America’s law enforcement never ceases to amaze and frustrate me.
A recent story about placing flowers on a windshield might just have you wanting to scream into a pillow in disgust.
Channel 10 WBNSwrote, that an Ohio woman who received over $300 in roses from her fiancé for Valentine’s Day was worried that all her flowers would go to waste.
“I think (my fiancé) ended up saying that he spent over $300 in just roses,” Brittaney Strupe said. “He was just going to throw them outside or in the trash, so I told him, instead of wasting, we should pass it on.”
So her sister, daughter and Brittaney decided “to spread some love, by placing roses on vehicles.”
Her daughter Kiara suggested putting roses on people’s windshields in a Walmart parking lot.
“We should just go to Walmart, thinking like, oh yeah, this will be a good idea, people are going to come out and think it’s awesome, and that didn’t happen,” Kiara Strupe said.
Before going any further I feel compelled to point out that only two terrorist attacks of note have happened at a Walmart and one of them is so absurd that I can see how Walmart employees would constantly be on the look out for suspicious activity.
Last year, a Missouri man was charged with making a terror threat for licking deodorant in a Walmart store.
“In the posted video, Cody Lee Pfister looks at the camera and asks, Who’s scared of coronavirus? before licking a row of deodorant sticks for purchase.”
The other case involved a mass shooting in a Walmart store which took place two years ago.
Mass shootings aside how does our ever vigilant Walmart handle people putting rose’s on car windshields? By calling the police of course.
As channel 10 WBNS explains, soon after the roses were left on vehicles, customers and Walmart employees began to discover them.
And that is where an act of kindness gets turned into a full-blown police investigation.
A store manager was so concerned after reviewing security footage that he called the Coshocton County Sheriff’s Office.
Thinking about this rationally, how could a competent person (Walmart store manager) be concerned about three people putting roses on car windshields?
This story should end here right? I mean all it would take is a store manger to review the video and realize that three people were placing roses on people’s windshields that’s it, end of story. But that is not what happened.
Our ever-vigilant police officers always on the lookout for something suspicious, want to stop anyone from preforming any acts of kindness in the present and future issued the following warning.
Placing flowers on car windshield’s could be tied to human trafficking.
Coshocton County Deputy, Chris Johnson can apparently see something suspicious where no one else can. (except Walmart employees.)
“Deputy Johnson said there have been other cases where flowers or other items are placed on vehicles as distractions. Human traffickers may do so to create an opportunity to approach and perhaps kidnap an unsuspecting victim.”
According to law enforcement, three innocent people are now suspected of human trafficking for placing roses on people’s windshields!
Apparently Americans are so unnerved by public acts of kindness that they flooded the Sheriff’s office with panicked phone calls.
“Once those calls starting coming in, and they really just blew up the phone lines, we knew at that point it might be something that we want to just go ahead and notify the community about, make them aware until we have further information about it,” Deputy Johnson said.
How do the police respond? Do they allay everyone’s fears and announce that there is nothing suspicious about putting flowers on car windshields?
Of course not, because that is not how American law enforcement works anymore.
The Coshocton County Sheriff’s Office decided to issue a news release based entirely on fake news.
“Although there have been several Facebook posts of similar instances that have happened in Ohio regarding Human Trafficking related techniques, it is unclear at this time if this incident is related to such type of crime.”
Law enforcement was so concerned by this act of public kindness that they felt compelled to warn other police departments.
“After contacting surrounding Law Enforcement Agencies, this type of incident involving flowers being left on vehicles has not been reported to their Agencies. This incident is being treated as suspicious at this time.”
As TechDirt pointed out there have never been any credible threats being reported of putting flowers on car windshields and human trafficking.
“The photo used by this Facebook user dates back to 2014. And the original post containing it said nothing about human trafficking. Instead, it was captioned with nothing more than a bunch of words some people might have mistakenly believed were insightful or original.”
A 2020 fact check warns, “the viral copy and paste warning is the latest in a never ending stream of baseless, alarmist, and panicked posts that claims to describe the latest and trending method used by kidnappers or sex traffickers to kidnap vulnerable females.”
It was only four years ago, when police considered people dressing up in clown outfits or placing red balloons around town to be potential terrorists.
You know America has changed for the worse, when public displays of kindness are treated like acts of terror by the public and law enforcement.