The August sun was unforgiving that Tuesday afternoon, baking the asphalt until heat waves shimmered like water across the highway. At seventy-two, Harold Morrison had learned to respect the desert climate where we’d retired five years earlier, but he’d also learned not to let weather dictate his life. His monthly ride to the VA medical center in Phoenix was a ritual he’d maintained for three years—sixty miles each way on the Harley-Davidson that had been his companion for over two decades.
I’m Nancy Morrison, and I’ve been married to Harold for forty-eight years. I’ve watched him navigate two tours in Vietnam, a thirty-year career as an electrical contractor, the challenges of aging, and the loss of too many friends to war and time. But I’d never seen him as broken as he was when he finally came home that afternoon, four hours later than expected.
Harold had left at ten in the morning for what should have been a routine trip—medical appointments, lunch at the diner he favored near the VA hospital, and home by mid-afternoon. When six o’clock passed without word from him, I began to worry. Harold was nothing if not reliable, and his phone calls were as regular as clockwork when he traveled.
It was our neighbor Janet who called me with the news that would change everything. “Nancy, I just drove past the intersection of Route 87 and Miller Road,” she said, her voice tight with concern. “Harold’s motorcycle is there, surrounded by police cars.
They have him on the ground.”
The twenty-minute drive to that intersection felt like hours. When I arrived, I found a scene that will be burned into my memory forever: my husband, a decorated Vietnam veteran with arthritis in his knees and hands, lying face-down on asphalt that was hot enough to cook an egg, his hands cuffed behind his back while a young police officer stood over him. Officer Michael Kowalski, according to his name tag, appeared to be in his late twenties—about the same age Harold had been during his second tour in Vietnam.
He had the aggressive posture of someone trying to prove his authority, and his voice carried across the intersection as he barked orders at my husband. “Stay down! Don’t move unless I tell you to move!”
Three other patrol cars had arrived as backup, their red and blue lights creating a carnival atmosphere that drew rubberneckers and smartphone cameras.
Traffic was backed up in both directions as people slowed to stare at what appeared to be a major criminal arrest. Harold’s crime? An allegedly modified exhaust system on his motorcycle that officers claimed was too loud.
I parked as close as I could and approached the scene, identifying myself as Harold’s wife to the first officer I encountered. The explanation I received was both infuriating and absurd: Harold had been pulled over for a noise violation, and when he’d questioned the citation, arguing that his bike had passed state inspection just two weeks earlier, he’d been deemed “belligerent and uncooperative.”
“Ma’am, your husband was acting aggressively,” Officer Kowalski told me when I demanded to know why a seventy-two-year-old man was being treated like a dangerous criminal. “We had to subdue him for everyone’s safety.”
I looked at Harold, still lying on pavement that was easily over 130 degrees, his gray hair matted with sweat, his face pressed against asphalt that was burning his skin.
The “aggressive” behavior that had warranted this treatment was apparently his audacity to ask why he was being cited for an exhaust system that had passed legal inspection. For twenty-three minutes, Harold remained on that burning pavement while officers ran his license, checked his registration, and called for additional backup as if they’d apprehended an armed robbery suspect. During that time, I watched passing motorists point and stare, some taking photos, others making comments about “old bikers who think they’re above the law.”
When Harold was finally allowed to stand, his face was marked with burns from the asphalt, his hands were shaking, and his dignity was shattered.
The man who had survived combat, raised three children, and built a successful business with his own hands looked defeated in a way I’d never seen before. The citation Harold received was for $150—a noise violation that carried no points on his license and could have been resolved with a simple ticket. Instead, he’d been subjected to treatment that wouldn’t have been appropriate for an actual criminal, much less a senior citizen whose only offense was having an exhaust system that some officer subjectively deemed too loud.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page to discover the rest 🔎👇
