‘What happened to Mayberry?’ asks relative of 87-year-old Georgia woman police used stun gun on
A police chief defended his officer’s use of a stun gun on an 87-year-old woman.
Police use stun gun on 87-year-old grandmother in GeorgiaOfficers said they were responding to a 911 call of a woman with a knife; her family said she was cutting flowers.
Murray County Jail via AP
The police chief of a small Georgia town is defending an officer who deployed a stun gun on a “smiling” 87-year-old woman, saying she refused to comply with numerous commands to put down a kitchen knife she was using to cut dandelions.
But relatives of the octogenarian, Martha al-Bishara, say police failed to use good common sense to prevent the incident from quickly escalating to a use-of-force confrontation in Chatsworth that landed their diminutive matriarch in handcuffs.
“We have nothing but love for this county, but within that context, we think that what happened is absolutely ridiculous,” al-Bishara’s grandson, Timothy Douhne, a 24-year-old medical student, told ABC News on Wednesday. “If they had calmed down, deescalated the situation, listened a little bit, we wouldn’t be having this issue right now. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.
“She told us she was smiling at them to tell them that she wasn’t a threat … and she was trying to get closer to them to communicate with them, and that’s when they tased her,” he said.
“My grandmother is a human being who they didn’t have any patience with. What happened to Mayberry?” he said, referring to the fictional small North Carolina town from the old “The Andy Griffith Show.” “Would you ever see Andy Griffith tase an 87-year-old woman? It points to a bigger problem with the lack of human interaction.”
(MORE: Dashcam footage shows Mississippi police officer firing stun gun at handcuffed suspect)
But Chatsworth Police Chief Josh Etheridge said the officer had little choice but to use a Taser on al-Bishara when she failed to obey numerous orders to put down the knife as the 5-foot-2 woman stepped toward him.
He said there is police body-camera footage of the incident, but he has yet to release it because charges against al-Bishara are pending. She has been ordered to appear in court on Sept. 19.
“She came walking toward the officer. After multiple commands, he told her to stop several times. She continued walking at which time we deployed the Taser,” Etheridge said in a video statement to the Daily Citizen News of Dalton, Georgia.
The incident occurred on Friday afternoon after police received a 911 call from a staffer at the Boys and Girls Club, saying, “This lady is walking on the bike trail, she has a knife and she won’t leave. She doesn’t speak English.”
The caller told the dispatcher that the elderly woman did not threaten anyone with the knife. “She’s old so she can’t get around too well…,” the caller said, according to the 911 call, which has been made public. “Looks like she’s walking around looking for something, like, vegetation to cut down or something.”
Chief Etheridge said he personally responded to the scene and he and an officer found al-Bishara behind the Boys and Girls Club in the town of roughly 4,200 people, about 70 miles northwest of Atlanta.
“We were able to contain her to the back area. She was in an elevated position above both myself and the other officer that was there on scene. She did have a knife in her right hand,” Etheridge said.
He said he and the other officer repeatedly told the woman to put down the knife, and that he even pulled out his pocket knife and threw it on the ground to demonstrate.
Fake Bloomfield Hills Target shooting gains traction on TikTok; police debunk story
By Amber Ainsworth
Published August 1, 2024 12:15pm EDT
article
(Photo: TikTok)
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. (FOX 2) – No, an elderly woman did not shoot a man over a handicapped parking spot at a Bloomfield Hills Target store.
A fake story featuring an AI-generated photo of the alleged suspect, 70-year-old Pauline Brown, led to police debunking the claim.
“This incident did not occur, we have received several inquires surrounding this post,” Bloomfield Township police said.
Bloomfield Township police responded rather than Bloomfield Hills because there isn’t a Target in Bloomfield Hills like the made-up story states, but there is one in the township.
The story posted by a TikTok account by the name of Dax News claims that Brown shot a 19-year-old man named Chad Bosnik after he sped around her to take a handicap parking spot. However, this didn’t happen, the people are made up, and the photo of Brown is AI-generated.
Beyond TikTok, AI-generated sites picked up the story and presented it as real.
Related
Livonia prom revenge murder story is fake news, police say
A TikTok claiming that a man named Douglass Barnes murdered a girl named Samantha McCaffery at a prom at Livonia High School in Michigan is fake AI-generated news.
This isn’t the first time Dax News has ended up on FOX 2’s radar for fake news. In the spring, a story was posted claiming that a man named Douglass Barnes killed a teen girl named Samantha McCaffery during her prom in Livonia. The video says the murder was revenge for Samantha’s cop father, Mike McCaffery, killing Barnes’s son several years ago.
A quick scrub of the Dax News TikTok account shows numerous fabricated stories based in Michigan. There are even AI-generated videos of the alleged suspects.
According to the Dax News account, the page has a “commitment to portraying Black individuals who stand up to an oppressive and racist system.”
“As Dax News continues to grow and challenge established narratives, the world will be watching closely to see how this independent, Black voice shapes the ongoing discourse around justice, race, and media representation,” the page wrote in a post after receiving an email from CBS News regarding the stories posted.
However, doing so through fabricated stories that spread quickly has caused confusion, as many view the stories as true.
In May, TikTok said it would start labeling AI-generated content on the platform. However, the Dax News stories do not have this designation. On a page that lays out how TikTok handles AI-generated material, the social media site says, “On TikTok, we require people to disclose realistic AI-generated content (AIGC), so that they can express their creativity while providing context for viewers.”
Being vigilant when consuming information online is an important part of combating fake and AI-generated news. If you see a story online, be skeptical and check the source. If you do not recognize the source as a legitimate news outlet, search for the story. In the case of the prom murder, one story does come up on Google, but it is from a news site that is not real and does not include where the website is based – a sign it may not be reliable.
Fake news isn’t the only issue artifical intelligence is creating. The technology is being used to clone voices, allowing scammers to trick victims into thinking they are speaking with a loved one.
The mimicking of another person’s voice could soon be a major source of online scams, misinformation, and trouble for governmental institutions.
