Texas Man Issued 6 Warrants For Not Cutting His Grass, Given Jail Time

Rick Yoes, 58, of Grand Prairie, Texas spent a weekend in jail because of overgrown grass.

by Lou Colagiovanni

(ANTIMEDIA) Rick Yoes, 58, of Grand Prairie, Texas found himself in trouble with the law when six warrants were issued for his arrest due to the unspeakable crime of not cutting his grass. Oh, the humanity — think of the children. In Yoes’ defense he may have not wanted to cut his lawn for fear that police would have confused a lawnmower as a weapon, and shot him dead.

The trouble between Yoes and Grand Prairie goes back 19 years to when he originally moved in to the home in 1996. Yoes concedes in that time there have been a total of of 59 violations listed in Grand Prairie’s records. Previous disputes were settled amiably between the city and Yoes until 2010, when he stopped answering the city’s complaints.

The 2010 citation was not the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back in this precarious situation, but was the first of a final six citations for $282 each. The final three citations came in the Summer of 2014, none of which Yoes answered. City records show Yoes was sent notices regarding cutting the grass which was documented at over a foot tall, but Yoes claims he did not receive the notices. According to the local reporting of wfaa.com Yoes said, “I assume they probably mailed me something.  It never landed in my hands. If they sent me certified mail, I don’t pick certified mail up.”

To his credit Yoes claims the yard has not been maintained because the home is in foreclosure and he no longer lives on the property.

Amy Sprinkles, spokeswoman for Grand Prairie, says the entire situation could have been resolved without the involvement of law enforcement if Yoes had answered the city’s requests, “Unfortunately since 2014 Yoes had not responded to our repeated requests to jointly solve the problems, which has forced us to ultimately cite him for the violations.”

The city’s response is rather disingenuous. Essentially their position is Mr. Yoes would not have had warrants out for his arrest had he merely paid the city their requested extortion fee. It seems that the fabled debtors prisons from the shameful addles of history are making a comeback!

In total Rick Yoes spent two days in the The Grand Prairie Police Department Detention Center for not cutting his grass. He says ,“I still think I need to address this with the City of Grand Prairie as far as how it was handled.”

Apparently Texas likes everything big — except the grass on the private property of its citizens.

Lou Colagiovanni is a columnist for Anti-Media and a political consultant based in Las Vegas.  Lou is the Editor-in-Chief of ruthless-politics.com and the popular political discussion community We Survived Bush. You will Survive Obama. He is also the National Crime Examiner, and a political journalist for Examiner.com. His work has published all over the world, and he is often a featured guest on radio and television. You may contact Lou at [email protected].