Sheila Beasley was struggling to clean up after her beloved Rottweiler, Rocky, on a Bronx sidewalk in December 2008 when she briefly put his leash down—a move spotted by a nearby plainclothes police officer who promptly wrote her a summons for having an unleashed dog.
Beasley, a 50-year-old mother of two, said she forgot about the ticket and missed a court date to resolve it. That decision triggered a warrant for her arrest, and nearly three years later, police showed up at her door and hauled her off to jail, where she stayed for four days.
