STICK 'EM UP: In the war on drugs, even the small victories count. A Tampa police officer spotted a man sleeping in the covered driveway to an indoor parking garage. The cop woke the man up "so his welfare could be checked." The man now being awake, the officer asked him if would agree to a search. He consented, and the officer "discovered a small twig in the defendant's left rear pants pocket." The man took responsibility, telling the officer, "That's my twig. I use it to pick my teeth." The cop had other suspicions, however. It seems the man's girlfriend had just been arrested nearby for being in possession of a crack pipe. Playing his hunch, the officer field-tested the twig for narcotics and it turned out to be positive for crack cocaine. Both the man and his twig were taken into custody.
NO LITTERING: Cops on "routine patrol" spotted a man and a woman walking "east down the alleyway located between Union Street W. and Chestnut Street W." in Tampa. The officers approached the couple and began to interview them. While questioning the woman, one of the officers asked her if she had used any illegal drugs, to which she replied "not today." The officer, perhaps sensing a lie, then asked if it would be ok to search her pockets. The woman never said yes or no but instead, "removed an open pack of Newport cigarettes from her shirt pocket, crumpled it up, stated 'there was nothing in there,' and threw it over a six foot chain link fence." The officer again decided not to take her word for it, retrieved the pack and found two small crack pipes in it. After fighting with the cops and trying to escape, the woman finally relented, saying, "I admit it's mine … don't Taser me."
BRILLIANT: A man pulled his white 1990 Mercury into a parking lot in Ybor City and hopped out of his car, not caring (or realizing) that he was still smoking a "blunt." (For the uninitiated, a "blunt" is marijuana and tobacco rolled into a cigar wrapper.) In his haste to exit the vehicle, the driver never spotted the squad of uniformed Tampa police officers assembling across the parking lot. The cops immediately spotted the jackass with the blunt, however, noting that the defendant was holding it "in plain view." What could be dumber than that? Well, upon seeing the entire squad of cops approaching, the guy leaned back into his ride and tossed the blunt onto the back seat. The officer who entered the vehicle to retrieve the blunt decided to have a look around, at which point he found a "clear plastic sandwich [bag] containing several smaller clear baggies under the driver seat." Despite his protestations that the 14 baggies were for personal use, the man was charged with intent to sell.
From the files of the T.P.D.
This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2006.