Opinion ID: 2264462
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Wildoners' Account

Text: Plaintiff concedes that Gannon made a report to police claiming that she had heard plaintiff being loud and abusive and threatening to throw a knife at his wife. According to Mrs. Wildoner's deposition (which was taken in her husband's presence), however, the couple had not been arguing that day. Instead, plaintiff was, at times, talking loud about their grandchildren and, later, he was angry and shouting because Gannon had telephoned three times that day out of concern for Mrs. Wildoner's safety. Gannon's third call was to let Mrs. Wildoner know that she had called the police. When the police arrived, one officer told Mrs. Wildoner to wait in the bedroom; when the officer returned he indicated that they were going to arrest plaintiff. According to Mrs. Wildoner, the police had her husband's hands behind his back and he was saying, You're hurting me, you're hurting me. Mrs. Wildoner attempted to help her husband put on his pants. In attempting to do so, she bruised her arm on the edge of a table. At some point, Mrs. Wildoner gave up trying to get her husband's pants on and the police took her husband away in a wheelchair, clad only in a t-shirt and his underwear. Mrs. Wildoner denied having told police that her husband had been drinking, slapped her with a cane, verbally abused her, or thrown a knife at her. She admitted having told police that her husband was angry. She also conceded that a knife was in plain view, but said that it was on the table, not the floor. Finally, Mrs. Wildoner testified that her husband could not possibly have beaten her because I'd run like hell. Plaintiff, in his deposition, stated that when the police arrived, he was seated at the kitchen table tapping a knife on the table. He agreed that at one point it may have flown out of his hands and landed on the kitchen floor, but he stated that his wife was in the bedroom at that time. According to plaintiff, one of the officers said we don't have nothing here, and was going to leave, but one officer then abruptly returned, said I'm going to try something, read plaintiff his rights, and twisted his hands behind his back to handcuff him. Aside from trying to get his arms behind his back to handcuff him, plaintiff concedes that the police did nothing else to him physically. Moreover, although plaintiff claims the police told him that he was bluffing about being unable to walk, he also concedes that the police did get him a wheelchair and did not try to force him to walk. An ambulance transported him to the police station. Plaintiff, who was seventy years old, testified that he had been wounded in the knee in World War II and had never recovered the full use of his legs. For the last eight to nine years he had had trouble bending the knee and had developed arthritis in the other leg, making it difficult for him to walk. He testified that he needed a cane and it took him a long time to get out of a chair. According to plaintiff, he could not possibly have attacked his wife because [s]he could give me a shove and that would be the end of it. In March, 1997, Arthur Wildoner, Jr. was deposed by defendants' attorneys concerning his knowledge of the incident. Wildoner, Jr., a Garfield police officer for twenty-one years, testified that at the time of the September 1993 incident, his parents had resided at the Ramsey apartment for approximately one to two years. Prior to that time, they had resided in a private residence in Garfield for approximately twenty-one years. Wildoner, Jr. worked as a Garfield police officer for about the last nineteen of his parents' twenty-one years' residence in Garfield. During that time, Wildoner, Jr. testified, the Garfield police had been called to his parents' home in connection with domestic disturbances on approximately five occasions. Wildoner, Jr. believed that the altercations were verbal and that, to his knowledge, no physical assaults had been alleged, nor any domestic violence complaints filed, in connection with any of those incidents. According to Wildoner, Jr., the verbal altercations between his parents continued after they moved to Ramsey. The Wildoners' loud arguments had given rise to complaints by other tenants and the couple had been threatened with eviction. Wildoner, Jr. also stated that, when asked what happened, plaintiff told him that he had a fight with mommy and a couple of other choice words out of his mouth and he said they arrested me. That same evening Wildoner, Jr. asked his mother what happened. She told him that they were fighting, he is drinking, she took his keys away and ... he threw a knife at her. Wildoner, Jr. testified that his mother had reported that plaintiff had hit her a few times over the years, but Wildoner, Jr. stated that he was not concerned about the altercations because his mother was in better physical condition and his father could not throw a knife with any velocity or substance behind it. Asked whether he, in his experience responding to domestic violence complaints, would have arrested a frail elderly man such as his father who had reportedly assaulted a woman that's basically strong and healthy, Wildoner, Jr. replied, Yes. If the law states that there is a victim who claims she was assaulted with a knife that was thrown at her, whether the guy is frail or not, he was arrested for domestic violence.