As I put my fingers to keyboard to type out an intro to this article, I took a long, deep breath & sighed…then I realized that act is almost a pre-post ritual for me these days. Either I am getting particularly ornery and snarky in my middle-young age or else the world around me is getting to be more insane by the minute…or both?
A man is facing a possible FIVE YEAR PRISON TERM…for releasing a bundle of balloons…tell me that doesn’t spin your head around backwards at least once…?!
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From the Sun Sentinel – “Anthony Brasfield saw romance when he released a dozen heart-shaped balloons into the sky over Dania Beach with his sweetie. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper saw a felony.
Brasfield, 40, and his girlfriend, Shaquina Baxter, were in the parking lot of the Motel 6 on Dania Beach Boulevard when he released the shiny red and silver mylar balloons and watched them float away Sunday morning.
Also watching the romantic gesture: an FHP trooper, who instead noted probable cause for an environmental crime.
Brasfield was charged with polluting to harm humans, animals, plants, etc. under the Florida Air and Water Pollution Control Act.
Endangered marine turtle species and birds, such as wood storks and brown pelicans, seek refuge in John U. Lloyd State Park, about 1.5 miles east of the motel.
Between 2008 and 2012, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said there were 21 arrests statewide under the rarely used environmental crime statute. The third-degree felony is punishable by up to five years in prison.” Source: Sun Sentinel
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That Florida would be the state to charge a man with a felony for releasing a batch o’ love balloons for his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day really isn’t all that shocking if you consider that this is the same state about to name a college stadium after a private prison corporation. I wonder if GEOGroup is really getting hard up for new clients, er, customers…uh…prisoners..! and is applying pressure on state officials to provide more ’criminals’ for them…or if this officer is really such an ignorant hardass as to see no other possible choice (outrageous things like oh..a warning ticket, a few minutes of environmental education…) but to slap someone making a romantic (tho careless/stupid) gesture with a full out FELONY charge which will cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in the end?
