Beaten for not watering lawn

A 70-year-old US woman was left bruised and bloody after a clash with police who came to arrest her because her lawn was dry and brown.

Trouble flared when Utah pensioner Betty Perry, 70, refused to give her name to an officer trying to caution her for not watering her lawn.

She says the officer hit her with handcuffs, cutting her nose, although police insist she slipped and fell.

Ms Perry told Utah newspaper the Daily Herald: "I tried to sit down and get away from him. I don't know what he's doing. I said: 'What are you doing?' And he hit me with those handcuffs in my face," she said. "He's just trying to cover his tracks, as far as I'm concerned."

The officer had judged that Ms Perry's "sadly neglected and dying landscape" breached an Orem city guideline and was attempting to issue a formal caution.

She was treated in a local hospital for the cut to her nose and for other bruises before being taken to jail.

But she was let go when police realised there were "other ways" of finding out her identity without taking her to jail, a police spokesman said.

The arresting officer has not been named but has been placed on administrative leave, he added.