We’d call it ironic, but irony is something you’re not supposed to expect.
Poor Lady Liberty. She’s had it hard recently and now it seems like she’s hit a new low. Channing Gould is a 19-year-old arts student who auditioned and won a job performing as the dancing “Lady Liberty” for Liberty Tax Service in Fort Worth Texas. Gould was dancing for his job on the median outside the tax preparation company to get customer’s attention. But instead of attracting customers, his dance attracted the police instead.
When police arrived the officers on the scene told him that he would have to move off the median three times, but he refused. He told them that he was trying to do his job and reportedly said, “This is not your jurisdiction. Get away from me.”
The officers kept attempting to get him to leave the median unsuccessfully, so they decided to arrest him for violating the ordinance against solicitation on the medians. Lady Liberty refused to get in the vehicle and that’s when the officers decided to get tough on him/her.
The police deployed a taser on Liberty, shocking her in the back. It was not effective. Then they tried tasering Liberty in the face… it was SUPER effective!Officers gained control of Liberty and sent her to the hospital to have the tasers removed before being taken to jail and slapped with an additional resisting arrest charge.
Liberty was finally found innocent in court later, when prosecutors dismissed the charges. But they didn’t let Liberty off that easy.
Dallas Observer: “I had to write 52 times on a board that I would not argue with police in order to get a dismissal,” Gould said. “In front of the judge and witnesses that were there, I signed it. I even made it colorful for them and all that…I felt like Bart Simpson.”
