Pedestrian thrown in jail for 12 hours for holding up sign warning drivers

[Silent_Bob]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165792/Natalie-Plummer-arrested-holding-sign-warning-drivers-police-speed-trap.html

A woman in Houston, Texas, was arrested and jailed for 12 hours after she held up a make-shift sign to warn drivers about a speed trap.

Natalie Plummer was officially charged with walking in the roadway -- jaywalking, essentially -- though she says the police officers who arrested her were just angry that she had tipped off speeders.

Miss Plummer was riding her bicycle along a road near downtown Houston on Thursday when she spotted police officers pulling drivers over.

She told KTRK that it looked like the officers were targeting cars at random, so she recorded some the activity on her cell phone.

Then, she said, she turned around and wrote 'Speed Trap!!' in large letters on a piece of grocery bag to warn oncoming traffic.

'I was simply warning citizens of a situation ahead,' she told the TV station.

The officers didn't see it that way. Shortly after she took up her post, a squad car pulled up to Miss Plummer and an officer grabbed her backpack off her shoulder and began rifling through it.

Then, he handcuffed her and told her she was under arrested for felony obstruction of justice and that she would spent three to five years in jail, at minimum.

She ended up being charged with misdemeanor 'walking in the road where a sidewalk is present,' through she was in jail 12 hours before she was able to bail out.

Miss Plummer said she wasn't obstructing justice, and she wasn't in the roadway, either -- she was on the sidwalk.

'He couldn't take me to jail for holding up this sign or he would have. So all he could do was make up something fake about it,' she said.

The Houston Police Department wouldn't speak on camera about the arrest, but stood by the officer's report that she was walking in the road and a danger to herself and others.

A KTRK legal analyst says Miss Plummer should not have been arrested.