QUINCY - A Quincy resident was shocked and insulted with a police department response to her complaint about an officer.

Nichol Knebel said the three-page response letter she received from the Quincy Police Department seemed like the department didn't feel like the officer behaved poorly. Knebel raised issues around how an officer dealt with her when the police came to tow her car. She also questioned a Quincy municipal code which prohibits cars from parking in the same spot for more than 48 hours without moving the car 500 feet.

Quincy officers came to Knebel's residence twice to tell her to move a vehicle parked on the street. She explained her husband drives to work about once a week, and normally opts to ride his bicycle to work.

"My husband dug (the car out,) he moved it, no problem," she said. "Two days later, Friday, my day off, just sat down on my couch with my cup of coffee and I'm in my bathrobe, logging on with my laptop and I see a tow truck driving by my house. The next thing I know I hear the sound of a tow truck backing up."

When she went to investigate, she found a police officer and a tow truck in front of her house, she said. After asking what was going on, an officer told her they came to tow the car.

"An officer says, 'We're here to tow your car.' I said, 'You can't tow our car, we moved it like you asked,'" she said. "(The officer said,) 'No you didn't.' (I said,) 'You can clearly see that this car was moved five feet,' and he says, 'That's not far enough.'"

When she said she didn't know how far the car should be moved, and they shouldn't be able to tow it, the officer shouted at her to get back into the house and be quiet, Knebel said.

Knebel disagreed with Police Capt. Gene Fretheim's assertion that the car was "in the same location surrounded by the same snow 48 hours after the warning expired."

"We were given a verbal warning. We were not given a citation saying that we had eight hours to move the car," she said. "We were not given a copy of the ordinance that said, 'You had to move your car 500 feet.' So we moved our car 5 feet, thinking that this is not an abandoned vehicle, and our car clearly moves. It's currently licensed. It's currently registered."

Officers need to provide a copy of the code if the city planned to enforce it, and not make people guess, she said.

She reiterated her question about what the purpose of the code is, saying officers told her she could drive around the block and park in the same spot.

"That doesn't do anything for snow removal," she said. "The snow plow still can't clear that section any better than if I had actually moved my car."

She pointed out the ordinance states the citation needs to be handed to the owner or placed on the car, neither of which happened.

She disagreed with a portion of the letter stating she "came on strong" to the officer "basically telling him what he was going to do and what he wasn't going to do."

"That statement is ridiculous and laughable," she said. "I was standing with my foot out the door, head poked out from behind my screen, in a bathrobe and slippers and nothing else. I was not wanting to draw special attention to myself. While I'm sure that I didn't look my best, I certainly was not intimidating."

Knebel didn't believe city officials would be comfortable with people speaking to them or their spouse the way the officer spoke to her, she said.

"His conduct was unbecoming," she said. "For you guys to say that I was at fault, and it was OK for him to talk to a citizen that way. I'm not a criminal. I think we're headed down a slippery slope."

She appreciated officers deal with high-stress situations where the level of aggressiveness would be necessary, but the situation wasn't a high-stress situation.

"I wasn't posing a danger to anyone," she said.

Knebel disagreed with Fretheim's saying the police can't be everywhere at once, and they have to deal with the crimes they see at the moment. The statement was made in reaction to Knebel saying it felt like the law was being enforced arbitrarily.

"That doesn't work for me," she said. "I'm sorry that you think that something has more priority, but if you are going to enforce the law or the ordinance on one person you have to enforce it on everyone."

Knebel drove around her immediate neighborhood and there was more than 40 vehicles with the same violation, she said.

"None of them had a sticker on their car," she said. "You can't pick and choose who you're going to do this to."

She finished by disagreeing with Fretheim's conclusion the city should support their officers, and if the city and department pull their support officers won't risk getting involved.

"This is basically telling me that you will support your officers but not your citizens," she said. "We weren't lawbreakers who were upset about being caught. We were upset about a person in a position of power and authority abusing that position of power and authority."