How to Get Arrested Without Really Trying (or) Fuck the War on Drugs

[99th_Monkey]

Fellow DUers,
I cannot recommend this article enough. It is a stunning, sizzling, exceedingly well-written first-hand account or how our "War on Drugs" uses scarce taxpayer dollars to routinely and systematically ruin otherwise perfectly good & happy lives; including how the WOD abuses, humiliates, violates a persons humanity, and strips them of their dignity.

It is admittedly a bit long, but if you care about this issue at all, PLEASE do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Actually, it shouldn't be difficult, as I couldn't stop reading it once into it 6 paragraphs). ~99th Monkey

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HOW TO GET ARRESTED WITHOUT REALLY TRYING

September 21, 2012 - J. Bennett Rylah

Being arrested was on my bucket list. I assumed it would be for unpaid parking tickets, but hoped it would be for overturning a cop car at a protest. But I got arrested in a strange way, I suppose. Here’s how you too can go from being a working class professional and wind up a criminal without doing much.

WHEN A SWAT TEAM IS THE ONLY GUEST AT YOUR HOUSEWARMING PARTY

Dear, Penthouse. I was sitting on the couch in a pair of pink panties and a wifebeater. It was the third of May, but also unseasonably warm. My partner, Shawn, and I had recently started a labor-of-love blog about terrible motels called MurderMotels.com. The rule is you have to find a terrible motel using TripAdvisor or some other site and then force yourself to stay in it all night, save a little exploring of the city it’s in. I’d been eyeing one in the small town of Morley (Michigan’s trucking capital based on number of truckers in residence) for a while and tonight, we were going. Having watched too much Dexter, I’d ordered a supply of Luminol and was mixing it up in a small bottle.

It was mid-afternoon on a weekday. I was home because I work as the Managing Editor of a publication that specializes in news about urban revitalization, entrepreneurship and social justice. I’m an independent contractor, so I work from a lot of places that aren’t an office. But today, I was done with work. Shawn was on break from school. So, we were sort of relaxing. I had just moved into his place the night before. We were in love, I think. I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life, perhaps.

Then there was a guy on the lawn. I thought maybe it was this catering company that’d been outside earlier, but it was a police officer in full SWAT gear. I said, “Look. It’s the police!” I think I was excited, maybe.

And then’s when the officer seemed alarmed that we’d seen him, and looked towards our door, where a small group of them had gathered. And just like on TV… Open up. It’s the police.

There were several of them. One guy had a battering ram and was disappointed, maybe, that he didn’t get to use it because we’d opened the door on our own. Cops, usually, are like vampires. I don’t invite them in. But I was convinced they needed help. Perhaps this SWAT team needed a place to hunker down. Maybe a maniac was on the loose. They said they had a warrant. They told Shawn to have everyone in the house come outside. I put on pants and met them on the porch. They must be confused, I decided. So I asked them who they were looking for.

“It’s not who,” the officer with us on the porch said. “It’s what.”

Then he took off his sunglasses and The Who started playing. Wait, no. No, that wasn’t it. I asked him “what” he was looking for, and he said, “Marijuana.”

Well, here’s the thing. I had just moved into Shawn’s house the night before, like I said. Prior to this, I lived by myself in a one-bedroom apartment where no teams of armed, flak-jacketed police officers with battering rams ever came over. Shawn’s roommate before me was a guy who had a card to grow medical marijuana. I knew he had a card, and I knew he grew marijuana in the basement. I knew that medical marijuana was legal in the state of Michigan. That’s all I knew.

http://jbennettrylah.com/how-to-get-arrested-without-really-trying-or-fuck-the-police-or-fuck-the-war-on-drugs/

[villager]

1. One of the other great failures of Obama's first term

Hopefully he can take some actual steps to rectifying this when re-elected....

[99th_Monkey]

3. Amen. From your lips to God's ear.. ~nt

[Downtown Hound]

5. Amen.

Nothing makes a Democrat weaker than when they act like a Republican. If Obama had adopted better policies towards civil liberties, drugs, and actually prosecuting real criminals like those on Wall Street, my thinking is the Dems would not have taken the shellacking they took in 2010.

[midnight]

9. This may be why Dems act like Rep...

The Blue Ribbon Report Ricard Nixon chose to Bury has cost tax payers over 100 billion



in arrests.

"After Richard Nixon flattened the Democrates as Soft on crime in the ’68 election, the President-elect faced a dilemma. There’s not much the White House can do to impact crime. The thugs people are aftraid of-burglars, robbers, rapists, murderes-are the business of state courts. Then somebody mentioned drugs.

In a textbook example of fear manipulation, Nixon warned the counry that a plague of unimaginable proportions was about to engulf the nation. “The problem has assumed the dimensions of a national emergency,” he said. To fighet the pushers on their own terms he would need emergency poseres-preventive detention, unorthodox strike forces, more freedom to search, wire tap, and arrest.

For scientific support, he appointed former Republican Pennsylvania Govenor Ray Shafer to head a National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. he told Gov. Shafer to treat marijuana just like heroin despite the “obvious differences between marijuana and other durgs. He was even more direct with chief of staff Bob Haderman. “I want a Godamn strong statement about marijuana...that just tears the ass out of them.

But after months of testimony from academics, medical experts, lawmen, and health professionals, the facts overwhelmed the myths. The report was devastating: “Marijuana use, in and of itself, is neither causative of, nor directly associated with crime... It found no basis for the gateway theory. Alcohol, it said, was probably a greater danger, and the report concluded that personal use of marijuana should no longer be a crime."

http://www.csdp.org/publicservice/nixon06.htm

[voteearlyvoteoften]

2. Schedule 2 Term 2

That's not too much to ask. Is it?

[99th_Monkey]

4. No.

it isn't too much to ask, it is the minimum.

My message in a bottle to Obama is about how state MM programs,
and other state laws that decriminalize marijuana need to be honored,
and that his DoJ instead focus on Wall St. criminals, and other REAL
criminals, who are doing REAL harm to peoples lives needlessly,
wastefully..

[Downtown Hound]

6. Boy I love law enforcement. I really do.

They do so much to keep us safe from dangerous people like this, don't they?

Do I really need the sarcasm thingy?

[99th_Monkey]

7. Not so much

I've got some spares here for you:


Not sarcasm --> I really hope this article gets lots of play, as in viral. It really
impacted me in my heart, and gut. I really think it has some kind of magical
power to become a game-changer. Such a steady stream of potent images she
makes, to tell her painfully personal story.

Of course, I could be wrong.

[midnight]

8. K&R

[tama]

10. What is awfully sad

is that President who identifies as 'black' continues the policy of war against people that allows police and prison industry to discriminate against people who are not as pink and pale as the ruling elite in the Prison Nation of America.

[99th_Monkey]

12. It's to believe

that some of Obamas "brothas" haven't gotten in his face about this sad
fact that you point out. People like John Lewis, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson,
et. al.

It's also sad that Obama lied to us when running in 2008, saying he would
leave MM states alone, and would honor their programs.

Maybe in the 2nd term, as people are saying up stream. Let's hope.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended, a sad but good read highlighting the insanity

of our unjust, immoral and dysfunctional drug policies.

Thanks for the thread, 99th_Monkey.

[99th_Monkey]

13. No problemo. feel free, of course, to share on FB, etc. ~nt