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.
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(top image: WECT6, WBBH, YANELLY GUZMAN, CAPE CORAL POLICE DEPARTMENT, CNN)
“Florida man kidnaps woman for parking in the wrong spot.”
If her name was Lisa Smith we wouldn’t be here.
You sure that cop wasn’t also a board member of a Home Owner’s Association?
That would be the proper MO.
PS: I live close enough to Cape Coral that I can easily see this happening. The heat does weird things to people down here.
Fuck Cape Coma…I mean Coral
Anyone like N.W.A.?
https://youtu.be/1WbQeDj74kc?si=s8lbFO5aeEQXPbT2
This reminds me of an episode of Aqua Teen where Carl and Shake dump a vat of cooking oil (which they used to deep fry and entire cow) in the woods, and are then summoned to court… In the woods. Where they are detained by trees.
In this situation the woman, unfortunately, is Carl.
You know what you’re seeing is stupid when it reminds you of an episode of Aqua Teen.
Can you believe that show is 23 years old??? Dancing is forbidden.
Boy that makes me feel as old as the cybernetic ghost of Christmas past from the future.
Perhaps slightly off topic but one does wonder if the cop was short with the resultant complex about asserting power in a society that tends to accord tall people more respect regardless of whether they deserve it or not (like the way a very large majority of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are actually over six feet tall despite the vast majority of the population not being so tall and CEOs not necessarily being the cream of the crop, so to speak) so it’s not necessarily an ableist/heightist observation but rather a commentary on society’s attitudes thereof. My dad served in WWII as a Navy enlistee and then served in the Korean War as an Army draftee; while he didn’t like to talk about his time in the military (for obvious reasons) he would occasionally talk about how there was nothing meaner than a short drill sergeant…or a short cop.
My dad was actually quite short into early adulthood; it wasn’t until he enlisted in the Navy that he had better access to nutrition after growing up impoverished during the Depression and experienced a major growth spurt even though he was already an adult. So he actually lived life on both sides, so to speak, and wasn’t speaking from a place of privilege when talking about those drill sergeants and cops.
My own experiences with cops have indeed validated his observation, anecdotally speaking, even as I have stayed aware about the potential for confirmation bias. I have been pulled over quite a few times for BS reasons where I actually had not commiited any infractions (indeed, I didn’t want to comment on an earlier Autopian article https://www.theautopian.com/whats-the-dumbest-reason-youve-been-pulled-over/ because it was just too damn aggravating and I’m still salty about such experiences) and the fact that I am deaf, even though I am white and male, really serves as a good litmus test for cops in that I have observed that so far without exception all the short cops have been quite antagonistic and quite huffy, even whiny, about having to deal with the communication barriers posed by my deafness and the cops of average or above-average height have tended to be more reasonable and more willing to deal with aforementioned communication barriers and all the tickets I have ever been issued to date were in fact only by the short cops even though I always behaved the same way with all the cops so the only variable was the cops’ height. Go figure…
Maybe there should be a height limit for cops giving tickets, like on Disney rides. You must be this tall to issue a traffic citation.
Instead of trying to add states, I’m thinking 49 is a better sounding number. Welcome to Krackerstan.
Yeah that one would be the easiest to saw off.
MoonpieTown Full of fluff and empty calories.
Hawaii: “Excuse me! Back of the line, no cutting.”
I had a feeling that if this story made its way here, the cops would get all sorts of shit in the comments, lol
Yeah, it’s way over the top as far as getting arrested, but it’s Cape Coral. Feel free to Wiki it, if you want to know what that city is like, but it is a chaotic place. Everyone and their mother (literally) moved there since covid, and the city/county are overwhelmed.
I’m not saying anything to defend the CCPD, but, boy, if you ever went there…it’s a darn mess.
I can easily see this happening. Regardless of the person’s last name. It’s not right, but it is still Florida. Kinda what you get if you go down here for more than a week on vacation.
Again, it’s Florida. Take it or leave it.
I’ll gladly leave it.
I’m not exactly sure how a rapidly expanding population would lead to this kind of BS.
You would think in a case like that the PD would quickly determine they have bigger fish to fry.
Nah, it’s free money that the city needs for all the expansion. In a VERY certain respect, it makes sense. I’m not saying it’s right, but…
Probably had their illegal speed traps shut down and needed to replace that revenue somehow.
I heard they call it Cape COVID now.
Not sure about that part. Never had it, but I am always outside in fresh air. So…
Good to see your screen name. Hadn’t noticed it for awhile.
Something sort of similar happened to me. I was young, dumb, and drifting my E30 in an empty gravel parking lot eventually brushing a bush with the front bumper. Zero damage to the car or bush, but the cops showed up 20 minutes after I parked the car and proceeded to handcuff me and toss me in the back of their cop car.
They lectured me (rightly so) about my “hit and run” and then gave me a ticket for, I kid you not, 48 points including “failing to leave my information with the bush”. They did not, however, arrest me. After months of freaking out and legal council I made it to the DA and she started laughing and threw out the whole thing if I plead guilty to a careless driving.
Of note, I’m a white adult male.
This would never have happened in MoonPieTown.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/moonpietown
Who knew the ents had the PD on their illicit payroll?
Leave your name on a note hanging in the tree. The cop is a moron or someone is lying for attention.
Can’t both be true?
And this is the time to remind everyone, especially minorities, Don’t Talk To The Police… and this famous video explains why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
“I shot the clerk?”
Hmmm…I wonder why people don’t trust cops…can’t imagine why…certainly nothing to do with their own behavior and choices…
As soon as I saw her last name I knew the reason she was arrested. Let’s be honest here, if it was Sally James there wouldn’t have been an issue.
It’s 100% obvious why she was chosen to be harassed.
Insurance wanted to know who owned the tree i hit. They didn’t understand “its fine”, or “it won”. They finally understood “i left a small scratch on the trunk where everyone hit it removing the bark prior to me” thank fuck someone called the cops as they thought I was still in the car injured.
My ex once rolled her car into a citrus farm in California, hitting an orange tree. The officer on scene told her she should contact the owner of the farm to pay for damage to the tree.
Guzman should have known you get the max for the minimum at TJ Maxx.
I didn’t want to laugh because this is a sad story (or a story about the sad state of things), but … brilliant
This is 100% cause her last name is Guzman. This would not have happened to John Smith.
Sadly I fear this may be the case.
“John Smith” was an illegal alien residing in the early 20th Century in England. Several people lost their lives and some others were imprisoned by him for eternity.
Much mayhem was caused by him and his other aliases through space and time,
though they are oddly concentrated around London between the 1960s and now.
If she had shot the tree and claimed self-defense via stand your ground, she would have gotten a pat on the back.
Only if the tree had dark bark.
“Coral Gables Woman fucks up and calls the Gulf the wrong name…arrested by SWAT team at home without incident.”
Florida. What a country.
This and other local news at 6.
Time to call Jackie Chiles.
I’m just glad they didn’t call it the Gulf of Muskico
She now has to disclose that she has been arrested on any official paperwork that asks it and it’ll show up on any background check which often do not explain circumstances without digging further into it. It’ll be a hassle to visit another country, get credit, a job, a loan, an apartment etc. Not always is the opportunity given to explain the circumstances behind the arrest and not always is that information then taken into account.
Even if the arrest or anything to do with the record of it is “expunged”, i.e. the arrest doesn’t officially exist anymore, of course it still exists. If she happened to not be a U.S. citizen and wanted to apply for citizenship for example, she would have to disclose the arrest anyway, the application form specifically requires listing even expunged events. If it’s not disclosed it’s grounds for reversal later on. Even when properly disclosed it makes things take longer than they would otherwise and that’s the best case.
Basically the “officer” scarred her for life.
Willing to be that was the point.
I believe it’s more if you’ve been convicted, not arrested. While there certainly are background check situations that will ask if you’ve ever been arrested, those are far less common. Lot’s of people get arrested and then the charges are dropped. From my experience, having been arrested with the charges soon after dropped (I absolutely should not have been arrested), I can positively say beyond doubt that it does not show up in my records. I have to regularly fill out fiduciary attestations that include criminal background questions from multiple states, and every single one of those documents ask if you been convicted, not charged with a crime (usually excluding non-felony traffic offenses). I’m also pretty sure one of the insurance companies I work with, which has very conservative leadership, ran a full check on me and absolutely would have mentioned it if an arrest showed up anywhere.
I wish it were so and that would make FAR more sense, alas, it is not so.
I’m a landlord and use Zillow for my credit and background checks mainly because I don’t want to handle people’s SS numbers. Two of my current tenants came back with an “arrest record” last year when they applied. Both of them when I dug through the case numbers from across the country were for misdemeanors that were dismissed in court. Both applicants admitted to it after I asked them and were surprised and shocked that it showed up. Both are model tenants as it turned out…Interestingly both cases were in North Carolina. (but I am not, nor are my tenants, nor are the rentals).
Look up the US N-400 citizenship application form pdf, look at Part 9, then question 15b right below it. Question 15b asks if you’re ever been arrested, cited, or even just detained. In the Part 9 instructions for that line item it takes pains to say that “this means EVER no matter if it’s been vacated, dismissed, expunged, or if a judge or any law enforcement figure has said it never needs to be disclosed.” In the next section you do get to (have to) explain every instance and can explain if it was dismissed, if you were convicted, or what ended up happening, but you DO have to disclose it even if nothing ever came of it.
I’m not making this up, you can verify for yourself easily enough..
It’s not that I don’t believe it, I’m just saying it’s not that many situations where you’re asked in a manner in which you must disclose. After I wrote my comment I remembered getting an FBI check because an immediate family member was working for the (formerly) Justice Department and they most definitely asked about arrests. However, again, I fill these damn fiduciary forms out on a regular basis and none of them ask. I actually can’t remember any other time than the FBI where I was required to disclose, although that instance was before my dismissed charge occurred.
I suspect what you found in the background check of the tenants was from a data scraping aggregator. They do log many arrest records.
Well, if you end up wanting to rent from me, I’ll let you explain yourself 🙂
I’m just saying it certainly doesn’t help. Given the choice of you having been arrested (for a BS reason) and it being dismissed vs never having been arrested in the first place, you probably would have preferred the second option even if you don’t think it affects anything in your life. As we’ve seen, lots of things have been changing lately that few of us expected to change.
Going by what you said you do (having to fill out fiduciary forms etc) I’m assuming your station in life is probably far more secure than someone of color working at TJ Maxx, someone who very well may not be a citizen (but I hasten to add may well be perfectly legal to remain in this country), and now this arrest record would add some potential complications to various scenarios. Nothing ever truly goes away forever, no matter if dismissed, cancelled, or “expunged”.
Can confirm. Even traffic infractions, dismissed or otherwise, must be reported.
I had one speeding ticket that was eventually nolled and that had to be reported and verified during the naturalization process. That added 3 months to an otherwise completely uneventful sequence of events.
Fortunately for Ms. Guzman, The Wayback Machine exists and she will be able to clear this one up pretty easily. Lol
Alleged tree ?? is it perhaps a shrub ? or perhaps a bush ?
It’s… a…. shrubbery!!
Thank God for those Woke Florida Cops protecting the vulnerable trees! (Think of the Trees!) I hope he gave the tree a nice hug so that it felt better. Ronny D should pin a medal on this guy. Was the driver an immigrant or something?
(If you are sarcasm impaired, this post is simply dripping with it)
This story has indeed sated my daily requirement for righteous indignation. Thank you, Jason. I hope Ms. Guzman finds some sort of peace in the future and a good lawyer who works pro-bono.
This entire situation is insane. Is Mercedes’ wife licensed in FL?
Unfortunately no.
It is not oak-K to treat this woman so harshly. There’s nothing shady here, no loss of life or limb, and the timbre of the tree’s silence speaks volumes. It’s no wonder the cop’s actions are so unpoplar.
Officer Lorax of the Cape Coral police department has been quoted as saying “It’s not about what it is, it’s about what it can become.”