No Fucking Way: Woman Arrested for Cursing in Grocery Store
According to a witness, Danielle Wolf cursed at her two little girls last week because they were squeezing the bread at a Kroger supermarket in North Augusta, South Carolina. "Stop squishing the fucking bread," Wolf reportedly said. Wolf says she was talking not to her children but to her husband, who was recklessly tossing frozen pizzas into their shopping cart. Either way, she committed a misdemeanor, so police had no choice but to handcuff her in front of her family and cart her off to the station.
Or so they say. According to WAGT, the NBC station in Augusta, Georgia, police "say that because it's a law on the books, they have to enforce it." The law in question defines disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum fine of $500 and up to 30 days in jail, to include "utter[ing], while in a state of anger, in the presence of another, any bawdy, lewd or obscene words or epithets." So once a shopper offended by Wolf's salty language complained to Officer Travis Smith, his hands were tied, and soon so were Wolf's. The complainant, whose name is blacked out in the police report on the incident, said the cursing reminded her of her traumatic childhood. She later apologized to Wolf by phone, saying she did not expect her to be arrested. Yet according to the police report, when Smith asked the scandalized shopper "if she wished to testify in court about the incident, [she] stated that she would." Only then did Smith proceed to arrest Wolf.
Because of the notoriety generated by her arrest, Wolf was anxious to show the public that she is a good mother who loves her children. Wolf, who is due in court on September 12, even apologized to the woman who turned her in, saying she would never say fucking in public again. I'm not sure that's the main lesson to be drawn from this incident.
[via George Mathis at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]