Vermont's Best Mugshot Of The Year

A teenager, home alone in the southern Vermont town of Marlboro, called police at around 3:30 this morning saying there was a strange man in the house, sleeping.

Which led to Vermont's best mug shot of the year, as you can see in this post.

According to NECN and other area media outlets, the strange man in the house turned out to be Sean J. Barber, 43, of nearby Wilmington. Police said they found Barber sleeping in the teen's house, in a clow costume, drunk and possessing cocaine.

So I guess he's in trouble, given the trespassing and drug possession charges he faces.  Definitely a sad clown look, don't you think?

Plus the embarassment of the mug shot, of course.

Kafka Lives In Roadside Drug Testing Kits

These two people were held in an Arkansas jail for
two months because authorities thought baking soda
found in their truck was cocaine, and didn't bother
to properly test it to prove their suspicions. 

A couple from Utah learned the hard way that in today's America, if you have a baggie full of baking soda in your truck and the cops decide it's cocaine, then it's cocaine and you're in a heap of trouble.

Talk about living in a post-fact world!  

According to KUTV in Salt Lake City, Gail Griffin and her husband Wendell Harvey are truck drivers who haul explosives for the military.

At least they did until the fine law enforcement officials in Arkansas went into stubborn batshit crazy mode over a couple bags of baking soda Harvey had in the truc.

As KUTV describes it: "They have top security clearance, and they've never been in trouble with the law. So in May, while driving through Arkansas, they weren't concerned when police stopped them in Fort Chaffee."

They should have been concerned, it turns out.

Police found the three baggies full of baking soda. The cops used a roadside drug testing kit to see what was in the baggies. The widely used drug testing kit is known to be wildly inaccurate, coming up with zillions of false positives, but it's used by lots of cop shops anyway.

The road side drug testing kit decided that the baking soda was $3,000 worth of cocaine, so police locked the couple up.

For two and a half months if you can believe that, because nobody in Arkansas would do a more accurate follow up test to see if the baking soda was really cocaine and not, you know, baking soda.

Only after lots of pleading from the Arkansas Public Defender's office that the stuff was tested. According to television station KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas, the couple didn't have phone numbers memorized and so were not able to call relatives for help getting an attorney.

No easy phone access was provided. Prosecutors dragged their feet getting the substance authorities found in the truck tested correctly. And you guessed it, the powdery stuff in the baggies was baking soda.

By the way, the truck drivers arrested were African-American. This being Arkansas, there is the possibility of racism, though I know I can't prove that here

The Fort Chaffee Police Department is basically shrugging its shoulders at locking an innocent couple up for more than two months and quite possibly destroying their livlihoods.

Fort Chaffee Police say they tested three times using the faulty device and it came up cocaine three times. Good enough for them.

Sure, hold the couple until you get a more sophisticated test, but why did authorities wait two months to do it, and only when prodded?

A reporter for KUTV got his hands on one of these road side test kits and received instruction on how to use it. He tested common household items like Comet cleanser, aspirin, cold medicine and chocolate. Four of the ten tests he did came up (false) positive for illicit drugs.

Now that's a REALLY inaccurate testing device!

Even if Arkansas authorities were trying to demonstrate how "tough" they were on drug criminals, they wasted a lot of Arkansans' tax money on incarcerating the pair.

Says KUTV: 

"As for Harvey and Griffin, they only recently got their truck back from Arkansas authorities. But they say the truck has major damage that requires repairs. 

The couple also said they have not worked since they were released from jail. They said they are still trying to get their security clearance reinstated, and that they are running out of money.

Harvey said what is expecially concerning to him and his wife is the fact that other people may have been victimized by the test."

Or by Arkansas and perhaps other states. As I said, I can certainly see holding a suspect for a day or two until it's determined whether the stuff they had was drugs.

Shouldn't Arkansas authorities compensate Harvey and Griffin, since they were punished severely for not doing anything wrong?

I'm not holding my breath on that one.

DEA, Like Other Law Enforcement Shakes Down Airline, Train Passengers

Is the DEA enforcing drug laws, or or
they just shaking down people for cash. USAToday
raised the question.  

Asset forfeiture, the habit of law enforcement of taking money from people they "suspect" of a crime, whether these people actually committed a crime or not, keeps getting more widespread, we find out.

It's basically larceny by law enforcement, but shhhh! We're suppose to call it, "Cracking down on the drug trade."

Or whatever.

According to a USA Today report last week, federal DEA agents routinely mine data on airline and Amtrak passengers to find supposedly suspicious activity, then seize large quantities of money from some of these passengers, then often let them go.

The point of this, says the DEA, is to stop the flow of cash in the drug trade. And I'm sure some or even many of the cash seizures involve drug curriers or other people involved in the illicit drug industry.

But as I've complained about regarding other police agencies, is it really OK for law enforcement to just grab money for fun and profit without due process?

Technically, it's legal in a lot of places, but doesn't seem to follow the spirit of the Constitution for me. But hey! If we can just steal money from stupid schlubs who get in our way, we don't have to go through the pain in the neck process of bothering law-abiding taxpayers.

And you keep those anti-tax and spend politicians happy.

Never mind that some of the people law enforcement steals money from are also law abiding. It's just easier this way, apparently.

Based on the USA Today report, you probably shouldn't travel one-way, pay for your ticket with cash, have checked baggage or give the ticket agent a phone number for you that's not working.

The DEA could well mine that data on you, then take your money at your next stop.

The danger of this pervasive practice, which so far nobody has really put a stop to, is that we lose more and more confidence in law enforcement. They're written off as just another part of the corrupt system.

If people come to that conclusion, what's to stop them from really breaking the law. Hey, the cops do it, why shouldn't I,? goes the logic.

But, people running these law enforcement shakedowns don't think in those terms. They just want to rake in the cash.

Couple Thinks Good Parenting Involves Bribing Kids With Pot and Cocaine

Police say these parents gave their teen
daughters drugs for doing their chores
and doing well in school. This all
happened in Florida, of course. 

Let's face it: Almost every parent has resorted to bribery to get their kids to do what they want.

"OK, Johnny, if you clean up your room you get a nice big ice cream cone."  

Or something like that.

According to The Smoking Gun, a Florida couple went in a little further with the bribery trick.

Why is it always Floridians who do strange things?

Anyway, The Smoking Gun says mom Joey Mudd gave their teenage daughters, ages 13 and 14 for jobs well done when they cleaned their rooms.

Bonus: The pot probably mellowed the girls out, too. No more shreiking about potential boyfriends. Then again, pot isn't exactly healthy for a kid, and pot is illegal for kids everywhere so I can see why the mom is in trouble with the law on this one.

Apparenty, dad Chad Mudd took this even beyond the level of mom. He gave the cocaine. It was a lovely dad/daughters outing: The trio snorting cocaine in dad's truck. Wonderful.

Needless to say, the parents were jailed, though mom at last report was out on bail. The kids are being cared for by a relative, who is such a hard ass that the relative is not providing the teen girls with drugs, booze or anything else like that.

Imagine that. Having to clean your room without a nice bong hit afterwards.

I'm also thinking the Mudds won't get a contract to write a book about novel parenting skills.

Let's Ruin A Kid's Life And Psyche Over A Fake, Malicious Marijuana Charge!

The kid didn't have pot, but
he was severely punished
anyway but dumb school.  

I've written about abusive so-called zero tolerance school punishments in the past, because I find them so fascinating in an awful way, like a tragic train wreck.

But the latest one takes the cake.

Some school administrators in Virginia suspended an 11-year-old kid from a school for gifted and talented students for a whole year.

Plus, they had criminal charges filed against him and sent him downward into a spiral of depression and anxiety which will take years of treatment.

Why? Because the kid had a lighter and a leaf in his backpack. The school said it was marijuana. Three separate field tests showed that the leaf was not marijuana. The school system basically tried to cover this fact up.

They also figured since the kids might or might not have told his friends the leaf was pot, that was also enough to justify punishing the boy as if he were a drug dealing street thug.

And with the truth out, school administrators still believe they did the right thing.

Here I was naive enough to think schools existed to educate children, but I guess they're there to ruin kids lives instead. At least at Bedford Middle School in Virginia.

The article about this idiocy, reported and written by Dan Casey in the Roanoke Times, is infuriating beyond belief.

It's murky as to whether the kid was pretend bragging that the leaf in his knapsake was marijuana, or whether it was planted there by bullies, or there was some other explanation.

However, even if this was marijuana, which it was not, the punishment meted out to this kid, and the obsfucation by school leaders and police, was itself bullying against the 11 year old. And like I said, these ostensible adults consider themselves fully justified about this.

Morons.

My guess is the kid probably did joke that the leaf was pot. If that's the case, the school would have been justified in giving the boy a good talking to. That drugs aren't to be taken lightly. Or at all, actually.

It could have been one of those zillions of teachable moments kids have. But nope. It's more fun to ruin a kid's life right?

The kid's parents, Bruce and Linda Bays, have understandably filed a lawsuit.

Casey's Roanoke Times article elaborates:

"It alleges Bedford Middle School Assistant Principal Brian Wilson and school operations chief Frederick 'Mac' Duis violated his due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.

It also accuses the Bedford County Sheriff's Office of malicious prosecution, because Deputy M.M. Calohan, a school resource officer, filed marijuana possession charges against the boy despite field tests that indicated otherwise.

'Essentially, they kicked him out of school for something they couldn't prove he did,' said Roanoke attorney Melvin Williams the Bays' lawyer.

'The field test came back not inconclusive, but negative,' Williams said. 'Yet she went to a magistrate and swore he possessed marijuana at school.'"

During a school hearing early on in this drama, the Bays asked to see the leaf, but the school wouldn't let them, saing it was evidence.

Again, from the Roanoke Times:

"Bruce Bays said, 'During the hearing, I asked Wilson, What about the field test on the marijuana leaf?'

The assistant principal hemmed and hawed and finally he got around to it and said 'I'm not qualified to interpret the results of the field test,' Bruce Bays said."

During a court hearing on the criminal charge, the sheriff's office asked for a continuance, claiming the leaf hadn't been to the state lab.

The Bays refused. Seeing a lame case, the judge dismissed the charges.

With the criminal charges gone, the Bays said they wanted another hearing at the school to clear their sons name and get him back into classes.

The school officials and the sheriff's office have dug in their heels.

The sheriff's attorney, Jim Guynn said they didn't pursue a malicious prosecution against the kid like his parents allege because the sheriff's deputy identified the leaf found in the boy's backpack as marijuana.

I guess to them it doesn't matter that the leaf wasn't marijuana. If the sheriff deputy decides it is, well, science and facts have nothing to do with anything.

The sheriff's office is also trying to claim the suit is filed in the wrong court, as if that would make it go away.

And under the school's silly zero tolerance policy, it doesn't matter if the leaf was marijuana or from some other plant, like a Japanese maple. If someone pretends it's pot, then it's pot, facts be damned.

I'm not sure why the lighter was in the backpack. Maybe the kid was pretending he had marijuana. Maybe he liked to play with fire like a lot of 11 year old kids do. Maybe some other student planted it there. But it seems the school isn't interested in getting to the bottom of that.

Because, DRUGS! DRUGS! DRUGS!  A Japanese maple leaf that looks vaguely like pot is DANGEROUS!!!!!!!!!!!

Under the school system's rules, the boy's parents were ordered to take the kid to a pediatric psychiatrist to be evaluated for substance abuse problems.

The psychiatrist found no such issues, but did find a lot of damage to the boy's mental health, and the school, and the sheriff's department are clearly to blame.

Writes Casey in the Roanoke Times:

"After the disciplinary hearing, 'he just broke down and said his life was over. He would never be able to get into college; he would never be able to get a job,' Linda Bays said. 

.....the events of the past six months have wreaked havoc on the formerly happy-go-lucky boy's psyche. His parents say he's withdrawn socially, and is now under the care for a pediatric psychiatrist for panic attacks and depression. "

Nice going, sheriff's department and Bedford Middle School administrators! You took what seemed to be a rather well adjusted kid and turned him into a wreck. You must be so proud!

You know what? There probably should have been a vigorous prosecution in this case. But not against the kid with the marijuana leaf that wasn't.

How about charging administrators at Bedford Middle School with child abuse and cruelty to a child?

Judging from the Roanoke Times article, if I was on a jury in such a case, I'd quickly vote to convict.

Don't Bring Huge Mallet, Grenades Or Suitcases Full Of Pot On Your Next Plane Trip, Please

Sorry, a mallet like this one found at the Burlington, Vermont
airport is not allowed aboard commercial planes.  

Lots of us are traveling this time of year, and you'd think nobody would need a reminder not to bring weapons onto planes, but apparently, they do.

Gizmodo cataloged some of the items the TSA confiscated over the past year, and there are some doozies in the list.

In Hawaii, they found a cannon barrel. In Anchorage the found a can of bear deterrent.

For those grizzly bear attacks that always seem to happen on the redeye between Anchorage and Los Angeles apparently.

One of my favorites was an "F-bomb" found in Milwaukee. It appears to be a gag gift, a round thing with a fuse, like a cartoon bomb, with a metal letter "F" attached to it.

Cute. And confiscated by the TSA.

Another favorite of mine was found right down the road from at the Burlington, Vermont airport. It was a gigantic very old wooden mallet, but a very big, heavy one. I guess such a mallet is useful if you want to bash the head in of the person in front of you when he declines his seat backward too much.

This "F-bomb" was also
not allowed on a flight.  

Knives and razors have been found inside a hairbrush, a lipstick case and a Scooby Doo doll. I never realized Scooby Doo was so violent.

Ruh, roh, Raggie!

I'm also unclear on how 81 pounds of marijuana in a suitcase would have gone unnoticed, but stranger things have happened.

Even airline employees get into the act. The Associated Press reported that five people, including a Delta Airlines baggage handler, were recently arrested for trafficking guns from Atlanta to the New York City area.

Of course we should say the guy is now a former Delta baggage handler.

So kiddies, no bombs on the planes, OK? And no bear deterrent. Because grizzly bears are not permitted to board aircraft.


.

SpaghettiOs On A Spoon Kept Woman In Jail For A Month

This woman did not possess methamphetamines or
any other illegal drugs, but she did make the
mistake of eating SpaghettiOs in a car.  

A woman spent a month in jail on felony drug charges because she was a bit sloppy:

There was a little food residue on a spoon Ashley Gabrielle Huff, 23, had in a car. She'd eaten some SpaghettiOs with the spoon.

But in a case that really gets my outrage going, a cop decided it was methamphetamine residue on the spoon and arrested her back on July 2, says the Gainesville (Georgia) Times. 

Interesting, reporters tried to get the original arrest report in the case but have so far been unsuccessful, even though arrests records are public record.

I can only conclude the Gainsville Police Department has something to hide and is trying to make the negative publicity go away.

Even though Huff knew she was guilty of only eating SpaghettiOs and did not do anything involving drugs, she figured the deck was so stacked against her that she was going to go in for a plea deal.

Says the Gainsville Times:

"Huff originally attempted going through the Hall County Drug Court but wasn't able to make all the appointments, (Hall County Assistant Public Defender Chris) van Rossem said. Huff was then reincarcerated Aug. 2 and was unable to make the bond payment.

"I think what the unfortunate part about her case is she was probably willing to take the felony to close out her case so that she get out of jail, even though she always maintained innocence," van Rossem said."

OK, there are all sorts of problems here. I though we were presumed innocent until proven guilty, so why was she in  jail and why was she being pressured to take a plea deal?

How long does it take to test SpaghettiO residue for signs of drugs? Somebody was pretty slow here.

Why was it important to keep her in jail, when it would have been cheaper to let her out on bond, with conditions? Yeah, she couldn't make the bond payment at one point, but arrangements could have been made.

Taxpayers got a raw deal, too. They kept Huff in jail, at taxpayer expense. It's a lot more costly to keep someone in jail than to keep them out, when that's possible.

So what were they trying to accomplish by keeping Huff in jail so long?

I'm not so sure Huff's case is isolated. In fact, I know it isn't.

Here's a for instance: Some Mississippi counties keep people awaiting trial in jail for months, prompting a class action lawsuit from the ACLU.

The ACLU says the Scott County sheriff, district attorney and judges after learning the Scott County Detention Center has held people for as long as a year without appointing counsel or indicting them.

"The county's practices violate the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments' rights to counsel, to a speedy trial and to a fair bail hearing," says the ACLU

According to Mississippi News Now, The Scott County Sheriff says one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit has a federal charge hanging over him, which keeps him in jail, and the other has two felony charges pending.

Still, even if the plaintiffs are eventually found guilty, should they sit in jail without a quick indictment, or a bail hearing, or trial, or something? If they are eventually found guilty, sure, lock 'em up, but let's at least have a fair legal process.

But screw the Constitution if local politicians can claim, probably falsely, that keeping suspects in jail saves taxpayer money. Or something.  

Don't Brag To Police If You Were Doing 185 MPH On Your Motorcycle

Now that he's been arrest, this guy might not
be as proud of what police said was his
bragging about doing 185 mph on his
motorcycle. He faces various charges.  

Here's a pro tip for all you speed demons out on the highways.

If the cops stop you for doing 127 mph down the Interstate on your motorcycle, don't brag to the nice police officer that you were actually doing 185 mph before the police noticed.

This did happen recently in New Hampshire, says Gawker and the Associated Press. 

The admission by David J. Fries, 31, about his speed, after one New Hampshire State Trooper clocked him going 127 mph, another saw him crash into a guardrail and run away, and after several officers spend an hour chasing him through the woods and such near the Interstate.

Fries didn't have a good night. He was also injured in the crash, and by the police dog that also caught up with him.

Police also said they found a hyperdermic needle, smoking pipe and crack cocaine on Fries, which might help explain why he was screwing around on his motorcycle like that.

The drug revelation prompted one commenter on Gawker to note:

"With all that drug paraphernalia, he was probably going 185 mph before he got on his motorcycle."

According to the AP, a trooper spotted 31-year-old David J. Fries going 127 mph on Interstate 93 at about 2:45 a.m. on Saturday. Another trooper saw Fries crash into a guardrail after he exited the interstate, at which point he led officers on an hourlong foot chase.

Fries was caught with the aid of a police dog, and treated for injuries both from the crash and the dog.

Police said Fries, who had in his possession a hypodermic needle, smoking pipe, and crack cocaine, allegedly told them he got up to 185 mph before exiting the interstate.

He is being held on a $30,000 bail.

Is The DEA A Little Too Interested In Your Spring Gardening?

Apparently, we need to use a little caution when going to garden centers this spring, especially if those garden centers sell hydroponic equipment.

OK gardeners, you're busted. Don't tell
the DEA you're just starting tomatoes indoors
They know it's drugs!  

In some areas of the Midwest, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration is staking out garden centers that sell hydroponic equipment, then conducting raids on households whose occupants were seen buying the stuff, says the Huffington Post, Patch, and other media outlets. 

Of course, a number of people who buy hydroponic equipment indeed use it to help grow pot. One of the people who were staked out indeed had some.

Angela Kirking, 46, was arrested in a raid on her place three weeks after she bought a bottle of organic fertilizer at one of these garden centers. It turns out she had less than a third of an ounce of pot at her place.

Yeah, possessing a third of an ounce of pot is illegal in Illinois, but staking out a garden center, conducting a three week investigation then having a big SWAT team conduct this huge raid on Kirking's place seems to be a bit of overkill don't you think?

DEA officials were asked that very question about overkill, but they're not answering questions.

It was even worse for the Harte family in suburban Kansas City last spring, according to the Associated Press. Adlyn and Robert Harte, both former CIA employees, thought it would be fun to buy some hydroponic equipment to teach their kids about gardening.

But the DEA surveillance caught the couple buying the hydroponic equipment.  So the DEA, like they seem to like to do, conducted another one of their dramatic SWAT team style raids on the Harte home last spring.

The "illicit" plants they found in the house were: Three tomato plants, one melon plant and two butternut squash plants.

I wonder how much this raid cost taxpayers?  The gall of the Hartes! Growing vegetables under grow lights and hydroponics!

And it could get more expensive. The Hartes are suing, because they said police and drug officials had no basis to carry out the raid. (They seem to have a strong case)

So, gardeners, now that it's spring, don't garden suspiciously! No grow lights to get plants started early indoors! No hydroponics!  Even buying fertilizer is suspect.

The DEA is watching, and they know that tomatoes are a gateway drug. You grow one tomato plant, and soon you'll graduate to a pot farm and a meth lab.

Or something like that. Maybe the DEA wants us all to stick to McDonald's and Twinkies?

Toronto Mayor Has Best Excuse For Smoking Crack: Was In Drunken Stupor

A big shoutout this morning to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford for offering the best excuses for misbehavior.

Crack and booze: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford
LOVES to party. 

After months of allegations, you might have heard that he finally admitted that he smoked crack.  His excuse was precious: "I was in a drunken stupor."

Oh, that makes it OK, then.

Residents of most cities probably wouldn't like it if their mayor was in a "drunken stupor" but in Toronto, at least for Ford, the drunken stupor is a good thing, because it excuses him for the crack smoking.

Pretty much everybody in Toronto wants Ford to resign, because no city likes to have a laughing stock as mayor. But good ol' Ford says he's going to stay on and run for re-election in 2014. Hey, booze and crack is expensive, you need a job to pay for it all, right?

According to the Associated Press, the crack smoking isn't the only example of Fords, um, colorful behavior:

"Ford apologized over the weekend for excessive drinking. He said he should not have been "hammered" drunk in public when he appeared at a street festival in August, calling it "pure stupidity."

He also said he got "a little out of control" after St. Patrick's Day in 2012, when city hall security guards said they witnessed a "very intoxicated' Ford having trouble walking and swearing at aides.

The mayor has also been accused of making an obscene gesture from his car and texting while driving. In 2011, Ford angered the city's gay community by declining to attend Toronto's gay pride parade, breaking with tradition observed by three previous mayors.

Earlier this year, the mayor was fired from his cherished side-job as a volunteer high school football coach after he made disparaging remarks to a TV network about parents and their kids."

 I'm not sure sure Ford will win the 2014 election, but he does sound like the life of a frat party, no?

On the bright side, if you're looking for a job, head to Toronto and run for mayor. You don't even have to be qualified. If you don't stumble around in public in a drunken stupor, and are not a fan of crack cocaine, that's an improvement over Ford. 

Your lack of drunkenness and drug abuse might just get you elected. 

Another Explosive Drug Making Exploit

You have to hand it to illicit drug dealers, users and makers: They are incredibly innovative when it come to doing things that are dangerous, not just to them but everyone around them.

A damaged Colorado kitchen after a hash oil explosion  

The latest fad, according to an alert put out last week by  FEMA: People are using butane and other explosive chemicals to extract oil from marijuana, to get a concentrated dose of some kind of high.

It's called hash oil, and it's the production of it has led to numerous injuries and property damage, like one recent case in Lansing, Michigan which led to three men getting critically burned and a house destroyed.

Great. We already have meth labs causing explosions and toxic materials hazards and now we've got enterprising drug dealers with another explosive undertaking.

Another explosion at a hotel near Sea World in San Diego because of some moron making hash oil blowing the butane up when he lit a cigarette badly burned himself, injured at least one other guest and trashed a large portion of the hotel.

So innocent bystanders are under threat, too.

I'm not sure what can be done about all this, other than the standard law enforcement. But if you have sketchy neighbors, it looks like nasty explosions are one more thing you have to worry about.

Tennessee Cops Thought Couple in Their 60s Were Druggies Because of Ohio State Buckeye Decal

Guido Boggioni, 66, and Bonnie Jonas Boggioni, 65, were driving through Tennessee recently, returning to their Plano, Texas home from a trip to Ohio.

Just for review, to avoid confusion.
This is a buckeye leaf......

Suddenly, the cops pulled them over, and with body armor on and guns drawn, pretty much asked them what the hell they were doing.

What they were doing was driving close to the speed limit along the highway. But, those coppers weren't going to take that as an excuse. They were drug runners! You could tell, they had a sticker depicting a pot plant on their car. Or so they thought.

The sticker was of an Ohio State Buckeye, which looks nothing like a pot plant, and the couple are big Ohio State fans, so they were understandably confused by the drug questioning, reports the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch.

Apparently, there was a drug sweep of some sort going on in that part of Tennessee and the couple drove into the area.

The police let the couple go, but told them to remove the sticker because it promoted pot, or at least looked like pot, Bonnie Jonas Boggioni told the paper. At last report, the sticker was still on the couple's car, and she's not taking it off.

She points out that a Buckeye doesn't really even resemble pot that much, and drug law enforcement should at least know what it looks like.

.....and this is a pot leaf. Any questions?  

And why was the couple stopped in the first place? Even a spokeswoman for the West Tennessee Drug Task Force was quoted as saying a sticker, whether it depicted pot or not, isn't sufficient reason on its own to stop a vehicle on the highway.

There is this little thing called the First Amendment, so if somebody wants to extol the virtues of pot, or Ohio State Buckeyes via a bumper sticker, that's A-OK.

Let's hope the traffic stop was just prompted by an officer having a bad or inattentive day. It happens to the best of us. Because since when is a bumper sticker a criminal offense? Or a buckeye leaf.

Because if this suspicion continues, will I be arrested because some of the perennials in my garden look vaguely like pot, if you really, really, really use your imagination?

After Police Chase, Suspects Huffs Nitrous Oxide

If you need proof that somebody is having a worse day than you, I have it right here.

What do you do when you lead police on a chase and they disable
your car? Snort Nitrous oxide, of course!

After a short police chase in which the cops disabled the car they were after with spike strips, the guy inside the car wouldn't come out, despite the demands of the police surrounding him.

Instead, he spent what seemed like the longest time filling up balloons from a nitrous oxide tank in the passenger seat and frantically inhaling as much as possible. 

KABC-TV  in Los Angeles reports that Jorge Sanchez, 22,  is being held, and was scheduled for a medical evaluation, which seems like a very good idea.

The cops finally got him out of the nitroux oxide bliss by breaking a car window, unlocking the vehicle and dragging Sanchez out to be arrested.

Seems like a major drug problem to me, and we hope he gets well soon. And we hope he gets over the embarrassment of huffing nitrous oxide all over the Internet for millions of us to gawk at. Including me.

Fast forward to about five minutes into the video to watch the spectacle:

Tide Detergent as Drug Community Currency?

While at work this afternoon, I thought I heard on the police scanner a report of a large amount of laundry detergent stolen from a South Burlington, Vermont Price Chopper supermarket.

If that report is true, Vermont has finally joined one of the latest trends in American commerce: An underground Tide Detergent market.

My brother-in-law David Jenne alerted me to a bizarre New York magazine article about huge thefts of Tide detergent .

As I began reading the article, excellently written by Ben Paynter, I assumed there was something specifically in Tide detergent that could make meth or some other unhappy addictive drug.

It turns out Tide is great for cleaning clothes but as far as we know, it's worthless for making illegal drugs. But Tide is not worthless to people in the drug trade, oh not at all!

It turns out Tide has strong brand loyalty among many Americans and it has a cache in some circles as being the Alpha detergent, the one the cool people use.

So, people steal big piles of Tide in supermarkets, then drug addicts or distributers sell it to crooked bodegas or even chain stores, according to the New York magazine article. They use the proceeds from the Tide sales to buy their drugs, or whatever they want to spend their money on.

Tide is an easy product to steal, compared to other items. There's no theft detection equipment attached to it, like there might be on expensive items like watches or smart phones or other gadgets. You can't easily track a bottle of Tide once it's stolen, as Paynter notes in his article.

And if a menacing looking couple of guys blast through the supermarket checkout with shopping carts full of Tide and don't pay for it, a skinny little high school kid staffing the checkout isn't going to stop them.

Once again, I feel left out of a raging national trend. I have nothing against Tide, but that's not my laundry detergent of choice. So I use uncool detergent to clean my uncool clothes.

And  I live in an uncool place, apparently. If that South Burlington, Vermont theft report turns out to be true, and involves Tide, it's the first time I've heard about it happening in Vermont. The tide of Tide thefts began in earnest two years ago, apparently. So Vermont is way behind the times.

I know how this will play out. There will be songs glorifying Tide thefts. Maybe a few of the more rogue celebrities will sport jewelry and clothes that resemble the logo on Tide bottles. Then the trend will spread to hipsters. There will be a zillion Tide memes on Twitter and on Facebook.

Finally, everyone will be exhausted by Tide and it will go out of fashion and go back to being the old reliable laundry detergent typically bought by those choosy mothers who also choose Jif.

Don't Take Heroin to a Murder Trial

A New York teacher has gotten in trouble for bringing refreshments to a murder trial, a proceeding in which he was a juror.

The reason he is in trouble is said refreshments consisted of 18 small bags of heroin, according to New York authorities.

Teacher Damien Esteban looks glum after
being caught with a bit of heroin when
he reported to jury duty. Oops

I've covered enough trials as a journalist to understand that court trials can get pretty tedious, even if the alleged crime in question is spectacular.

So I don't blame him for wanting help to get through the day. But heroin? Isn't that, um a bit illegal?  Jeez, they would have probably forgiven you for bringing a Diet Coke or two with you to perk you up.

I've never taken heroin (Honest! I'm deathly afraid of the stuff) so I had to look up what heroin does to you. Apparently, people use it to feel a warm and safe feeling, and euphoria.

Do you really want to feel euphoric at a murder trial?

And it's easy to get caught, since in his case the heroin was in a cigarette box and set off  the metal detectors.

The teacher was kicked off the jury, of course,  and if he was looking for another court proceeding in his future, like his own trial, he'll be disappointed. He was charged with a misdemeanor, and if he keeps his nose clean and his mind out of the junk for six months, he'll be free without a criminal record.

Of course, his school is reviewing his future, so he may or may not have a job down the line.

Guy With Cocaine Nose Makes Headlines

Given the fact that I never snort cocaine, I was unaware the drug could practically wipe your nose right off your face. 

Some millionaire from Britain blew most of his money on blow -- snorting coke every day. His nose collapsed, Leading to a very embarrassing mug shots, to say the least, and an awesome headline from the Daily Mail:

The resulting disaster to the guy's face has been all over this Internet thingy for a couple weeks now.  .

Apparently, cocaine eats away at the cartilage in the septum, which causes one's nose to collapse. Well, if this guy hasn't managed to lose all his money on drugs, I wonder if plastic surgery will help.

If this guy keeps snoring coke, will his entire face collapse?

It's amazing so many people abuse drugs that wreck your looks, not to mention your mind and your legal record. To wit: There's a famous series of photographs that shows how meth ages people damn quickly. The photos use mug shots taken of meth addicts. Not much time has elapsed between each set of photos.

The say crack is whack. I guess almost every popular drug has its drawbacks.

The only drug of choice that I consume is beer. Too much could lead to a beer belly, of course, so I'll need to stay moderate on my consumption, definitely.

Bath salts, Goats, Bras, and a Drug Problem.

In my continuing search for the weirdest crimes, I found a good one.

Mark Thompson was high on bath salts and got
really weird. Photo from the Kanawha County
W. Virginia Sheriff's office.

It seems a guy in West Virginia got high on bath salts, stole a neighbors pygmy goat, got dressed in a bra and panties, brought his new friend the goat home and killed it. Hoo-boy.  The Charleston (W.Virginia) Gazette had what had to be the most wild first sentence of a news story the publication has ever printed.

Here it is:

"Police say an Alum Creek man high on bath salts killed his neighbor's pygmy goat and that neighbors found him in his bedroom, dressed in a bra and panties, next to the dead animal, said Lt. Bryan Stover of the Kanawha County Sheriff's Department."

As a journalist, I would almost kill to write a story like that.
The suspect, Mark Thompson, 19, has to be more than mortified, given how his story and picture is rocketing across the Internet worldwide. Quite a way to get famous, no?

This is hilarious, and I got a laugh at this weirdness, but as I dug deeper, it turns out this incident is part of a big new drug problem.

I never realized bath salts represent a serious drug issue until now. Apparently, there is stuff sold as bath salts everywhere, but people take them to get high, often with disasterous results, according to ABC News. 

ABC says people do really weird things on bath salts what with the hallucinations and such they cause. Exhibit A appears to be our buddy Mark Thompson.  Bath salts are advertised as such and are legal, for now, but they're advertised with a wink and a nod. You buy "bath salts" to take a bath, ha ha, but then you go home and get high.

Just great. Another creative way to cause drug issues, crime, injuries and death. And think about it. Thompson has to live with this forever. As I said, it's all over the Internet.