Cicero visited Clover and met their code enforcement officer, or the town judge.
Or maybe both.
Contact information for Clover’s mayor and town council can be found at this link.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit, Legal
If this isn’t evil, it’s pretty damn close.
This is BS.
That compliance officer should have approached it a different way.
Already sent an email to the mayor.
Yeah, Imma gonna send an email too. I tried calling the number but all I got was a busy signal.
I’m not gonna say anything uncivil, just point out how he and his town look like assholes now that this story has gone viral.
I hope the lot of them end up tap dancing before the MSM, on camera, with mics shoved in their faces for comments.
Just another example of one of our elderly being dropped into a bureaucratic shredder. Instead of helping him, they did the easier thing: they fined/sued/imprisoned him. Nice.
Code enforcement officer was the BTK killer’s job.
Ramsey, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, once was convicted of burning a cross on the front lawn of the former police chief in York. He served time in prison before the conviction was overturned on appeal.
He has since maintained he took the fall for two other guys.
Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/10/04/4315205/clover-korean-war-vet-gets-30.html#storylink=cpy
I’ve shared this on my FB wall. I figure the wider the audience, the greater the embarrassment for these nitwits.
The South Carolina morons are the type that give rednecks a bad name.
@7
WTF does that have to do with anything? Character assassination? Trying to deflect the story from Barney Fife onto the real victim here?
What the man did in the past is done and over with, as he paid his debt to society and it seems like he’s trying to get on with his life and do right by his wife.
I emailed..we’ll see..;)
This kind of puts the exclamation point on a couple of things…
Rich people go free, poor people go to jail.
You can find 6-12 idiots for a jury who can be convinced of anything.
Small town officials acting like 4ssholes are apparently not unique to western Massachusetts….
True, SkrtSkwrl. And also irrelevant to the point of the article. Klan members weren’t exactly unknown in the South in the 1950s and 1960s. And Ramsey was 20 in 1953.
A little common sense from small-town bureaucrats isn’t all that much to ask when they’re dealing with their neighbors. The fact that the Ramsey is no saint doesn’t excuse the idiocy.
If anything, it sounds to me like maybe someone had an axe to grind.
Posting and reposting this.
@7 I notice you left out the blurb where he speaks highly of his Mexican neighbors and even flies a Mexican flag for them. But that would ruin your narrative, now wouldn’t it?
@14 He also forgot the part about the conviction being overturned on appeal ….why bother with all the facts when you only need some of them…welcome to the new age of “fact check” journalism…brought you by the liberal media….the bastions of plagiarism and favoritism…
Hell, I have neighbors running a scrap metal business out of their yard and cant get anything done about the gallons of oil they spill on the streets and the cars that they are ripping the VIN plates out of right in front of their house and Clover wants to complain about what this mans got in his yard. Sounds like a bored code official who needs to become a lot more bored via being unemployed. I dont see a huge issue with the pics I saw, seems a lot neater than a hell of a lot of places Ive seen.
Has anyone checked to see where #7 tracks back to? Not that I would ever suspect it might go back to a certain municipal government or someone connected with them…
@ #7: Creative editing much? Please post the next two paragraphs, or GTFO. Better yet, just delete your post and GTFO.
Laughing Wolf: no, he’s posting from NYC. He’s been here at least once before – under a different screen name – and seemed to me a bit fixated on racial issues then, too.
Email sent, call placed, mad as hell…
Told the stupid fucking mayor to call me if he has the balls.
Thanks to TAH for the information about these idiots…
Thunder
Hey Guys, I’m just quoting the article. I agree that this is overkill sending an 80 dude (veteran or not) to jail. That being said, it sounds like this guy is a hoarder and probablly an eyesore (and property value killer) — certainly neither which warrant prison. However, I doubt very much that this is just a case of a guy with a few garden gnomes and unkept lawn. Hoarding is a real mental illness, and if you’ve ever met anyone who does it, their homes are not just a bit dirty or
Somebody should call that 1-800-got-junk guy, he often volunteers to clean up in cases like this.
JMHO.
I can’t remember what used to piss me off before I met you guys
SkrtSkwrl: did you bother to look at the photo in both linked articles? That shows his front yard. It’s not exactly an eyesore. And per the first article, no one complained about his yard – except for the code enforcement officer.
The guy’s no saint, but IMO common sense says this is just a self-important local bureaucrat or two pissed off because the old guy won’t do what they want fast enough – so they’re out to hammer him. They might have a point if what he was doing was causing a hazard or bothering anyone but them. But it’s not, and he’s not. And that means IMO the they way they’re handling this absolutely stinks.
They’re in a position where they can hurt people by being idiots. Thanks to Jonn, I’m in a position to point out their idiocy.
Jabatam: glad we could be of service. (smile)
@22
I know the answer for me is…everything.
Are you friggin’ kiddin’ me?
Who is launching what and when?
I can’t much from here and now!
Holy crap that sounded like poetry.
Thank you Code Enforcement Officer Joe Funderburk, you steaming pile of crap. What a decent fellow would have done if had Javert’s sense of duty to the law is jump in the nearest freakin’ river. And if you couldn’t bring yourself not to cite this Veteran, you should have at least returned on your own time and helped him out. Funderburk.Perfect.
Yes. I looked at the picture.
Again, I doubt very much that this is a case of just an unkept lawn. Hell he even admitted that he had “junk” on his land. I’m not saying that he deserves to be put in jail, I just want to clarify that a) this isn’t just a wanton act that could befall any of us and b) he has a prison record, and probablly more then a bit of disdain for the law (it seems that the judge gave him time to clean up — which he didn’t).
If he were my neighbor and he was storing bricks, washing machines, broken windows and lord knows what other kind of junk next to me — I wouldn’ t be too thrilled either.
In closing, however, I think this guy deserves help and not jail. The jail part is the unfortunate part.
@ 27 my sense is that the amount of stuff on his property probablly took decades to accumulate, and probably isn’t easily removed. If somebody wants to dig into the court records and see what was actually claimed, I’d be curious as to how much junk he had. He sounds like a sad case, and at a minimum, somebody who has slipped through the cracks.
Hey if there is a fund to donate a few bucks to help him hire professionals to help clean up, I’m all for donating.
Not positive, but if Ramsey has an Honorable discharge and actually served during the Korean War as stated in these stories, then he just might qualify for a VA pension based on age and limited income.
http://www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/pension/vetpen.htm#3
Perhaps someone could put Ramsey in touch with a local VSO and/or a federal/state/local VA rep? That might obviate the need for him to run a home-based “scavenging” business in order to make ends meet.
Yes, I see your point SkrtSkwl. My question is, in view of that point, how do you wear a hat, or don’t you?
Damn, 2-17 AirCav – why’d you have to point out that I missed a perfect title to this article? I should have called it “Bless Their Pointy Little Heads”!
I left my comment on the news website. Glad old funderbutt is on the job. How could this country function without funderbutts being so anal about yards? I mean the guy was trying to pay for his wife’s meds so obviously some kind of criminal activity was going on. It all balances out – for the pointy headed idiots.
Jeez. Can we get a giant Bullshit poster sent to the mayor?
No, your title worked just fine. Now you have a subtitle for the inevitable update, Hondo.
I wonder if there isn’t more to this story than what we’ve seen. I would be interested in seeing the other “code enforcement violations” that were prosecuted in that town in the last year. Might make for interesting reading.
Look, a code enforcement officer is like a meter maid–or whatever they’re called nowadays. The latter are expected to write tickets. That’s their be all and end all. If they don’t, they have just announced that they are either not doing their job or that the job is unnecessary. It’s that simple. Funky Winkerbean (or whatever his name is) is not working in a metropolis and surely isn’t going to cite the mayor, judge, or any of his 146 relatives and 1 friend. So, he hunts. He looks high and low, drives to bumf— and beyond to keep grits on the table. Does that make him not an a-hole? No, it makes him spineless and an a-hole.
Just a heads up, friends. Some municipalities “code enforcement officers” city and or county are in reality state certified peace officers, a functioning part of the local PD or county sheriff’s office such as is the case here in Georgia.
Dunno why but….
Locally, we have two black & white trucks I’ve seen that are marked as “code enforcement”. From what I gather, they are no bullshit….In this man’s case, maybe we as in you and me *need* to find a way to assist him?
Where is that lawyer, ol’ whats his name hiding out when he’s needed.
…I’m forwarding this to The State, the main paper in our part of SC. (I’m in West Columbia, about 90 min from Clover). Not sure if it’ll have any effect, but you never know.
Mike
Mike Kozlowski: if you have any contacts at the state American Legion HQ, VFW, or state Veteran’s Affairs office, please forward it to them as well. This guy and his wife may legitimately qualify for a veteran’s pension from the VA – and that would at least help out with funding his wife’s meds. But he may also need help in navigating the system to get it.
His yard doesn’t look bad to me. The jury needed to hear about jury nullification and the community needs to act like one and help them out.
It used to be that if someone fell on hard times, people would come together and build a barn, fix a house, cook food,etc. Apparently this town isn’t much of a community. Why aren’t his neighbors helping him with his fence? Why didn’t the town offer to help him clean up his yard?
There is a project to raise money to pay off the fine:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/238237
Oh, and not only is he a Korean War vet, his only son is on his 4th deployment to Afghanistan.
What a way to reward their service.
And, with healthcare reform, these twerps will be running your health care, too.
#39 –
Hondo,
I’ll see what I can find. A thought also just occurred to me: Fort Jackson is fifteen minutes from me, and I wonder if someone could put a bug in the CSM’s ear about perhaps a squad driving up one Saturday to help out.
Mike
2-17 I wear it facing outboard on days ending with a “y” and inboard on all others. The damn tinfoil antenna makes low clearance bridges and tunnels a problem though 🙁 On the plus side, I do pick up news broadcasts as far away Uganda. So I have that going for me.
South Carolina? It figures.
@44. Good answer, SkrtSkrl. I have a newfound respect for you. Must be troublesome coming that hair, though, eh?
@ # 40. About that community spirit – I mentioned that in MY email to the Mayor……lol
Interestingly, there are now 571 comments on the article linked (as of @ 10pm central). Most are supportive.
Ridiculous. Almost as bad as the town putting him in jail, are all the nitwits trying to justify it by reaching back to the Klan tidbit. Wasnt Robert Byrd in the Klan? No one in the neighborhood complained, so what was the big deal? And he came with the 500 dollar fine money, and some folks apparently helped him put up a fence…so whats the problem now? Sounds like the town officials have their back up about it, and decided to make an example out of him.
Hondo, thanks. Not that I am suspicious, or know that the first act of tyranny is usually to attack the victim (or family), but… So, just Zippy the troll then. Good to know.