(AlterNet) As darkness approached, [Robin Rae Brown, 48,] returned to her pickup truck to find Broward County’s Deputy Sheriff Dominic Raimondi and Florida Fish and Wildlife’s Lieutenant David Bingham looking inside the cab. The two men asked what she was doing and when she said she had been bird watching, Bingham asked whether she had binoculars. As she opened her knapsack, Officer Raimondi spotted her incense and asked if he could see it. He took the bowl and incense, asking whether it was marijuana. “No,” she recalls saying. “It’s my smudge, which is a blend of sage, sweet grass, and lavender.” “Smells like marijuana to me,” said Raimondi, who admitted he had never heard of a smudge stick. He then ordered Robin to stand by her truck, while he took the incense back to his car and conducted a common field test, known as a Duquenois-Levine, or D-L, test. The result was positive for marijuana.
Exactly 90 days later, Robin was arrested at the spa in Weston, Florida where she has worked as a massage therapist for three years. She was handcuffed in front of clients and co-workers, and charged with felony possession of marijuana. She was brought to a local police precinct in the town of Davie where she was booked and held for three hours. Unable to post the $1,000 bail because she was not allowed to call her boyfriend Michael, she was transferred to the Women’s Correctional Facility in Pompano Beach. At no time was she read her rights.
Five hours after her arrest, she was finally allowed a brief phone call and left a message for Michael to post her bail. At the jail, a female officer came in and told Robin to take off all her clothes. She had already been searched at the precinct station and had her shoes, socks and bra confiscated. “I’m on my period,” she said. “I don’t care,” said the officer, who ordered her to pull her underwear down to her ankles, squat over the floor drain and cough. The following morning at 4:30 a.m. she was released onto the streets of Pompano Beach with no idea where she was.
John Kelly’s entire article on Alternet is worth a read. He shows how too many states have accepted the notion that if a police officer dips a substance into these unreliable D-L test packets and says it’s weed, well then, it’s weed, when in fact we are arresting, detaining, and imprisoning thousands based on little more than an officer’s word and pseudoscience.
Wow, do cops not read rights anymore? Back a few years in summer when I was seventeen, I was arrested for marijuana (in fact, it was only a grinder with very little to no pot) – they never said my rights, nor asked me if they can searched me. I always thought males cops couldn’t do that to females, so I simply asked the cop, in a chill matter if he had the right to search me. I got arrested for “marijuana” and being snotty! I was even fined for questioning the cops! +25 more dollars added to my fine, with the marijuana.
I had no smell on me, or anything to make them even think I was smoking marijuana or breaking any laws. But they searched me anyways without any type of permission. I would, never, allow a cop to search me, since I don’t consist to searches.
I couldn’t even speak during my courts. I only could say guilty or not guilty.
The whole ordeal made me not trust a single cop in my area. I don’t have to have anything on me, or do anything but whenever I see a cop – I get a very sick feeling.
I seen the cops whom arrested me awhile after getting arrested. I was standing outside of my boyfriend’s house with him on the sidewalk in front of the house – the cop came up to us and told us to go in the house, since apparently it is illegal to stand on sidewalks – he said if we didn’t, we would go to jail. I feel as though cops around here (New York) have nothing better to do than go after people for marijuana.
Belville, you kick the can down the road on this… big time. You are the Aristotle of the cannabis world, and this story is another surreal example of why we wake up each day….we Resist this totalitarian sumptuary law. After Pol Pot the CIA partnerships with the Chinese Red Army to finance with cheap slave labour-the US military hegemony. Cambodia genocide is the same neocon folks that give us DARE-DEA pseudo-science. How many trillion has the slave capitalism loaned the crony capitalism…1980-1997 Khmer genocide #3 USA-China_Singapore-UK-UN vs. Vietnam-Soviet Union…guess who lost-won ? Cambodia people are owed billions ! Try to put POL POT back in power for 18 years after the world KNOWS he’s a MASS murderer of epic proportion. US policy on drugs and war is insane,and must have THC Ministry love-logic to create paradigm shift, before global demise. Those that KNOW the law…are NOT IMPERIAL.
It is stupid events like this that give “law enforcement” its reputation. I’d like to hear from the law enforcement fan boys that like to say that no one gets arrested for simple marijuana possession. Sha-right!
NEVER EVER EVER EVER (have I made my point?) open anything, pull out anything, give anything, say anything, or agree to FOOKING ANYTHING anyting a cop asks unless they say you have no choice and they have legal cause. Even if you’re the Virgin freaking Mary, pure and sinless, something bad and stupid is likely to happen. If you have no choice, then let them search (without your permission, because they didn’t need it, right?) and cooperate and shut up.
Poor woman, probably not even a pot smoker and even she got caught up in this lunacy of prohibition. Unless you called the police for an emergency, pretend like you’re Neo traipsing through the Matrix–everybody is an Agent, the enemy.
BTW, I thought the Supreme Court ruled a long time ago that an officer couldn’t base a search on smell, or at least smell alone (I think this was some case involving a motor vehicle at a traffic stop). One would think, “Come on, what dipshit can’t tell what sage and lavender smell like?” but obviously it happens. Maybe if someone gave him a Neti pot–or punched him in the nose–it’d help his sinuses so he could smell better. I know if this injustice happened to me, I’d be ready to assist the officer after it’s all said and done, so that he wouldn’t put his job and department in jeopardy by arresting another innocent person due to his crappy sense of smell. I have a spare Neti pot.
I’m just a concerned, helpful citizen that way.
I pray I live to see the day when Prohibition finally falls and societal derision is deservingly heaped upon the evil people and corporations who concocted and implemented drug testing. They can’t even get that right.
Fuckers.
Well I already dont trust cops now this, great, I know they use all kinds of tactics to screw us, but I thought we could trust science. Now its just pure discrimination, if any race was treated the way they treat us there would be riots in the streets. Is that what its going to come to, all potheads rising up and revolting, not that we would get very far, you know as soon as we gathered we would toke up, that would be all.
How many people have to go through HELL before we wake up how many will have to die in a jail, because of this discrimination, thats whats next when they keep raising the violence they direct at us, we have to end this before it happens. God dam i hate this country sometimes, oh good lord dont go all, “he hates america crap”, sometimes I do, you should too.