A Maine woman had a rather unorthodox excuse for why she stole 40 Donald Trump signs: she thought there were just too many of them. Betta Stothart, of Falmouth, Maine, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post where she describes how seeing the 40+ Trump signs in her hometown caused her to "snap" and "become unhinged" and then steal them with two of her friends. Stothart claims the presence of the numerous Trump signs was disrupting the "equilibrium" of the community, which is one of Maine's richest. She also said that she felt "assaulted" by the amount of signs.
The escapade was not premeditated: We simply jumped into my Jetta wagon, drove down to the strip and got to work. In all, it took less than 20 minutes. We grabbed about 40 signs and threw them in the hatchback. I hadn’t really thought about what I would do with the signs; I just wanted them gone. At the time, we believed we were doing the right thing. There were so many Trump signs up and down our main drag — it was destroying all sense of equilibrium in our community.
But the Falmouth police happened to spot us as we were preparing to leave the scene of the crime. The officer was kind, informing us that we had stolen someone else’s personal property, which had not really entered into my mind while I was doing it. He took the signs and sent us home.
Stothat also asserts that she didn't realize stealing signs actually constituted a crime and that the signs were someone's property. Under Maine law, Stothat is actually subject to a $250 fine--per sign.
Although a supporter of Hillary Clinton (with her own yard sign to boot), Stothat says that she's actually not all that political. In an article about the theft published in the Portland Press Herald, Stothat says that she intends on apologizing to the chairman of the Making Maine Great Again PAC, which purchased the signs.
Stothat isn't the only Trump sign thief in the Pine Tree State. Also in mid-October, someone stole several signs that were planted by the marsh in the town of Scarborough.
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This is absurd. While there are a lot of political signs everywhere, as far as I know no laws have been broken and they are allowed to be where they were planted. To say that an abundance of signs is an "assault" is laughable at best and is offensive to people who have actually been victims of assault. A person does not have the right to take property that does not belong to them, and if this were any other kind of theft, the criminal probably wouldn't be permitted to publish a smug op-ed in a major newspaper attempting to explain away their actions.
People need to grow up.
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