Don’t assume for a second that people who enforce our laws actually follow them.
Broward County drug court judge Gisele Pollack, who has had a history of substance abuse (ncluding one time when she arrived to work drunk) was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence early last Friday. Pollack, who just a month ago took leave of her duties to deal with her personal problems, is now facing several charges, including DUI with damage to property or persons and failure to use due care.
Back in March, Pollack, 56, was behaving erratically in the courtroom and at times slurred her words. Her meltdown on the bench led Pollack to take personal leave and shortly thereafter checked herself into an outpatient treatment program in Weston. Before that, in December, Pollack had reportedly shown up for work inebriated. She began drunkenly threatening to have her staff fired when they confronted her about it. When her staff tried to keep her from going to the bench drunk, her response was reportedly to say, “Fuck you, you’re fired.”
Another judge had to personally come and remove Pollack from the courtroom that day.
Pollack had put together a misdemeanor drug court that specialized in helping people arrested for marijuana violations by having them checked into a treatment facility rather than sound any time in jail. Pollack had described her so-called marijuana court as a place where “defendants prepared to go through a treatment program and six months worth of testing, supervision and staying clean, would have the charges against them dismissed,” according to BrowardBulldog.
Hopefully she’ll get a taste of her own medicine here and be forced into a treatment facility — because unlike most (if not all) of marijuana users she sentenced, she clearly has a major dependency problem.
Read more over at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.