The police chief of a small Georgia town is defending an officer who deployed a stun gun on a "smiling" 87-year-old woman, saying she refused to comply with numerous commands to put down a kitchen knife she was using to cut dandelions. But relatives of the octogenarian, Martha al-Bishara, say police failed to use good common sense to prevent the incident from quickly escalating to a use-of-force confrontation in Chatsworth that landed their diminutive matriarch in handcuffs. "We have nothing but love for this county, but within that context, we think that what happened is absolutely ridiculous," al-Bishara's grandson, Timothy Douhne, a 24-year-old medical student, told ABC News on Wednesday. "If they had calmed down, deescalated the situation, listened a little bit, we wouldn't be having this issue right now. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. "She told us she was smiling at them to tell them that she wasn't a threat ... and she was trying to get closer to them to communicate with them, and that's when they tased her," he said. "My grandmother is a human being who they didn't have any patience with. What happened to Mayberry?" he said, referring to the fictional small North Carolina town from the old "The Andy Griffith Show." "Would you ever see Andy Griffith tase an 87-year-old woman? It points to a bigger problem with the lack of human interaction." But Chatsworth Police Chief Josh Etheridge said the officer had little choice but to use a Taser on al-Bishara when she failed to obey numerous orders to put down the knife as the 5-foot-2 woman stepped toward him. He said there is police body-camera footage of the incident, but he has yet to release it because charges against al-Bishara are pending. She has been ordered to appear in court on Sept. 19. "She came walking toward the officer. After multiple commands, he told her to stop several times. She continued walking at which time we deployed the Taser," Etheridge said in a video statement to the Daily Citizen News of Dalton, Georgia. The incident occurred on Friday afternoon after police received a 911 call from a staffer at the Boys and Girls Club, saying, "This lady is walking on the bike trail, she has a knife and she won't leave. She doesn't speak English." The caller told the dispatcher that the elderly woman did not threaten anyone with the knife. "She's old so she can’t get around too well...," the caller said, according to the 911 call, which has been made public. "Looks like she’s walking around looking for something, like, vegetation to cut down or something." Chief Etheridge said he personally responded to the scene and he and an officer found al-Bishara behind the Boys and Girls Club in the town of roughly 4,200 people, about 70 miles northwest of Atlanta. "We were able to contain her to the back area. She was in an elevated position above both myself and the other officer that was there on scene. She did have a knife in her right hand," Etheridge said. He said he and the other officer repeatedly told the woman to put down the knife, and that he even pulled out his pocket knife and threw it on the ground to demonstrate. "I felt like everything was handled by the protocol," the chief said. "Of course, we'll still be reviewing this ... to see if there is anything we could have done differently, anything we could have done better." Etheridge said he realizes that some people might ask why the officer didn't just retreat. But he said had the officer backed up down the sloping terrain, he could have fallen and accidentally shot the woman. "That was the whole goal, to try to avoid using any type of force, but if we have to use force, use the minimum force," he said. "No one wants to tase anyone, much less an 87-year-old woman. "But then again what do we do? Do we try to go hands-on? She could have been hurt just as easily, or even fell on the knife itself," he said. "Lord help us if she had tried to stop the officer and held the knife in an aggressive manner, and then deadly force would have been used." Douhne said his grandmother, who has nine children and immigrated to the United States from Syria nearly two decades ago, speaks mostly Arabic. She told her family that when she was shot with the stun gun she was telling the officers her son-in-law's name, Solomon Douhne -- a retired pastor, entrepreneur and former school science teacher in the area -- in hopes they would contact him. He said his grandmother, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2001 along with her 96-year-old husband, lives across the street from the Boys and Girls Club. He said his grandmother had gone onto the property to collect dandelions to use in a traditional Arabic dish because none had bloomed in her garden. The grandmother was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor criminal trespass and obstruction of an officer and held at the police station for about three hours, Douhne said. Police refused to allow his mother and sister to interpret for al-Bishara while she was being booked and having her mugshot taken. Douhne said that once his grandmother was released, relatives took her to a hospital to be treated for bruises and pain to her body. "She's still feeling pretty shook up," Douhne said. "Her body is still pretty tired. She has some symptoms, I think, of post-traumatic stress. She can't go outside and look at the spot where it happened. She's feeling really bad about the whole situation and really embarrassed, and has been crying on and off." He said that while his family has sought legal counsel, "we don't want to be too hasty in assuming what we're going to do." "The main purpose behind what we're trying to do is we're trying to hold the officers accountable for their actions," he said.<doc-sep>CHATSWORTH, Ga. — A Georgia police chief said an officer was justified in using a Taser to stun an 87-year-old woman after she didn't obey commands to drop a knife in her hand. Martha Al-Bishara was charged with criminal trespass and obstructing an officer Friday, when police held her at gunpoint before bringing her to the ground with a jolt from the electrified prongs of a stun gun. Relatives said Al-Bishara doesn't speak English and was merely out cutting dandelions with a kitchen knife near her home in Chatsworth, about 85 miles north of Atlanta. "An 87-year-old woman with a knife still has the ability to hurt an officer," Chatsworth Police Chief Josh Etheridge told the Daily Citizen-News of Dalton. "There was no anger, there was no malice in this," Etheridge said. "In my opinion, it was the lowest use of force we could have used to simply stop that threat at the time." Chatsworth Police Chief Josh Etheridge NBC Etheridge responded along with two other officers Friday after an employee of a local Boys and Girls Club called 911 to report a woman with a knife was walking outside and would not leave. "She's old so she can't get around too well, but," the employee said on the 911 recording. "Looks like she's walking around looking for something, like, vegetation to cut down or something. There's a bag, too." When Al-Bishara didn't follow commands to drop her knife, Etheridge said, he tried to communicate with her by taking his own pocket knife and throwing it on the ground. But Al-Bishara's relatives said the officers should have shown more patience. "If three police officers couldn't handle an 87-year-old woman, you might want to reconsider hanging up your badge," said Solomon Douhne, the woman's great-nephew. Family members said Al-Bishara's spent about two hours at the Murray County jail before being released Friday and that she still has trouble sleeping and is nervous about going outside. "She is OK," said Martha Douhne, a great-granddaughter. "She is still repeating the incident over in her mind and telling us she didn't mean for this to happen and apologizing that she didn't want to bring this on us. She is having trouble sleeping and is stressed." Etheridge said the police department is conducting an internal use-of-force review.<doc-sep>
“Looks like she's walking around looking for some vegetation to cut down or something,” a 911 caller reported. Police are defending an officer's decision to use his Taser against an 87-year-old woman in Georgia after she allegedly stepped toward them with a knife she was using to cut dandelions. On Friday afternoon, Martha Al-Bishara, an American citizen originally from Syria, walked into a wooded lot behind a Boys and Girls Club in Chatsworth, near her house, to snip a few plants for a salad to help her cholesterol, her nephew Solomon Douhne told Oxygen.com. An employee on the property called 911 to report that a woman with a knife wouldn’t leave. “Looks like she's walking around looking for some vegetation to cut down or something,” the caller said, according to WRCB in Northwestern Georgia. “She told me she doesn't speak English and she's walking up the trail with a knife.” The dispatcher then asked if Al-Bishara had tried to attack anyone. The caller replied, “No, she brought the knife onto the property in her hand. She didn't try to attack anybody or anything.” When officers arrived, Al-Bishara was holding a plastic bag and the knife. Officers said they witnessed Al-Bishara cutting weeds and asked her to drop the weapon, according to a police report obtained by Oxygen.com. They approached her with guns drawn. Al-Bishara does not speak English, Douhne said, and was probably confused by the officer's commands. The officers said they told her to drop the knife, but she didn't, according to the police report. They said she was calm and looking right at them, and at some points would raise the knife. They said she didn't react to the fact that they were pointing a weapon at her. She didn't comply with their commands, according to the report, and kept walking toward them with the knife in her hand. That's when one of them tased her. "The first prong hit her above her left breast by her heart,” Douhne said, “and the second prong hit her on the stomach." She went down on the ground grunting on the right side, he said, still holding the knife. Officers then turned her on her stomach and handcuffed her. She was taken to jail on charges of obstruction of an officer and criminal trespass. She was in jail for about three hours before she was released. Chatsworth Police Chief Josh Etheridge defended the officer’s actions in a statement, calling the event “extremely unfortunate.” “The last thing any member of our department wanted to do was use a Taser on an elderly female,” Etheridge said in the statement. “However, when she began to walk towards the officer, from an elevated position with a knife, the officer used the most reasonable amount of force that he could at the time.” Douhne, a former police officer, doesn't think the stun gun was necessary. “There was no one at risk and no need to tase," he said. “The officer is 6' 3'' and 250 pounds. He's not a little guy. He shouldn't have put himself that close to her.” Al-Bishara, he said, has a sore hip and back and feels depressed about the situation. Neighbors have been visiting her and that's been lifting her spirits, though. [Photos: Solomon Douhne]