| You have the right to remain silent…seriously |
With cannabis laws in flux not only from state to state these days, but even from city to city and county to county, it is more important than ever to know your rights should you ever get pulled over by the police.
More often than not, the best advice is to keep your record – and your car – clean as can be, and if you do get rolled, shut the hell up and give as little information as possible.
Here we present two recent examples of exactly how not to deal with the cops when it comes to cars and cannabis.
Our first tale comes out of one of the least weed-friendly states in the nation, Missouri. Specifically, Springfield, MO where a 25-year old man named David Farley apparently never got the “shut your mouth when talking to the cops” memo.
It was on December 18th that Farley says he set up a routine meeting to buy some schwaggy weed at the local “Kum & Go” convenience store on Division Street. According to Farley, when the suspected weed dealer got out of his car at the store, he brandished a knife and robbed Farley for the $95 he had planned to spend on the weed.
We know all this not by some random emotional Facebook post or Tweet, but by the official police report taken after Farley called the cops to report the robbery.
Yep, the genius called the cops to say he got ripped off on an illegal weed deal.
Responding to his call, the cops agreed to meet Farley nearby, but he apparently hid from them at first, and changed his story several times while giving his version of the events to the officers.
One part of his account that was crystal clear however was that he already had some illegal weed, but that he was just trying to top off his stash that night. That’s what he told the police before busting out his sack of weed for all to see.
Way beyond probable cause at this point, and seemingly uninterested by the alleged knife-wielding weed dealer on the loose, the cops searched Farley’s car and found a grinder full of weed and two pipes inside.
So guess what? The Springfield police made a weed-related arrest that night – tipped off by the same nimrod handcuffed in the back of their cruiser.
Meanwhile, about 800 miles to the northeast in Cleveland, Ohio, an unnamed 24-year old driver was already learning the hard way about dealing with the police with weed in the car.
Just before 11pm on December 13th, Cleveland police spotted a white Chevy Impala cruising past with no front license plate. When they pulled out to pursue the driver, he erratically made a lane change without using his turn signal.
When they pulled the car over, the driver immediately started talking.
The car was his grandfather’s, he said.
The license plate had just fallen off the day before, he said.
The entire time the driver was talking, the officer was focused on the half-burnt blunt roach sitting in plain view on the center console.
When asked about it, bigmouth admitted to smoking it “earlier in the day”, apparently thinking that fabricated window of time might buy him some leniency from law enforcement.
Wrong.
The cop asked if there was anything else in the car that he ought to know about, and bigmouth lied and said that was it. Then, as thanks for his cooperation, he was yanked from his vehicle and sat on the curb while the cops searched the entire vehicle.
He tried to confess to a grinder in the center console that he suddenly remembered, but the cops had already found it (full of weed), alongside a piece of foil blunt wrap packaging stuffed with a dozen more incriminating roaches.
Like his soulmate from Missouri, the dude in Cleveland was arrested on charges of marijuana and paraphernalia possession, in addition to failing to use a turn signal and driving with no front license plate.
Honestly, there is no telling what may have happened to either suspect had they observed their right to remain silent, but there is no doubt that every word they did say was absolutely used against them.