Governor Huntsman and Mayor Billings:

Not so very long ago:

A city police officer in Orem, Utah gave us the case of assault and battery against a senior citizen who is now known, the world over, as "the Lawn Lady."  Her crime?  Not putting enough water on her lawn to keep it alive and green.

A Utah Highway Patrolman in Vernal showed the world just how a taser works, and how fast you can give an alleged speeder, who poses no threat to you, two jolts of incapacitating electro-shock. (Youtube: the words Utah, taser and speeder.) His crime? A minor speeding violation, the kind any of us are liable to commit on any given unlucky day.

And now a lawless cadre of Provo City law enforcement agents have given us the case of the "the battered dog owner."  His crime?  Leaving two dogs in the car on a 40-degree day (that's Farenheit, not Celsius) while he carried out a transaction in a local bank. (See the Deseret News' initial report here, and KSL-TV's initial report here.)

The first two of these cases have run their course.  Both resulted in convictions of the accused.  The "lawn lady" was convicted of resisting arrest.  The taser victim was convicted of speeding.

They got the book thrown at them for minor offenses, in spite of having already paid a pretty heavy penalty when they were unnecessarily arrested and incarcerated.

The police, as anyone would have predicted, were exonerated, with no disciplinary actions being taken against either agent; this, in spite of the clear evidence that at no point in either encounter was any attempt ever made to harm either policemen.

This predictable and well-worn template of police abuse followed by subsequent police exonerations, appears, once again, to be in play in the case of  Mr. Chris Lauridsen, a Provo business owner, who was recently beaten by three agents of the Provo City Police who used night sticks to carry out their attacks.  (See photo here.)

Such abuse is unconscienable, outrageous, and should be, once corroborated by an independent investigation into the matter, grounds for termination, followed by criminal prosecution, conviction, fines, and jail time.

Utah and its citizens are besmirched each time such an incident comes to knowledge of the world-wide public, especially when the city prosecutors in these high publicized cases insist doggedly on doubling the trauma to these victims by putting them through the ignomy of a show trial, where the results are orchestrated in advance, and where the purpose is to to protect the municipalities in which these abuses occur from the court-awarded judgments which justice would demand when these excessive misuses of force are undertaken by Utah's police agents.

In light of these considerations:

We, the undersigned, cognizant of the inherent bias which exists on the part of any internal review board that has been, or may be, called to "investigate" the actions of the police agents who are known to have assaulted the victim in this case, Chris Lauridsen, demand a full and independent investigation of the law enforcement officers implicated in this affair, with a view to holding them fully accountable for their initiation of aggression against Mr. Lauridsen.

Further, we demand that the charges pending in Provo City against Chris Lauridsen be permanently dropped and that he be given a complete and unconditional apology as well as full monetary compensation for the physical and emotional trauma to which he was subjected by the law-enforcement officers implicated in this matter.

Respectfully,

The undersigned citizens of the World.

Contact information:  The author of this petition and the organizer of this petition drive is Mike Ridgway, of Salt Lake City and Tooele, Utah.

Mike can be reached by phone at 801-438-4139, or by email at miketangoromeo@gmail.com.

For more information on this case, and to see pictures and video of Mr. Lauridsen, please vist Mike's blog, StopTheBrutality.blogspot.com.

Mike welcomes inquiries from any interested parties and encourages activists who feel strongly that the perpetrators in this and other similar case must be held accountable to join my Facebook group, "Better Accountability."