I'm betting the police officer has the same idea I do: it's hard to imagine Terri Garr actually being serious about hurting someone. Try this on for size: "terrified of Terri Garr". If that guy had cheated on, say, Nicole Kidman, I'd expect to hear of his scrotum being stapled to a hardwood floor, with more-serious charges and counter-charges filed, but of course that didn't happen.

This is less serious than physical assault, even as nearly all of us would expect her to slap the guy, once, at a restaurant table in a "final scene". There is room for such fits. What should we expect, a polite letter of sorrow and dismissal, in black or blue-black ink on white writing paper?

-----

Consistency warning: be sure, as you view the police response to this incident, that you got what you want vis-a-vis judgment of the situation on the scene. Don't complain that the system should boot such instances into higher involvement with the legal system while simultaneously claiming that officers should be able to use their "better judgment" against involving jail and judges. Officer judgment keeps a lot of people out of jail, and free of the label, "felon", in cases where no one is hurt and everyone will get over it. Otherwise, throwing the dishes puts you in jail and costs you your job.

She smashed all his windows - other similar cases result in her cutting up his clothes, keying his car, etc. The corresponding male examples I can think of seem to involve murdering the woman and their children. But these are just memorable anecdotes. Do men and women react differently to cheating partners?

I'm still having trouble believing he found someone he thought was more attractive than Terri Garr. I mean in the websters under American Beauty there is A picture of her with the sub-text see also A breed of Rose.

The problem here I think Amy was trying to illustrate was parity, or the lack thereof, between sexes.

Let us suppose for a moment that a woman cheated on a man, the hypothetical man does the same thing, goes to her home, smashes windows, damages her private property. When the police are called, he's as good as in jail, a restraining order faster than you can blink, and probably a bail hearing the next breath.

But a woman does it, and she's only asked "is she ok?"

Now I'm not saying that the sexes are or should be treated identical. In the ability to do physical violence, men are almost universally better equipped.

However a woman with a hammer in her hands, destroying another man's property, should not be inquired as to her well being before being arrested...no matter how good she looks.

Frankly we ought to be well past the legal point where a wandering penis is grounds for destruction of private property. I could at least understand it if they were married or actually living together, even if I couldn't condone it...but I'll be damned if someone I'm not living with & not married to is going to have any say over my sex life.

Heh. Reminds me of the time the guy I was living with at that time was cheating on me - I took ALL of his belongings and threw them on the front lawn, changed the locks, refused to let him in, changed the phone number, and told the guys in the band he was working for (he was their roadie) what a piece of shit he was. They fired him after a battle of the bands gig (at which the band I was in at the time won), he came after me like a madman, and promptly got the snot beat out of him by the bass player in my band. I have no idea where he is today. And I don't care. (The guitarist's girlfriend in the same band, who caught him cheating on her, threw all of his clothes in large garbage bags, and dumped used cat litter in with them! I think her response was just a tad more over-blown than mine, what?) o_O

The problem here I think Amy was trying to illustrate was parity, or the lack thereof, between sexes.

But what if that had been me, and NOT Teri Garr? Would the policeman have asked me if I was okay? I think not; I'm not a famous actress. I probably would have gotten my butt thrown in the pokey! Well, here in CT I would have, anyway, there's a law on the books that at least one, but usually both parties, has to be arrested in domestic disturbances. She got lucky because she's pretty and famous. Not so, the rest of us.

there's a law on the books that at least one, but usually both parties, has to be arrested in domestic disturbances (Flynne).

There is room for such fits. What should we expect, a polite letter of sorrow and dismissal, in black or blue-black ink on white writing paper (Radwaste)?

In America, a vagina gives you a license to steal, burglarize, assault and kill. It's obviously unjust.

In America, a vagina gives you a license to steal, burglarize, assault and kill. It's obviously unjust.

Um, I don't think so. There are plenty of women in prison for various crimes. You need to calm down.

As wrong as it is that the cop let Teri Gar get away with this, I think it has most to do with her being a star and having a public persona that he took into consideration.

What made me ill was her: "And really, I was" comment. Way to give up personal responsibility for choosing a loser and play the victim. What a crap example to set for any women who view her as a role model.

Flynne - how many men get away with claiming emotional distress to walk away from a murder 1 conviction?

Mary Winkler anyone?

Although you are right - if this had happened in CT, they would have arrested the guy. 99% of the time the guy is arrested so that the girl doesn't claim some kind of shit against the cops. Self-preservation.

Back in the day, before the nose job, she didn't seem that threatening.

"And then for some reason..."

She knew the only way to make him hurt was to hit him in the wallet.
Far more painful than a "you bastard... etc" given that the boyfriend didn't really care for her.

Back in the day, before the nose job, she didn't seem that dangerous.

That shit cracks me up. Check out the colors on that dress. In the 60's, it wasn't enough for clothes to have bright hues: They had to be indistinguishable from fucking test signals... Only then were they loud enough to be considered fashionable.

I never thought fidelity was that fascinating... Yer either in or yer out, and sometimes people who make a big deal out of being fooled by others were trying to prove something that had nothing to do with other people anyway. Psychodramas are boring.

But stories like this are kinda funny.

Another.

Sorry about the extra posts... This one too! (Unless it annoys Jeff a little, in which case deal with it, man!

HAven't had coffee yet

Getting to know another person is a lot of work, takes time, and you probably won't like a lot of what you see. Why do that when you can just project your romantic fantasies on some guy/girl and then be the martyred victim when he/she disappoints you in some way?

I think it goes back to people being lazy, and wanting instant gratification in every area of their lives.

Fame does usually help a perp walk away. OJ anybody? *L*

But come now, how long can someone claim to be destructively upset?

She was of sound enough mind to gather his things and toss them outside, I'd wager that took more than just a minute or two.

She was of sound enough mind to drive over to his place...take note of that, "HIS PLACE", they didn't live together, its not like she just ran down the hall to do all that...she had to get into a car and drive to a location belonging to him, that his hard earned money paid for, she had to be admitted to the place, all of which she was of sound enough mind to manage...and then she proceded to smash his private property.

Because why? Because the guy she was dating (him), who did not live with her, was not married to her, and whatever HER mindset, to his mind had no binding physical commitment to her, exercised his basic right to have relations with whom he wanted. Whether or not he was honest is a point we can only debate pointlessly. No telling what he said or didn't say, or what the various women in his life just assumed or said in turn.

I'm sure the woman in question was angry, and intellectually I can understand her anger, however if we condone destruction of property as just retribution for (horror of horrors) hurt feelings, well there is a whole helluva lot more pain in ALL of our futures.

What's next, legal action for not calling the next morning?!

I've joked to my boyfriend that if he ever cheated I'd take a crow bar to his Corvette Z06. Then he totaled it when he looked at the GPS instead of the road and realized he was about to enter a one-way.

So he took care of that pre-emptively for me.

There's still the motorcycle.

...but I was joking. I don't think most people would get away with destroying personal property; that's ridiculous and not the norm.

Cheating is tough. Usually it's because the person is miserable and doesn't know what to do (it's still not justified, in my opinion) so they cheat hoping to cause SOMETHING be it the end of the relationship or beginning to work out the problems.

My reaction to those types of situations is: act like a grown up. If you want out of the relationship fucking end it. It won't be fun and yes, you'll hurt the other person. But at least s/he won't have to spend time in therapy trying to convince her/himself that people CAN be trusted and that the syph isn't THAT bad.

There are a few things in that story setting off my b.s. meter (and I have a pretty sensitive meter when it comes to these things, seeing as how I am a prosecutor).

The part of the story that makes me think it isn't being quite fair to the cops:

The law came into play when Terri Garr was in the middle of her rampage inside the house: Her terrified ex dialed the cops.

"But the policeman arrives and says, 'Oh! Ms. Garr! Are you OK?' the actress said, 'Now I am.' And I left," she says, adding that no charges were pressed. The police officer "thought I was the victim," says Garr. "And really, I was."

Number one -- cops always ask everyone involved in a domestic dispute if they're okay. The first thing they need to determine is if anyone (victim, witness, or perpetrator) needs medical attention. (And, though on its face this appears to be a malicious injury to property case, it's wrapped up in the domestic violence world because of the status of the perpetrator and victim.)

Number two -- you don't have the cop saying he thought she was the victim. You have the perpetrator saying the cop thought she was the victim. What the cop really thought, we don't know, but I can tell you that cops know who the suspect is before they ever arrive at a scene. Dispatch will give them that information. I suspect that what's really going on here is puffing: the woman is doing the whole "see, everyone agrees with me" thing, even if they might not.

Number three -- just because charges weren't pressed doesn't mean the cops didn't think the incident warranted charges. Both prosecutors and cops hate domestic violence cases, because 9.9 times out of 10, the victim (not the big, bad state) will decide, unilaterally, that charges shouldn't be pressed. If you live in a jurisdiction where the victim has to be agreeable to pressing charges for the case to go forward, you, as a prosecutor, are screwed. Even if you're living in a jurisdiction where victim cooperation isn't legally necessary to press charges, you're still screwed, because it's awfully hard to win a case when the primary witness won't testify.

What probably happened in this case is that the victim decided, for whatever reason, that he didn't want to go through the criminal case. In the law enforcement world, he would be known as an uncooperative victim, and the case, dependent on his testimony, would have been dropped. (Officers can't testify about what people at the scene told them, because that's hearsay.) This happens with both male and female victims -- it's just the nature of the domestic violence beast. The media will often twist it to make it look like the government doesn't protect female victims, and lately I've been noticing more and more stories about how the government won't protect male victims; in reality, it's almost impossible to prosecute a domestic violence case if the victim is uncooperative, and that will be the case until the rules on hearsay evidence change.

I'm not saying that nothing inappropriate happened here -- maybe the cops really were just dazzled by a celebrity, or maybe they really were sexist. But I doubt it. Few cops are going to want to risk their jobs because some actress is batting her eyelashes at them. The media are notorious about slanting facts to suit their story. I've heard horror stories, but in my experience, I've never run across a cop or a prosecutor who would refuse to go forward on a case just because the victim is male, and certainly the law itself is not written to discriminate.

*Few cops are going to want to risk their jobs because some actress is batting her eyelashes at them.*

I beg to differ.

http://www.wsmv.com/news/14351455/detail.html

I beg to differ.

You're taking the exception and treating it as the rule. You can find a sensational, sordid media story for just about every imaginable situation; that doesn't mean that such incidents are widespread.

"She got lucky because she's pretty and famous. Not so, the rest of us."

You missed my consistency warning, or at least, its implications. The arriving officer can make the call. If you don't know your sheriff's deputies, I suggest that you correct that somehow. Amy knows hers, and because they know her she can speak to them with greater confidence, about more issues and get better results than strangers can.

If you want everything to be a felony, prepare to be locked up for something YOU think is no big deal.

Meanwhile......terrified of Terri Garr...?

*You're taking the exception and treating it as the rule.*

Nah, you're just making up a rule based on supposition and I'm poking at it with evidence.

"I dug my key into the side
of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats...
I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...

Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats"

Here's where I get iffy.

Its been referred to several times as "a domestic violence" incident...but as I understand the term, it is used when a couple in the same home is in the midst of severe unpleasantness to put it politely.

They weren't in the same home, they were dating sure, obviously they were dating for awhile if he had some stuff at her place, at least semiseriously.

She went to his place with violent and destructive intent, no shared domocile involved.

In domestic violence one of the problems that causes escalation is that there is no place for the two parties to withdraw to. They're kind of stuck in the same house. Why should either one have to leave, in this case, none of that applies.

A man doing that crap, hammer in hand when the cop arrives, would have a gun pointed at him almost immediately.

I doubt there would have been an inquiry "Are you alright?" first. *rolling eyes over here*

The madness.

I've done my share of policing and have seen many, many times when preferential treatment is given based off of what ever sense of "importance" an officer may place/project upon a person. I call it the human element. Only a few people I have come across have the absolute resolve to act completely by procedure.

Its been referred to several times as "a domestic violence" incident...but as I understand the term, it is used when a couple in the same home is in the midst of severe unpleasantness to put it politely.

Robert,

States define a domestic relationship differently, but generally speaking, a domestic relationship is between two adults who are living together, two adults who are married, two adults who have ever been married, two adults who have a child in common (regardless of marital status), or two adults in a dating relationship (regardless of habitation status). As you can see, despite the word "domestic", living together isn't necessarily required. :)

At any rate, my point wasn't that the crime would have been charged as domestic violence -- likely, it would have been charged as malicious injury to property or whatever the state's equivalent charge is (though, depending on the circumstances, it could also be charged as domestic assault if the destruction was accompanied by verbal threats). My point was that because the two were in what is considered a domestic relationship, a lot of the dynamics of a domestic violence case might very well apply -- my point specifically being that the victim might well have been uncooperative. I don't know the circumstances of the case or why charges weren't pursued, but I know enough about the law enforcement and criminal justice world to know that you can't take the story as a face-value example of a victim being screwed over just because he's a man. Sadly, the vast majority of victims in domestic violence cases, male and female, don't wish to pursue charges.

Not knowing the laws of the state in which they live, perhaps they do qualify it as domestic violence due to the pressence of a relationship, and perhaps he was not inclined to press charges, that part I am not bothered by. Maybe he felt giving her a little revenge was the right thing to do. Who knows? What bothers me is how the police responded in this case on arrival at the scene.

Consider all the "bad guys" in this little skit called life.

He's dating teri, but he's sleeping with someone else. THAT someone else is pissed, not because he's also sleeping with teri, but because he's sleeping with a 3rd woman.

The second woman apparently is pissed off about that, and calls teri to tell her about the "others".

Now why teri is not pissed off at woman number 2 or 3 for sleeping with him, I couldn't guess.

But then comes the destruction, breaking a good deal of his property, then claiming she's the victim because of her hurt feelings...the poor wittle deary. *rolling eyes*

But hammer in hand, the officer on the scene treats her with kid gloves. Frankly he's just lucky she wasn't a raving lunatic and chucked the hammer at him, a hammer in hand is not less dangerous because the hands are female.