St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Bob McCulloch dismissed five pending felony court cases Wednesday because they depend on testimony from Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.Wilson is a key witness in the five cases — including one marijuana case — which cannot continue without his testimony.
Wilson, who fatally shot unarmed teen Michael Brown on August 9 and set off weeks of protests and backlash against police, has been in hiding since the shooting. Wilson, who is on paid administrative leave, emerged briefly to testify in Clayton to the grand jury investigating Brown’s death, but he was not seen in public. Riverfront Times has more.
Browsing: Say what?
Some call it “stop-and-frisk by another name.” Others say it’s an excuse for cops to up the number of outstanding arrest warrants.
But the facts in a recent CUNY Law School study show that from 2008 to 2011, the New York City Police Department issued more tickets in minority than in other neighborhoods to cyclists who rode their bikes on the sidewalk. Of the 15 neighborhoods with the greatest number of summonses for the crime of bicycling on the sidewalk, 12 consist mainly of blacks and Latinos. And you’d better bet they used pot as a reason to arrest a good number of those folks. More at the Village Voice.
| Buddha Tahoe OG. |
A somewhat surprising number of Florida’s biggest and most influential newspapers have come out against medical marijuana. The Orlando Sentinel, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Florida Times-Union are just a few. None of those editorials actually bashes the idea of medical marijuana. They’re cool with it, in theory. They just think that it should be an issue decided on by the Florida Legislature and that the amendment is too vague and will cause some sort of abuse. What kind of abuse? No one knows — the editorials are being very vague about it.
This of course ignores two key points:
1. There is no way the Florida Legislature in its current Republican-controlled form will legalize medical marijuana (and this amendment failing will give it more reasons not to do so).
2. Floridians already smoke tons and tons and tons of marijuana.
More at the Miami New Times.
| Patrick Quinn, from a screenshot of KHOU coverage. |
Police in this country have a problem. Sure, there may be some good, honest cops out there but they’re too often overshadowed by bully-creeps like 26-year-old Patrick Quinn, a school district cop in Houston.
During a recent traffic stop, Quinn allegedly told a woman he smelled weed in the car. That’s not what he wanted to be smelling, though. Nope. His olfactory glands were tuned to other things: her feet and underwear.
| The Flatirons of Boulder. |
Upon being saved after a fall in Chautauqua Park yesterday, a man reportedly told his rescuers that he’d taken hallucinogenic drugs.
While you’d think this is a rare occurrence, it actually happens (sadly) very regularly.
Yesterday, we told you about the Twitter spat that erupted after Dr. Christian Thurstone, an addiction specialist who’s also a major player in Project SAM, a national organization fighting to prevent greater access to cannabis, shared a blog post in which he implied that marijuana contributed to — and perhaps even caused — the death of Michael Brown, whose shooting by a police officer caused weeks of rioting in Ferguson, Missouri. Now, Thurstone has pulled the controversial post and put in its place an item insisting that his intentions had been “misstated and mischaracterized.” We’d say so…
More at the Denver Westword.
| A cropped image from the Denver Police Department Facebook page. More photos plus two videos below. |
Last month, we shared Denver Police Department concerns about trick-or-treaters possibly being slipped marijuana edibles on Halloween. Literally hundreds of readers ripped such fears as unreasonable and reactionary. But rather than backing down, the DPD upped the ante with a video on the alleged threat, plus a Facebook campaign rolled out over the past couple of weeks. Thus far, the majority of those who’ve responded to the department on Facebook have been more upset by what they see as fear-mongering than by the prospect of kids being dosed without their knowledge.
Soft spoken leftist Uruguayan President Jose Mujica’s dream of legalizing cannabis to curb violence and drug problems in his country may be on the outs along with his role as the country’s leader.
Earlier this week, a reader passed along the following note and video to us. It’s a frustrating tale that unfortunately is all too common, even in states that allow for medical cannabis use and cultivation.
“Deborah and Dennis are elderly patients living in San Diego that decided to grow a small amount of cannabis for personal use and soon after were raided by the San Diego Narcotics Task Force. Deborah Little has been HIV positive for over 20 years and her husband suffers from nerve damage – there is no reason they should have been raided and dragged through the judicial system. Thankfully, they were both found NOT GUILTY in the end, but not before the public officials made their life a living hell for nearly 2 years. It is a true injustice that patients are still having to deal with this in 2014.”
| Danny Wicentowski. |
The investigation into the death of Michael Brown has sprung a leak. Three leaks, in fact. First, the New York Times published details from the Ferguson police officer who fatally shot Brown, Darren Wilson. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch then got its hands on the official autopsy. And finally the Washington Post announced that several black witnesses have given testimony that matches Wilson’s version of events.
After months of keeping a tight lid on the grand jury and civil rights investigations into Brown’s death, the leaks feel like a little more than coincidence, especially as the city braces for the potential violence if Wilson is not indicted with a charge in Brown’s death.