WETUMPKA — The police officer pulled Mary Alston, 60, out of her car. In the midst of a heat wave in June, he put her in the back of a police cruiser with only one window open.
This is where his nightmares begin. Alston said she relives the scene while she sleeps. It’s been that way since June 25, when Wetumpka police arrested Alston and his friend, Beverly Roberts, 85, after police told them they were trespassing on public property to feed the cats.
The women objected and argued that feeding the cats was not illegal. Body camera footage of the arrest has moved from the Montgomery Advertiser news site to regional, national and even international news sites and programs.
Officers left Alston in the back of the car for 30 minutes to an hour while they searched the women’s cars, said attorney Terry Luck, who represents the two.
“I thought I was going to die,” Alston said.
She screamed as loud as she could, saying she couldn’t breathe, but the police ignored her cries.
“The law should have been on our side”
Dec. On December 13, Wetumpka Judge Jeff Courtney found Roberts guilty of criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct and Alston guilty of criminal trespassing and interfering with government operations.
Courtney sentenced Roberts and Alston each to two years of unsupervised probation and 10 days in jail. The prison sentence was suspended. They were each ordered to pay a $100 fine, plus court costs.
“Let’s be clear that feeding cats is not illegal,” Alston said.
Roberts was not surprised the judge found them guilty because of “small town politics” which she said was at stake. The mayor, she said, gave the formal order to arrest Roberts and Alston. Luck said a police officer tested this during the trial.
Luck said he asked Courtney to recuse herself from the case because Wetumpka Mayor Jerry Willis was his employer. Courtney refused to do so.
The women are waiting to hear what will happen to the appeal Luck filed for them on Monday.
“All the evidence we had and all the body camera footage, the law should have been on our side,” Alston said.
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A history of animal rights
Roberts has long been a voice for animals in Wetumpka. She was instrumental in passing two laws protecting neglected dogs. Wetumpka City Council passed the first law in 2019. The ordinance said that instead of chaining their dogs, owners had to tie them up, giving them room to run around.
When Alston found a dog that had wrapped its tether around a chair, she knew the tether law didn’t have enough teeth.
“Basically, if we hadn’t found him that day, he probably would have hanged himself,” Alston said of the dog.
In 2020, the city council passed a no-chaining law, preventing people from chaining their dogs in any way. But the city hasn’t enforced it, Roberts said.
So Roberts and Alston did what they could to help the dogs. They brought dog food and kennels to homes where people neglected their dogs. They often called the animal control officer to report to the owners.
“Well, I guess, you know, I came on too hard with him, and I guess I just thought that when you hit 80+, you can do whatever you want and say whatever you want” , Roberts said. She then added about Willis. , “I don’t think he likes strong women.”
Wetumpka Mayor Willis declined to comment on the story.
In 2021, Alston and Roberts went to meet Willis. When they arrived, they were greeted by a group of disgruntled men, including the chief of police, the deputy chief of police, and a lieutenant. They ordered Alston and Roberts to stop calling about the dogs.
“You know you all have to stop calling. Stand back,” Roberts recalled. “And the chief of police looked at me and he said, ‘Somebody’s going to get hurt,’ and I took that as a threat. “
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“And then I discovered cats”
“We left a little crestfallen after that,” Roberts said of the reunion.
“And then I discovered cats,” she laughs.
Roberts first started feeding stray cats behind a dumpster in town, and police eventually ordered him to stop feeding them there. So Roberts went up the hill, to a place that wasn’t even on the same street as the first place.
She and Alston started feeding the cats and doing TNR, which stands for trap, neuter, return. The general idea, which is being promoted by animal experts in surrounding areas, including Montgomery, is to slowly reduce the cat population by spaying and neutering the animals, so that they die naturally but do not reproduce.
Allison Black Cornelius, chief executive of the Greater Birmingham Humane Society, goes even further. In his organization, people practice TNVR, trap, sterilize, vaccinate, return.
TNVR and TNR are not common practice. But they should be, Cornelius said, especially the TNVR, which also spares cat disease.
To practice TNR, Roberts and Alston often dug into their own pockets to neuter and neuter the cats, then they returned the cats to their colonies.
The animal control officer had given the women permission to work at the site where they were eventually arrested, the women said.
However, three police vehicles showed up this Saturday morning. The police arrested the two women and took them to jail. The men could have given the women citations with a court date, but when tempers flared they chose prison for the two pensioners instead.
In the prison, the women were put in separate cells, “like we were bank robbers,” Alston said.
Alston was still having trouble breathing, but she said the guards wouldn’t let her take her heart medication.
Roberts hadn’t had breakfast that morning, and she started leaning on the bench and eventually passed out, she said. Previously, the guards had refused Roberts water.
“I looked around the corner and Beverly was lying on the floor,” Alston said. “I didn’t know if she had a stroke or a heart attack or if she was even still alive, but no one was coming to me to try to help her.
Roberts finally came and again asked an officer for water. “They said, ‘Well, we’ll bring you some in a bit,'” Roberts said.
The experience left them both in nightmares. Roberts struggled to get out of bed and eat. Alston says she has suffered nerve damage since being pulled from her car during the initial arrest.
But still, their main concern is for the cats.
Alex Gladden is the public safety reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser. She can be reached at agladden@gannett.com or 479-926-9570.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Wetumpka cat women say small town politics behind arrest
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