A two week investigation in Canada resulted in a 60-year-old woman in handcuffs as police discovered… tomato and dahlia plants.
It’s just so hard identifying those pot leaves.
At least they discovered their mistake before hauling away 300-400 horsemint plants.
Or, it could have been hibiscus plants with white flowers.
That was some wild herb man with the red round buds. That’s some of that Roman Red. It just won’t work in papers you must use a bowl.
Everyone knows those little red things are deadly. After all, isn’t the accepted color of Evil, RED? I wonder how many salad bars they’ve put yellow tape around?
It is obvious by now that the cops are not competent to establish protocols or to train and supervise themselves. There can be no doubt that strong civilian oversight of their activities is necessary. Of course this would not be the case if they were required to personally pay for their transgressions, as the bad cops would be unable to pay their costs. As if either will ever happen.
Two weeks of investigation? Helecopter surveillance? And another paramilitary style home invasion? And the RCMP can’t tell a tomato from a pot plant?
Since about 1980, Police agencies have changed the pool of people from whom they draw their officers. No longer are the police looking for people who can think on their feet, and respond to situations with a measure of independance. The tests they use now to screen applicants deliberately exclude people who are independant thinkers, as well as people who are deemed too intellegent. Independence is not a desireable trait in a gun toting thug. And the days when the beat cop was also the neighborhood social worker and boy scout troop leader are long gone. Andy Griffith coudn’t be hired today.
The results of employing this degraded pool of applicants can be seen in just this sort of incident.
Is it true the police turn down any applicant with a triple digit IQ? Forgot where I heard that some patriotard tinfoil hat conspiracy theory AM radio show probably. Only the coincidence theory can be accepted and no smart cops because we all know smart people are too hard to control.
With all the talk, publicity and photo-ops given to cannabis by the media and marijuana users, most people would have to be comatose to fail to distinguish marijuana from other plants.
Perhaps the new RCMP cannabis training program can include a policy forcing RCMP officers to sit and watch Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo a dozen times or so.
If some officers still can’t recognize weed after days of Harold & Kumar shtick, maybe they need to get a marijuana leaf tattooed onto their foreheads.
It’s not to exclude intgellegence….they believe that above a certain level of education and intellegence an applicant is less likely to stay with the job. They want career officers, not people using the force as a stepping stone to something better. As for what could be termed operational independance, they don’t want it. They (believe that) they want people who won’t make up the rules as they go along, so they screen out anyone who doesn’t see the world in black and white. It’s a matter of what the institution of L.E. wants as opposed to what the public needs.
You see, about 1975, the Law Enforcement agencies began employing people like me (psychologists) to do their employment screening and design their screening tests. After years of study (or a couple of moments of unguided thinking, your guess is as good as mine) these psychologists decided the public would be better protected by a bunch of uncritical, easily manipulated tools who can’t imagine anything better.
I’ll own this one for the shrinks. As with so many other things, we got that one wrong from the start. What has happened is largely our fault.
Sorry, new netbook, tiny keyboard…big fingers.
See! See! It’s all FaceBook’s fault that cops can’t recognize the proper leaf configuration. Bad FaceBook, Bad!
I think I found the problem. The crown leaves on top of the cherry tomatoes have an odd-number leaf configuration. THAT’s what must have set them off. That face that it was sitting on to of a bright read mini-tomatoe had nothing to do with it.
The RCMP should study UTube a little more so they know their left from their right. They certainly don’t know their citizen’s rights!
I’m so glad no cops where patrolling around our home a few years back. A skunk decided to crawl under the foundations and die. Oh the smell. That raid would have been amusing. And I know some tomatoes have a very strong smell but to mistake that aroma for cannabis is a bit much.
This incident illustrates two things that rankle my already rankled nerves. The incompetence of the entire system involved is glaringly, soul crushingly, obvious and the fact that so many resources, so much time, and manpower, and money (aerial surveillance!) where devoted to trying to arrest two people for growing a few “evil” plants in their fucking backyard. Major criminals indeed.
“They might have been one of them Mez-kin carwheels or sumpin'”
Link
“However, opponents of the measure claim marijuana is also full of health risks, drug dealers will still have a market to minors and, with legalization, a reduction in violence would be minimal.
I’m going to present what should be the only argument for never legalizing marijuana or any other illegal drug for that matter”
Hmm, this should be good..
— our children.
Oh. That.
“And here’s the litmus test: Would you want your kids smoking legalized weed?”
Yes.
“There will still be drug-related violence.
The Mexican cartels will just tweak their operation a little and the war will continue.”
Can’t argue with that bulletproof argument.
Seriously, was any stoner logic ever as pathetic as this?
Somehow I missed this:
Note: Victor Cass is an author and an officer with the Pasadena Police Department.
Is anyone besides idiots and those also profiting from prohibition still standing with him? I doubt it.
ah well… ignorance is bliss (and torture to others).
Remember back when hemp was a real issue? When Gaitwood was running for office, Conde and Seber and Wirtshafter (sorry Don if I spelled that wrong) et al were riding the wave of hemp education? And the police complaint about hemp was the them damn potheads would be growing their ganja in with the hemp and how the heck were the police gonna be able to tell the difference?
This has been a policy of stupid of the nth degree.
As much headway as we are making, it is but a portion, a small bit of what we have at our disposal in the gallery of Drug War Stupid.
Theater of the Absurd, indeed!
As for the intelligence of cops, they will be denied admission to the ranks of law enforcement if their IQ is too high. The statists want the cops to be dumber than most of society, smart cops might question the things they are required to do.
Courtenay was my home for 30 years. Been gone for 8
Looks like little has changed. Stress capital of the world, where 60 percent derive their income from gov’t, the other 40 looking over their shoulder constantly, wondering how such a beautiful island paradise could have been transformed into Stasi East Germany.
Now there went Skippy he went down to the farm,
carryin’ 10 pounds of hemp seed under each arm,
his feets a movin’ and his mind a clickin’,
he’s going to feed that hemp seed to the chickens
Now those chickens they couldn’t get enough,
eatin’ that hemp seed not the other stuff,
it was the damnedest thing that farmer ever saw
Those birds got so damn big,
we took them to the bar-b-que sponsored by the pigs,
The meat inspector was blown away
he was even heard to say,
nothin’ tastes like these reefer roasters,
and hell, we ain’t even breaking the law.
Reefer roasters, don’t get you high
Reefer roasters, I’ll have a thigh
Reefer roasters, juicy and hot,
Reefer roasters, not Betty Crock.
http://tinyurl.com/272fflg
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That’s a true story, and Don Wirtshafter was the farmer mentioned. Don’t know how to spell Wirtshafter? Heck Google suggests that you might be looking for his name after putting in Don Wirt…
Those really were some fat juicy chickens.
RIP Skippy.
The Mega Corporations own a good 70 percent of Vancouver Island now, with almost all logging roads gated off. The sheep ever more stressed and penned in, how horrible.
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