JUSTICE GONE AWRY

  

       Mr. Sexton, a man on my mail route, was in trouble.  For helping me, he had to deal with the police and with the court system.  I wrote down what had happened and gave it to him to show whomever it may concern:

 

       On Tuesday, March 11, 2003, I had just delivered mail to 623 Eiserman Ave. and was walking across the yard toward the street when a golden Labrador retriever approached me.  I noticed the fur was raised on its back, so I was cautious.  Suddenly it began barking and coming towards me as if to bite me, and I kept having to face it to make it keep its distance.  Every time I would begin to turn, the dog would run at me, and I'm fully convinced it would have bitten me if I had not kept facing it.  I crossed the street backwards, while the dog followed threateningly, and managed to stick mail in the box at 622 Eiserman.  This turned out to be the home of the dog's owner, and so the dog became more aggressive and was approaching even though I continued to face it.  I reached down as if I were picking up a rock, but the dog kept getting nearer and noisier.  Finally I picked up a long, bent, reinforcement pipe that was lying on the ground and used it to keep the dog away, but it kept trying to get to me despite the pipe.  Yet I managed to put mail in the box at 620 Eiserman.

       Then I saw Mr. Sexton walking up the street.  He called out, "Do you know whose dog that is?"

       I said, "No, if I did, I'd report it."

       "I'm tired of it!" he said.  Apparently it had been a neighborhood nuisance for some time.

       Meanwhile the two of us, as well as the pipe, discouraged the dog from pursuing me and it left.  I continued my route.  After delivering to 616 Eiserman, I got back into the mail truck and drove up Eiserman to deliver to curbside mailboxes, and saw Mr. Sexton talking with the woman at the door of 622 Eiserman.  I stopped the truck and asked, "Is this the owner?"  But they were arguing.  I heard the woman say that she was trying to fix the fence.  (Of course an aggressive dog should have been tied up meanwhile, I should think.)  Mr. Sexton turned away and walked angrily home while the woman hollered at him, cussing and calling him "Mister Bad Ass."

       I said, "It's not just him.  It was all I could do to keep from getting bit."

       "I know, sir," she said, "but he didn't have to come over here like Mister Bad Ass... There is a nice way of doing things and a bad way."

       There are few things that infuriate me more than being attacked or threatened by a dog, and I felt like acting like Mr. Sexton had, but I said nothing - only nodded my head slightly - and drove on.

       After going to the end of Eiserman and turning around, passing the houses of Mr. Sexton and the dog's owner, and continuing up the street, I noticed a police car speed by me.  I thought to myself: good, Mr. Sexton reported the dog and I don't have to.  I saw another police car approach and signaled to the driver, trying to have him stop so I could verify Mr. Sexton's story and offer to help with mine, but the policeman either ignored me or didn't notice me and sped by.  I hurried to finish my mail route in time to talk with the police, and when I returned to Mr. Sexton's house at 630 Eiserman, there were several police cars there.  I was surprised at the response to an aggressive dog call, but then saw that the police were moving all around Mr. Sexton's front yard with guns and even going into his house, while Mr. Sexton was standing amidst the police with his hands behind his back.  He was being searched!  I was shocked.  I parked in front of his house and asked Mr. Sexton what was going on.  He explained to me that he could have handled that better, talking to the dog's owner, and it dawned on me that she had called the police to report him!  One policeman shouted, "Move that truck!"  Another officer said, "That's the mailman."  And the first cop said, "I don't care if he's the mailman; get that truck out of here!"

       I mumbled, "I was just trying to help," and was tempted to drive away, but Mr. Sexton was being mistreated by what seemed to be over-reactive policemen, so I pulled the truck ahead to the next yard and parked.  While I was there, two or three policemen talked with me.  One explained that Mr. Sexton had had a BB gun in his hand when he went and argued with the dog's owner.  I had not even noticed the BB gun when I saw Mr. Sexton, but it made good sense to me that he had one with him.  If I were to see the mailman being threatened by an aggressive dog on the loose, and went out to help him and protect myself at the same time, I would have grabbed a BB gun too if one were handy.  I mentioned to the police that it was just a BB gun, that no license is needed for it, etc., but one cop said that in Branson you just don't walk down the middle of a street with a BB gun.  Later, I thought about this.  When the dog was threatening me and Mr. Sexton came to help, there were only one or two neighbors out watching.  But when the abundant number of police were waving real guns all around the yard at 630 Eiserman and intimidating the resident there, more than five neighbors were out watching.  Which incident gives Branson a worse name?

       One officer told me that BB guns kill people too.  I tried my best to think of how many people I've heard of being killed by them.  He said, "If you had a BB gun behind your back, and brought it around to show me it was only a BB gun, what would I do?  I'd shoot you!"  Well, I suddenly understood then how BB guns could kill people.

       I had overheard the last part of the argument between Mr. Sexton and the dog's owner, and by that time, it was she who was cussing him out, and he just walked away in angry silence.  It was very obvious that she had no fear of him, despite the fact that he had a BB gun.  She reported him because he had treated her so rudely - although not as rudely as her dog had treated me - and I suspect she found it quite convenient for her complaint that he had had a "gun" of some sort in his hand.

       I don't know Mr. Sexton.  Talking with him that day was the only time I had said anything to him other than occasionally saying hi to him while delivering his mail.  But I am very grateful to him for being the only one coming to help me when I was being threatened by an aggressive dog on the loose.  Even its owner didn't come out to help me, and it occurred right in front of the owner's house and my shouting at the dog should have alerted her.  And, having had a BB gun most of my life since carrying one all around town when I was a kid, I see absolutely nothing wrong with this wise choice of protection in approaching a mad dog and helping the mailman.  The police told me that he used bad judgment in taking a gun with him.  One told me that I should have called the police about the dog.  I think that telephoning the police while confronting a mad dog in the middle of the street makes about as much sense to me as intimidating and arresting a man in his front yard for trying to help the mailman.

       When I was a mailman in Everett, Washington, an innocent woman was shot and killed by a SWAT team who were overreactively following up on a false report.  They smashed through the glass patio door of her apartment where the Pratts lived on my mail route, scattering broken glass all over a little girl who was spending the night and sleeping on the living room floor.  Mrs. Pratt jumped up from bed, not knowing what was happening, and ran instinctively to grab her daughter out of bed, and as she carried her little girl into the hall in a panic, a policeman shot her in the neck.  This mother's last words were, "Don't shoot!"  She fell on top of her daughter and quickly bled to death.

       The Pratt family was completely innocent and, after much publicity, were paid over a million dollars in damages by the city, as if Mrs. Pratt could be price-tagged.  This crazy police reaction in Branson brought back to me these horrifying memories, and I'm so thankful that no one was killed over this BB gun that, by the way, had been loaned to Mr. Sexton by his neighbor Wade Meadows [a former mayor of Branson] to try to get rid of a woodpecker that had been damaging their houses and property.

       Another person you might like to talk with about the dog is Mrs. Forbes [address and phone number given].  She was traumatized by this dog on her own property.

       Forgive my opinions I couldn't help expressing here.  I hereby state that everything I've said above is true to the best of my knowledge, and would be willing to testify in court on Mr. Sexton's behalf.  He came to help me.  I'd like to help him.

 

Dale Lund

[address, phone 

and e-mail given] 

 ______

 

Mr. Sexton was hit with a large and unreasonable fine, and moved away.  Meanwhile apparently the fence was fixed, since the dog never attacked me again.