1 month of jail for having a spoon in your vehicle? ETA: NM field test showed meth

originally posted by: TorqueyThePig
a reply to: BasementWarriorKryptonite

Or you could go and read the follow up article where the police said the residue did field test positive for meth.

I know you won't though and if you did you wouldn't believe it.

So why even waste your time commenting to me?

I don't know who is telling the truth in this scenario. Maybe it's the police, maybe it's the woman.

I am just not going to jump to conclusions without all the facts like you.

Did you know that some cleaning agents can cause a false positive for certain drugs. Those test kits are not much different from some of the kits used by the military to test for chemical weapons.

We had one test positive during training here in the states. We had no idea what caused it and I still don't but I know there wasn't any chemical weapons set off in the area.

I wish cops would concentrate on catching the cookers but that might be dangerous for them.

a reply to: theyknowwhoyouare

You would think they'd have to have other evidence or prove it was drugs before arresting someone. Did the cops even look at it? I am sure they had seen drug encrusted spoons before for comparison.

Who in the hell has spoons in their car? Are you eating in the car? Who eats in the car??

On that note, talk about a crappy deal. That seems like something that would happen to me (only not with spoons in the car but something just as off the wall). Whatever can go wrong... Will. We all know the saying.

I've really never understood the whole paraphernalia deal. If the drugs are gone, you should walk regardless. I'm no advocate for drug use, but the war on drugs has really just gotten out of hand and too many innocent people seem to be suffering the consequences.

So I'll say it again... Legalize it all. All of it. All the street drugs, the prescription drugs, the bootleg... ALL OF IT.

The herd will thin itself. Those who use recreationally and responsibly (depending on your drug of choice) will continue to do so. Those who do not partake of anything... Will continue to do so. Those who overindulge and overdose (you see where I'm going by now) will continue to do so.

Legalization will not change any users or non users habits. What it will do is cut down on crime by making the black market null and void, it will keep innocent folks out of jail (while we wait and see if it's meth or not), it will stop allowing police to profit from taking spare cash as they see fit because it may have come from a deal, etc.

There must be a reason why those in charge can't see the reasoning of that... I wonder what that reason could be?

a reply to: Kangaruex4Ewe

I agree that we should at least have a trial run of drug legalization.

Give it a year and evaluate.

If it causes hell on earth then I am sure a majority of the population will want things back to normal.

If not let it be.

a reply to: charles1952
Charles..really?
So people are jailed when the said substance has not been verified?..good faith according to the cops?...pretty shabby and wtf was her lawyer thinking or is that common practice?
I think the point of the spoon would be the spoon was initialy targeted as drug paraphanalia..or like most of us we use it to eat. If the spoon wasn't there we would not be discussing this utter stupidity.
This is a ridiculous indefencible story.
Cheers

originally posted by: vonclod
a reply to: charles1952
Chares..really?
So people are jailed when the said substance has not been verified?..good faith according to the cops?...pretty shabby and wtf was her lawyer thinking or is that common practice?
I think the point of the spoon would be the spoon was initialy targeted as drug paraphanalia..or like most of us we use it to eat.
This is a ridiculous indefencible story.
Cheers

Agreed. Damn the benefit of the doubt to the cops in these situations. How many of you could keep your job, keep your house, or even your reputation after you have been in jail for a month? Can you go without pay that long? Is your boss really going to believe that the cops put you in jail for a spaghettio spoon? Most would not. How about simply having 30 days of your life stolen whether or not you suffer any other damage?

Nobody is ever around when these people get out of jail after being proven innocent to help spread the word. But there are a bunch that are always ready to condemn beforehand. This could destroy somebody's life sooo...

Benefit of the doubt my ass. Sorry. It's not something that is fair or should be acceptable IMO.

originally posted by: TorqueyThePig
a reply to: Kangaruex4Ewe

I agree that we should at least have a trial run of drug legalization.

Give it a year and evaluate.

If it causes hell on earth then I am sure a majority of the population will want things back to normal.

If not let it be.

Hopefully one day we can try that. I seriously don't think it would change much of anything. Nobody ever uses or choose to abstain simply because of a law. Those who do things they shouldn't, will always do it regardless of laws or penalties. At this point, I really don't think it could hurt. We've tried this way and it isn't working. Maybe it is time to give another way a chance?

I don't know. I don't do any illegal activities besides speeding, seatbelt, and maybe a shot of shine on rare occasion so my views aren't colored because it would make it easy for me. It just makes sense. It would at least remove a lot of the criminal element that is profiting right now and that can't be a real bad thing IMO.

a reply to: Kangaruex4Ewe

You know they have tried that social experiment in other countries and from what I remember it has worked out pretty well.

Those countries took a good portion of the money used to fight the drug war and put it into drug education and rehab programs as a result drug use has fallen especially with the harder drugs.

A few years I watched a documentary on drug rehabs in the states they had waiting lists for people that wanted to get clean backlogged months.

Of course as you said..I wonder why. IMO there are too many profiting of a imprisoned population.

Edit to add:

You said who keeps a spoon in their car. To be honest I have a messy truck don't even look in the truck box I dont even remember what I have in there. I probably do have a camping spoon/fork/knife combo in there along with a can opener. I am thinking I need to clean it out stories like these make me afraid.

I sort of like it the way it is in some Central and South American countries - you can get pretty much anything from the farmacia. If you use it, or misuse it, it's your head.

a reply to: Grimpachi

I do know that there are many countries that are more lax on prescription pills, marijuana, and the like and their societies (like you said) are far from falling apart. I'm not sure about those that allow more hardcore activities, but assume it's the same. That's not something a lot in government want you to know or talk about though. They have everyone believing that our society would burn to the ground if they weren't protecting us from ourselves.

There is big money to be had in this noble war but anyone asking about that "hates the children and wants them to become addicted to heroin and die in the streets". You know the script. It's supposed to keep you from speaking up.

It's a losing war regardless of who is profiting from it. Eventually it will come crashing down. It's a question of how much is going to be destroyed before that happens I guess.

I think this may be a group fail..Why not a comfirmation of the positive and why wouldnt her lawyer request it?
I reread the story properly and she does appear sketchy..lol.
As pointed by other poster I think drug policies need some change.

originally posted by: TorqueyThePig
a reply to: BasementWarriorKryptonite

Or you could go and read the follow up article where the police said the residue did field test positive for meth.

I know you won't though and if you did you wouldn't believe it.

So why even waste your time commenting to me?

I don't know who is telling the truth in this scenario. Maybe it's the police, maybe it's the woman.

I am just not going to jump to conclusions without all the facts like you.

Read my lips - I don't give a sht. When will police get it through their skulls that the public owns them? They are there to serve and protect.

How hard is that to understand? Stop making everyone the enemy like it's total war against the civilian population.

a reply to: Kangaruex4Ewe

I completely agree with you.

I looked up the country I was thinking about that legalized everything this is what it said.

2: PORTUGAL This trailblazing nation has made a huge success of its policy of offering drug users compassion and treatment rather than persecution (despite the objections of certain die-hard drug warriors). In 2001 Portugal became the first country in the European Union to decriminalize the possession of all drugs, from marijuana to heroin. While many feared this would lead to an increase in Portugal’s already out-of-control population of drug users, the opposite proved to be true: more than 10 years down the line, drug use is down, rates of HIV infections are tumbling, and more addicts than ever have found their way into treatment. By all accounts, scoring drugs in Portugal is no big deal: “If you want H/crack in northern Portugal [and] have any past drug using experience it is as easy as buying groceries,” says one user. And counterintuitive as it seems to some, this accessibility comes with a welcome boost to national health.

If you want a good laugh or cry/depending on your take look at this link I got the info from.www.thefix.com...

Were #1 were #1. lol

a reply to: Grimpachi

I wish I could give you more than one star for that.

And not just because I was right... Maybe only a little.

The last link??

Who would have guessed, huh? /sarcasm

We are absolutely swimming with drugs. When I was in high school we could always find marijuana if we wanted it. Maybe someone would pilfer a Xanax or Valium from their emotionally distraught mother and we would half it... That was about it. I never saw any other drug in real time. I didn't even know what crack looked like until I saw it on COPS, by then I was grown.

I'm 37.

My daughter attends public high school and has seen almost anything you can imagine. She sees kids deal it out of the bathroom. Most kids even seem to talk about it like they could care less if their parents knew and some kids even do it WITH their parents.

I am not stupid or naive and know that all kids of drugs were around when I was in school. But they weren't prevalent. Even the kids who could have gotten into more, did not. Now it's everywhere and it's easily accessible. So it is stunningly obvious that the drug war is not working the way we are told that it is supposed to. There were less drugs and less usage before that war started. And yes... I am counted the weed/acid revolution of the 60's as well.

Now... We are number #1 just as your link says. I am not surprised in the least.

I am disgusted to be sure, but sadly not surprised.

It's a shame that nobody in government even wants to approach anything new considering how bad this has failed. That alone, is enough for me to buy into the conspiracies surrounding this whole issue.

I want to say in advance that I think it's crap that someone can be put away for a month for something as benign (or what I consider benign) as a spoon with meth residue (if that was indeed the case). Innocent until proven guilty and all that. I think meth should remain illegal, and have no real sympathy for dealers or cookers, but I do for someone that gets caught up in a horrible self destructive habit.

Freaking drug test her. If she shows, then maybe hold her. If she missed a court date I get it (I thought I saw she did but when I went back to find it I couldn't).

“We had been riding around, and I threw the can in the trash because I was eating them straight out of the can,” she said. “I just threw the spoon in my purse because I had borrowed it from a friend — the can of the SpaghettiOs and the spoon.”

Smacks (heh) of "I was holding it for a friend!". I mean of course it's a possibility, so there is doubt, so I still think it's BS, but I have a sneaking suspicion this woman got lucky as the guy that's a cop pointed out. I eat stuff cold and out of the can every once in awhile (because I am all that is man) and would save a spoon too. So again, not impossible, but a little too convenient.

I don't blame the cop, I blame the justice system. Don't hold people for petty crimes with such exorbitant bail. Even if this was cut and dry I don't believe jail is going to help. Required treatment, yes. 30 days in jail for a personal amount of narcotics (especially just residue) should be the maximum if someone has a clean record. They need help. The rehabilitation model for drug users is the only one I think works.

a reply to: Kangaruex4Ewe

I am a few years older than you but not many.

When I went to school in NC you could get anything LS well you know was still big I even followed Greatfull dead around one summer. I had my fun but stayed away from the harder stuff..err..well I remember messing with that as well but not my thing.

I can remember my friends and I watching Headbangers Ball on MTV we hours in the morning when a "say no to drugs" commercial would come on.

We would laugh and and laugh at them.

Seriously looking back that was when Nancy Reagan's pet project was Just say No while at the same time her husband Ronald was giving the OK to Ollie North to have cargo plains of Coc ain run into the US to fund the Iran Contra affair. BTW down in Costa Rica they confiscated one of the c-46s left behind by Southern Air Transport that was then owned by the CIA and they transported it up on a cliff by the Pacific to be part of a bar there. Drinks are kinda pricy but its a great view.

IMO that whole just say no along with all drugs are equally bad montra they had back then did more harm than good. I know it did. Kids usually started out trying pot when they realized they had been lied to about it a lot of them thought the other stuff they were saying was bad were lied about as well. In that respect it was a gateway drug but only because the government screwed up and lied about the dangers. Then again maybe they didn't screw up and the result was exactly what they hoped for. A population incarcerated.

This story is ridiculous. Lets go with the false positive, these things happen. The next step is to put her in a holding cell while getting a warrant to search her home and car. That will quickly prove one way or the other if things need to happen. 6 months in jail for suspicion of breaking a law (and then being cleared of it) seriously messes with a persons life.

a reply to: TorqueyThePig

I appreciate your point of view and it seems you are being fair and balanced. However, I must point out that the idea that she was actually guilty and got "lucky" with 47 days in the hole is not the point, even if this were true.

IMO, she was "unlucky" for getting pulled over and accused of a crime based on such scanty "evidence" and then tossed in the clink for over a month. It can irritate me when people say something like, "You were lucky to live through (insert accident here), when in all reality if you were really lucky, you would have never had the accident in the first place.

I don't think that this case has anything to do with "luck" and everything to do with an out of control law enforcement policy that contradicts the U.S. constitution and our rights as citizens. We are, in the practical sense, guilty until we can prove we are innocent. Just ask O.J. how you can get away with murder if you have a dream team of slick lawyers.

She'll never get that time back and will probably never see true "justice" in this case, and the cop will at worst get some free paid vacation time and a cushy desk job for a while until they put him back out to bust some more apparent druggies.

ETA: I forgot about any money she had to fork out during this holding process. I'm not sure, but I suspect that even with proof of her innocence, she still had to pay out some dough for the privilege of being in the court system.

a reply to: theyknowwhoyouare

Thats what so F up about the American legal system. The plea Bargains! You are expected to admit to a lesser offence even if your innocent?

a reply to: TorqueyThePig

The spoon was tested again by a lab tech to be able to say in court it was tested and verified a second time to prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt it was meth. There was not enough residue left to test positive in the lab therefore it couldn't be absolutely verified by a second source as being meth.

But they did verify it contained spaghetti sauce residu.

Are you suggesting she used it for meth, then ate a plate of spaghetti with the same spoon?

Another question I have - she was the passenger and the spoon was adjacent to her...how can they charge her with possession at all? She wasn't holding the spoon. Was it her car?

It's kind of like giving a vehicle owner a ticket simply because someone using their car runs a red light.

ETA: Got now - it was in her purse.

Still, unreasonable search, IMHO.