Amanda Ponzio
Julia Shields
On December 26, 2014, Chattanooga Police Department Officials said that two victims were stopped at a stop sign when a woman, pulled up next to them in a dark colored sedan and fired a single round into their vehicle. The woman, Julia Shields, struck the radiator and disabled it. After that incident, police began to receive several calls about Ms. Shields pointing her weapon at people as she drove by. Officers were dispatched to try and find the armed, and dangerous, woman and as soon as Shields saw the cops, she fled the scene and sent police chasing after her, leading down several roads
where she continued to point her gun at other drivers as she drove by.
Then when finally cornered and stopped at an intersection she pointed her weapon at the officers…but Ms. Shield was taken into custody without incident or injury and has been charged with 3 counts of Attempted First Degree Murder, 7 counts of Aggravated Assault, Possession of a Firearm during the Commission of a Felony, Felony Evading Arrest, and Felony Reckless Endangerment…and most amazingly…she is still alive!
Meanwhile on December 17th in Barnegat, NJ, near my home town, police received several calls about a female subject standing in the middle of the road and waving a rifle at children while arguing with them over a basketball game they were playing outside her home. Multiple officers responded to the scene where they found Amanda Ponzio and…took her into custody… without incident. The investigation revealed that Ponzio had become engaged in a verbal dispute with the juveniles, then entered her Schooner Avenue home and returned with a Remington 597 rifle, which she then used to threaten the juveniles…but most amazingly…she is now still alive!
Two perpetrators with guns and not one shot fired…by the police! Do these policemen of New Jersey and Tennessee know something that the police in Missouri, Ohio, and New York don’t know? How were these policemen able to take into custody two would-be killers who actually had real guns, and pointed at them, without incident… when those other policemen couldn’t manage to apprehend unarmed perpetrators, one of them a child even, without killing them and without fearing for their own lives?
Was it a New Year’s miracle? Or…Were these two women just not fat and asthmatic enough to warrant the officers disdain? Maybe they just weren’t scary enough to strike fear into the arresting officers souls? Were they just not pointing their actual, real weapons in a menacing enough way to make those policemen fear for their lives? Did they not disrespect the officers enough by using the F word or other nasty words that make grown men cringe in fear? Or perhaps they didn’t act disrespectfully enough to the arresting officials to warrant lethal retaliation? Maybe they hadn’t already committed other crimes, like shoplifting and loitering, to make them seem deserving enough of a public death sentence?
Who knows? I sure as hell can’t figure it out. Can you? But I have learned one thing. It can be done! Officers of the law can apprehend criminals without incident and without deadly force…even in the face of real deadly force, not imagined. Kudos to these brave, courageous and extremely competent police heroes of New Jersey and Tennessee. If only they could teach other officers of the law throughout the United States what it is they know.
And what do you suppose that is?
