| Photo: Legal Juice |
Huntington Police say a Lufkin, Texas man, worried about getting in trouble for the marijuana joint he was holding, swallowed the evidence after telling an officer what he was about to do.
A police officer conducted a traffic stop early Wednesday morning after a vehicle ran a stop sign, according to Chief Steven Sifford. The officer reported that he handcuffed the driver and one of the passengers — which seems a little unusual for running a stop sign — and then approached the third passenger, Marty Ray Evans, 45, reports Jeff Awtrey at KTRE.
| Photo: U.S. Postal Inspection Service |
A federal judge in McAllen, Texas has sentenced four illegal immigrants to prison for using the U.S. Postal Service to mail marijuana.
All pleaded guilty last summer to conspiracy to distribute marijuana through the mail. The four were convicted of mailing cannabis from various locations in the Rio Grande Valley since May 2008. They were each arrested in May 2009.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office on Tuesday announced the sentences for Leopoldo Perales-Rodriguez, 42; Juan Carlos Hernandez, 22; Victor Hugo Mares, 27; and Margarito Gallardo, 46. All four illegally lived in Mission, Texas, reports Lindsay Machak at The Monitor.
| Photo: High In America |
A Texas man was convicted of marijuana charges after 78 pounds of cannabis were found packed in the tires of a pickup he drove through the border crossing in Brownsville earlier this year.
Edith “Eddie” Camacho, 36, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute marijuana earlier this week, federal prosecutors said, reports Dale Lezon at the Houston Chronicle.
Camacho was driving a Ford F-150 pickup on April 21 when he entered the United States through Brownsville, according to federal officials.
| Photo: Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office |
| Richard Baker made a big mistake: He asked the cops for help. In his towel. With a pound in the house. |
A Jefferson County, Alabama man, standing wrapped only in a towel in his front yard, was arrested Wednesday morning, but not because he was almost naked.
Fearing someone was in his house, the towel-rocking man asked Jefferson County Sheriff’s deputies to search his home. When they did, they didn’t find any intruders — but they found a pound of marijuana, reports Carol Robinson at The Birmingham News.
“Deputies found no signs of an intruder in the house, and little sign of intelligence outside the house,” said wise-cracking Chief Deputy Randy Christian.
| Photo: WIS-TV |
| Sgt. Oddie Tribble puts the beatdown on marijuana suspect Charles Shelley on Thursday. |
A South Carolina sheriff’s deputy has been fired after he was caught on tape repeatedly hitting a handcuffed inmate who had been arrested for possession of marijuana.
The videotape shows Sgt. Oddie Tribble Jr., 50, beating a handcuffed Charles Shelley, 38, with his police baton, breaking the victim’s leg.
The State Law Enforcement Division and the South Carolina Attorney General are now involved in the investigation of the deputy, reports Brad Franko of WIS-TV.
Kershaw County Sheriff Steve McCaskill said he fired Sgt. Tribble on Friday, one day after the incident at the Kershaw County Detention Center.
Shelley told TV station WIS by phone on Monday that he and Tribble had “exchanged words,” and then Tribble ordered him to get out of the police van.
| Photo: RCMP |
| High Prairie RCMP uncovered a 6,500-plant marijuana operation with a street value they claimed was $6.5 million. |
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in High Prairie, Alberta, last Thursday seized 6,500 marijuana plants they claimed were worth $6.5 million and charged six men in the bust of large cannabis grow operation.
Investigators quaintly estimated the seizure “effectively removed the equivalent of more than two million marijuana joints from reaching the streets,” reports CTV News.
Plants in various stages of growth were found in 12 portable semi-circular huts, each about 200 feet (60 meters) long, 20 feet (six meters) wide and 10 feet (three meters) high, reports CBC News.
| Photo: Bay County Sheriff’s Office |
| Jesse Colt Nolind brought a pot pipe into the courthouse, then consented to a search of his car, where a joint was found. How many more dumb things did he do that day, I wonder? |
A man entering the Bay County Courthouse in Panama City Beach, Florida on Monday tried to hide a glass pipe used for smoking marijuana while passing through the entrance x-ray scanner. He was unsuccessful.
When deputies arrested him, they discovered he also had two handcuff keys, according to an incident report, and a subsequent search revealed a joint inside his car in the courthouse parking lot, reports Tony Simmons at The Walton Sun.
Deputy Donald Floyd, a bailiff at the courthouse, was working the front door at 9 a.m. Monday, screening items put into the little plastic bowls that run via conveyor belt through the x-ray machine, according to the report.
Floyd noticed that a man later identified as Jesse Colt Nolind, 27, of Panama City, not only placed items into a bowl; he also put something under his wallet in an attempt to hide the item, according to the report.
When Deputy Floyd asked Nolind what the item was, the suspect took the item out of the bowl and showed the deputy a glass pipe that contained some “suspected marijuana residue.”
| Photo: Cook County Sheriff’s Office |
| Here is one of the Zimmermans’ enviable grow operations. Since the photo is from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, this must have been the dad’s growroom. Nice! |
An old man and his middle-aged son have been arrested on marijuana charges for cultivating cannabis in their homes, the Cook County Sheriff’s office said Tuesday.
Sheriff’s police estimate the seizures at both homes totaled “about $3 million to $5 million” at those mythical “street prices” they keep promising us.
Jay Zimmerman, 69, and his son Alan Zimmerman, 42, owned homes in Skokie, Illinois and Chesterton, Indiana, reports Chicago Breaking News. The father was charged with manufacturing and delivery of marijuana, a felony. The son was charged with felony possession of marijuana and possession of “drug paraphernalia.”
| Photo: Mother Jones |
The Royal Oak City Commission on Monday unanimously rejected a request to suspend the city’s moratorium on commercial businesses involving medical marijuana, blocking — at least for now — the attempt by a warehouse owner to turn his building into the state’s largest marijuana growing facility.
The 7-0 vote to keep in place a 180-day moratorium passed in May came near midnight after a packed, lengthy meeting at which dozens of citizens spoke for and against allowing medical marijuana businesses in the Michigan city, reports Bill Laitner of the Detroit Free Press.
Landlord James Canner met with city officials in May in hopes of avoiding foreclosure on his 23,000-square-foot warehouse by leasing it to a tenant who would convert it into roughly two dozen grow rooms for medical marijuana caregivers, reports Jonathan Oosting at MLive.com.
| Photo: Gold Speculator |
| Did Kentucky Senate hopeful Rand Paul tie a college girl up and try to force her to take bong hits? |
A new article profiling Kentucky Republican Senate hopeful Rand Paul’s college days makes the allegation that Paul and a friend once kidnapped a classmate and tried to force her to smoke marijuana.
The GQ Magazine article by Jason Zengerle relates the anecdote about Tea Party darling Paul and another alleged member of the “NoZe Brotherhood,” a “secret society” described as “a refuge for atypical Baylor students,” reports Stephanie Condon at CBS News.
The unnamed woman, reportedly a college classmate of Paul’s, requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, according to GQ. She told Zengerle about the incident, which allegedly occurred in 1983:
“He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They’d been smoking pot.” After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. “They told me their god was ‘Aqua Buddha’ and that I needed to bow down and worship him,” the woman recalls. “They blindfolded me and made me bow down to ‘Aqua Buddha’ in the creek. I had to say, ‘I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.’