Who could use the fire of righteous anger this morning? We all could, let’s be honest, which is why I’m happy/angry to tell you about a genuinely maddening situation that happened in Cape Coral, Florida. It starts with a pretty innocuous situation, one that is more annoyance than anything else. A woman, parking her car at a spot under a tree that had low-hanging branches, found that the roof of her car scraped along part of the tree branch when parking. So, like many of us would, she grumbled to herself, backed out and moved to a different spot.
Usually, the story would end there, perhaps just with you inspecting the damage to the car’s roof. But in the case of Yanelly Guzman, it ended with her getting arrested.
Yes, she was arrested. For scraping the roof of her car against the underside of a thick tree branch. Guzman is an employee at a T.J. Maxx store (I believe that stands for Thomas Jefferson Maxx) and at the time when the incident happened, a Christmas Eve shift, she recalls asking her manager what she should do. As she told local news channel WECT 6:
“I feel like something was making pressure on my car, so when I do that, I back up,” Guzman said. “Then, I decide to park in another spot.”
Shortly after, Guzman realized she hit a low-hanging tree branch hovering over the first parking spot. She spoke to her manager about the incident, but he didn’t know what to do. Other people she talked to advised her to contact the Cape Coral Police Department.
“The district manager told him for me to make a report, an accident report… so I could file for a claim, so they could pay my damage. That’s what I did,” Guzman said.”
Looking at the tree in WECT6’s news footage, it makes sense how one could scrape the roof of a higher car like an SUV without realizing it, based on the low angle of the branch that arches over the spot:
(Screengrab: WECT6, WBBH, YANELLY GUZMAN, CAPE CORAL POLICE DEPARTMENT, CNN)
Guzman’s car did sustain some damage along the A-pillar in the form of a dent, and the tree’s bark was scraped off a bit where it encountered her 2020-ish Toyota RAV4:
(Screengrab: WECT6, WBBH, YANELLY GUZMAN, CAPE CORAL POLICE DEPARTMENT, CNN)
That’s an annoying panel to replace/fix on most cars or SUVs, and the scraped bark on the tree may grow back a bit, but even if not the extent of the damage makes any real harm to the tree pretty unlikely. I’m no arborist, but I have done similar things to trees with cars and other implements, and so far my hands and conscience have remained fairly free of sap-stains.
Here’s a Gulf Coast News interview with Guzman about the event:
Okay, let’s get right to the maddening part. Because she wished to file an insurance claim and because Guzman seems like someone who follows the rules, she met in January with a Cape Coral police officer to issue a report about the tree-scraping incident. Instead of just taking the report, though, the police officer decided to arrest Guzman on hit-and-run charges and took her to jail.
To jail! He took this woman to jail for scraping a tree! Why the hell would that be considered necessary in any context? Was the tree community demanding this unrepentant tree-scraper be taken off the streets? Was the community of Cape Coral made safer by handcuffing and putting this woman in jail? This is absurd, and Guzman had to pay $150 in bail to be freed.
When WECT6 reached out to the police department, they said
“For every call, we assess if there is a crime involved. In this case, the facts clearly match up with the criteria for a hit-and-run, a misdemeanor crime.”
This is, of course, incredible idiocy. To really put an idiotic cherry on this heaping, dripping sundae of stupidity, you need to know what the police officer told Guzman she should have done:
“Guzman says the officer told her she should have left her name, car registration number and her phone number in a note hanging in the tree.”
W, it’s worth noting, T.F.
She should have left her information and phone number hanging in the fucking tree? What would that have done? Let the squirrel whose job it is to inspect the tree get that information to the common grackle that lives in the tree and works for the owner of that T.J. Maxx parking lot? This is absurd.
It may be absurd and comical to us, but Guzman is out over $4,000 even though the state attorney general’s office dropped the charges due to insufficient evidence, and Guzman is severely shaken and disturbed by the whole mess. I know what jail can be like for people very unsuited to jail, because I once had to bail my own parents out. It messed them up, and it makes sense Guzman would have similar repercussions.
This is some Kafkaesque-level of bureaucratic destructive foolishness. Guzman’s life would have been immeasurably better had the police never been involved at all. Involving the police made no one’s experience better; rather, it complicated and harmed everyone involved for no clear benefit whatsoever.
The tree was unavailable for comment.
Watch Police Officers Stop A Pregnant Woman In A Car With No Brakes From Crashing Into Lake, Then Help Us Figure Out What Happened
How Long Can You Drive Around A Roundabout Without Getting Arrested?
Toronto’s Talking Cop Car Is An Absolute Abomination Of Automotive Anthropomorphization
(top image: WECT6, WBBH, YANELLY GUZMAN, CAPE CORAL POLICE DEPARTMENT, CNN)
“Guzman”: guilty
Brown skin: guilty
Woman: guilty
That’s three strikes. She’s lucky she’s not given the chair.
(/S in case you wonder)
I hate to be the one to go for the low hanging fruit here, but I’ll also go out on a limb and say this is ridiculous. She should have contacted another branch of the authorities for sure. Maybe checked in her trunk to see if she had another camera to record things with. Boy, did Florida’s PD come out looking like a bunch of saps here, just barking around at nothing. When you get down the the roots of what happened, it’s all just best if you leaf it alone. At least I wood.
Boy, you just thought you’d lumber in here and throw down a whole pile of puns, didn’t you?
A regular Paul Punyan, he is.
I went into this article thinking the lady wrecked some famous tree of Florida, or something. Crazy…
Autopian Pun Opportunity: 27
Sid’s Self-Control: 0
“The tree was unavailable for comment.”
Did you leave a note on the tree asking it to return your call?
She should have just killed a cyclist, she would have been back at work within the hour.
(I can say this, I’m a cyclist)
If she’d left her information on a piece of paper, that cop would have cited her for littering on top of it. Best option clearly would be to carve her info into the bark, but then she actually wood be damaging the tree.
She failed to notify Treebeard, apparently.
I suppose if she hit a bird she’d have to pin her information to the carcass?
Florida. Not even once.
When departments protect overzealous officers is when I get super confused. Each of us makes bad decisions all the time. I won’t attempt to speak to the officers motivation, I know nothing about him, except that in this instance he was clearly unreasonable. But why don’t his superiors have the emotional intelligence to read the room around them and say “yeah, you technically followed the rules, but you should have exercised some common sense. Let her go.”
And how does this clearly fit hit and run? She didn’t leave the scene, she moved. Like how people move their cars after a fenderbender and its ok? Then she reported it.
And lastly, what did these people expect the police report to do? She hit a tree. The tree didn’t hit her. There is no question of attribution of fault here. Tell your insurance you hit a low branch in a parking lot and get it fixed?
We’re deep into an appeals process with a school district (attorneys involved) and it feels analogous to these minor police infractions in a lot of ways. One bad decision is made, then a bunch of other bad decisions have to back up the first one, otherwise they expose that they hire poorly and their people are not good at things like “decisions” or “common sense”
And even if you win, at best you get an apology and maybe some legal fees. Otherwise you have to sue for damages and upend your life for years, all in the hopes of winning.
Personally, had I missed the window for filing immediately, I’d call insurance and file under comprehensive. Not totally ethical, but also not totally wrong. This is just like a branch falling on your car. There’s no real crime or property damage to the other party.
The Cape Coral Police Department only gets a 2.5 out of 5 stars on Google Maps. If they sold Tacos, I would avoid them
“If they sold tacos” is my new metric for judging everything
Yeah, I would buy tacos from this site for sure. Maybe not from David. He may be reformed, but I don’t need shower tacos with rust seasoning.
Also, taco shells with the Autopian logo? I would buy that merch.
Who’s selling the tacos?
Mercedes: there wouldn’t be any parking spots available. Her cars would take the spaces
Jason: All of the pull in parking spots would be arranged so Jason could see your tail lights while he made tacos
David: He would promise 2 tacos for every person that became a member. 6 months later he would change it to 1 taco.
Adrian: He would say things like: I’m out of change, let me run to my Ferrari and get more
The Bishop: Would be doodling in the corner
Matt: Would be blasting a wide variety of music throughout the day
SWG would have an amazing deal on used tacos that just needed a refried beans change.
As a chef I’m really wondering what the tail light of the taco is
I got a dent from a falling avocado. I wish I had known this valuable information when that happened; I would have taken that tree to the cleaners.
This is especially infuriating because she reported the collision! How is it a hit and run when the accused person reported the accident, both to the store and the police?
I hope a good attorney helps her sue the agency for enough that they make real changes to their department.
It’s a good reminder that calling the cops will make a lot of situations worse.
I think her last name and skin color can probably explain why she was arrested. I hate this timeline so fucking much.
That cop should be fired.
A 4-letter acronym comes to mind
ACORN
WTAF?
BYOB
As someone who was constantly harassed throughout my teenage years by a bored police department eventually ending up being arrested for some similar nonsense she will definitely have a different opinion of police for the rest of her life. I’m not one of those ACAB fellas but I definitely believe there needs to be a way to hold police who overstep accountable.
This is what ACAB means, one bad cop did something ridiculous and the police department backed them up.
What ever happened to being…you know, reasonable?
Reason goes out the window when you are 1) in a position of authority and 2) get off on exercising that authority.
People who meet the second criteria would, in a sane world, not be allowed to be a police officer. But alas, this world is anything but sane, and is becoming less sane as each day passes.
I moved to the relative boonies. I knew I was going to be OK with my new gun-wearing-USMC-flag-displaying neighbor when I complained about being pulled over for my out of state tags because of his response: F–k the law.
10/10 would recommend.
The tree is on the store’s property, she works for the store, they already obviously have all her personal information, and she also reported it immediately to her manager, that all pretty obviously does exactly the same thing functionally as leaving a note. Yeah, TJ/TK Maxx probably is a tenant, but, obviously, they’re the ones responsible for communicating with their landlord since no one else is likely to have that information
Yeah, she reported it to the damaged party and to the police. There is no world in which this was a hit and run.
This is the system working as designed. The police want you to fear asking them for help.
I hope she can sue the police department. That is typically the only way to bring any kind of pain back onto the police.
Of course, then you have to move to a new town, because now you live in a town where you sued the police.
Arrest the cop. While he sits everyone is allowed to street fighter 2 his car then arrest him for kidnapping, false imprisonment, and hit and run.
+1 Shoryuken
How much do you wanna bet the same situation would’ve happened if the perp (ha) had been white & male? Good grief.
Luckily, she wasn’t deported to Puerto Rico
We need to dig a moat around Puerto Rico to make sure they can’t get back into the USofA!!!
This is an endless loop (in more ways than one).
I imagine they just didn’t want anyone in town to be arboring a dangerous fugitive.
Based on the dendrochronology of events, I’m applauding the live oak for promoting her to branch manager.
The cop just wooden let her go. Knot on his watch.
It beggars be-leaf.
Nobody expects the Spanish Moss Inquisition!
Pretty sure at least someone in that community told her “Why don’t you make like a tree and get outta here!” to which she replied that a big decorative plant in a TJ Maxx parking lot was about as useful as a screen door on a battleship.
I’m pretty sure the actual idiom to which you refer is, “Make like a tree and bark.”
I thought I could come to the comments to discuss this without puns, but I was clearly barking up the wrong tree.
There’s something deeply rooted in our psychology that makes us do this.
Since Florida is a “stand your ground” state, she would have been better off shooting the tree and saying she feared for her life because it was trying to crush her.
I was part of a group that shot down a tree* once. It’s a lot harder than you think. We’re talking hundreds of bullets.
*It was small and dead and on very remote private property.
That might be the most American thing I’ve heard in months…and I’m saddened I didn’t get to see it. 🙂
Mythbusters did something similar. I think they used a mini gun and thousands of rounds. It’s got to be on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC8jnSaCqxY
Type the search term “Gulf of Mexico” into Google or Safari and see what comes up if you want to see something even more American. It’s a small thing compared to a number of truly awful things we’ve done, but it’s just stupidity without any benefits and it disgusts me enough to make me wish I could leave.
Alright, you got me there! I mean, they could have made it a smidge more American by going something like “Gulf of Trump” or “Gulf of Lockheed Martin.” 🙂
LOL. just commented the same thing on page 2 before seeing this.
Wait, I know how this would have gone: She left her information hanging from a tree branch and is now under indictment for Federal hate crimes and racial intimidation.
And the EPA would be all over her….at least up until a few days ago.