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Pay Your $75 Fee or South Fulton Fire Dept. Will Watch Your Home Burn to the Ground

By Bruce Carton

I thought a statement made by the Oakland Police back in August was pretty bold ("If you come home to find your house burglarized and you call, we're not coming"), but that was before I learned about how they roll at the South Fulton Fire Department in Tennessee. To put it simply, the SFFD would like you to know that if you don't pay your annual $75 county fire service fee, they will stand by and watch your house burn to the ground. If you think the SFFD is bluffing, just ask Gene Cranick. He failed to pay his $75 and then had the misfortune of seeing his home catch fire. The Cranicks called 911 several times, and were told that the SFFD would not come on account of, you know, the $75. The Cranicks then reportedly offered to pay the $75 if firefighters would extinguish the fire, but that offer was rejected. "I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," Gene Cranick told local TV station WPSD.The SFFD later did come to the scene when the fire spread to a fee-paying neighbor's field, but still refused to...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on October 06, 2010 (boomark / email).