De politie van het Jasper Police Department in Missouri (VS) heeft vorige week een bok van enorm formaat geschoten: men ruimde ‘een wietplantage’ op en liet dit vol trots fotograferen. De politie plaatste e.e.a. op het internet, waaronder een fiks aantal reacties werden geplaatst van deskundigen die ‘de vangst’ herkenden in wat men in de V S ‘hemp’ noemt, ofwel hennep. In tegenstelling tot de cannabis die hier in koffieshops (wat een belachelijk woord eigenlijk) wordt verkocht, wordt je van de ‘wiet’ die deze agenten rooiden, amper of niet stoned, je moet er giga hoeveelheden van roken om iets te kunnen voelen, echter volgens mij is het dan meer de reactie van veel roken, die z’n (schadelijke) werk doet……. (bijvoorbeeld door het veel roken van deze hennep in combinatie met tabak, wat dan een nicotinevergiftiging oplevert)
Van de hennep die de politie van Jasper vond, kan men overigens veel nuttige zaken maken, zoals touw, kleding, papier en zeep.
Kortom ‘het lijkt erop’ dat de politie de pret voor een aantal sufferds heeft verpest, dit daar de politie beweert dat deze plantage werd bewerkt. Deze figuren dachten waarschijnlijk dat ze met wiet van hoogwaardige kwaliteit te maken hadden……… Ach, het scheelt hen in ieder geval heel veel joints roken, waar je amper of niet ‘high’van wordt……. Zo bezien is deze mislukte drugvangst toch nog ergens goed voor! In de VS sterven in verhouding per dag nog meer mensen aan de gevolgen van alcoholgebruik dan de 12 in ons land, alcohol is dan ook de dodelijkste harddrug op aarde…….. En toch maakt men jacht op andere drugs, die veelal via vuile deals met the Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) en de CIA het land binnenkomen……..
Hier het bericht van Anti-Media dat ik gisteren ontving, daaronder nog een Anti-Media bericht dat vanmorgen werd verstuurd, let op de reacties op het internet die daarin te lezen zijn, mocht je wat somber zijn, hierna kan je dag niet meer stuk! Let wel het gaat hier m.n. om softdrugs, terwijl zoals gezegd alcohol een harddrug is!
Cops Delete FB Post of Massive ‘Weed’ Bust After the Internet Corrects Them
ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
(ANTIMEDIA) — Last week, officers from Missouri’s Jasper Police Department celebrated a marijuana bust they deemed worth roughly $100,000. In a now-deleted Facebook post, they disclosed their satisfaction with their operation, which took ten cops and sheriff’s deputies and a National Guard helicopter to conduct.
As the Riverfront Times noted (grabbing screenshots before the post was taken down):
“’What a great team effort today,’ the Jasper department’s now-deleted post read. ‘It was hot and humid and not easy getting these plants. We ALL got in the thick of things and got it done.’“
The Times summarized the post’s sentiment:
“In a curious bit of show-your-work math, the department calculated the nearly 290 plants seized would have produced — “on the low side” — 63 pounds of marijuana with a “street value” of roughly $100,000.”
But commenters were quick to point out an apparent flaw in the officers’ bust: it wasn’t cannabis they had seized, but hemp, they said. You can’t get high from smoking hemp, and the material can be used to create anything from clothing, soap, paper to sails, rope, fuel, and concrete, called “hempcrete.” It is both durable and sustainable.
“That’s hemp,” one comment bluntly said, according to the Times, though the rest of the comments are not available to view because the original post has been removed. One of Missouri’s two entities allowed to grow hemp for certain medicinal purposes, Mitch Meyers of BeLeaf, said, “Sure looks like hemp to me.”
“These look to me like wild hemp plants, because they are tall and without buds,” Show-Me Cannabis
Executive Director John Payne told the Times, which sent images of the confiscated plants to several experts. “That probably means that no one was actively cultivating them. If that’s the case, the street value of those plants is next to nothing.”
Many comments echoed similar sentiments, “as the post racked up hundreds of comments, among them mocking congratulations to cops for confiscating the raw material of natural fiber rope,” the Times reported.“Jasper Police, who cover an area about twenty miles northeast of Joplin, pulled the post on Wednesday morning.”
However, there is still some doubt as to whether the plants were hemp or cannabis. Dr. Jason Strotheide, founder of licensed hemp grower Noah’s Arc Foundation, said it is “nearly impossible to tell the difference between hemp and marijuana until late in flower.“
Rusty Rives, police chief of the Lamar Police Department, which participated in raid stuck by the claim that it was weed. “I’m just looking at the picture,” he said. “but they look like marijuana plants to me.”
It doesn’t matter either way. Both are illegal in the state of Missouri despite nationwide efforts to legalize both marijuana and the hemp plant.
The Times had difficulty obtaining comment other officials involved, but by last Thursday, Jasper police chief Chad Karr responded, defending the Facebook post.
“The goal, Karr says, was never to brag about a bunch of pot plants, but rather to serve notice to a suspected meth dealer operating in the area.” But the post reached many more people, accruing over 1,000 comments, Karr said, some of which were “abusive.”
As far as the “$100,000” estimation, “Karr says he tried to estimate conservatively. He admits he’s no expert when it comes to marijuana and doesn’t care to be.” However, he suggested the plants were not growing on their own, without human cultivation, because there were trails leading out to the field where they were confiscated.
Nevertheless, he claims cannabis is not an issue for him.
“I think the misconception is we go to work to bust pot heads,” he said. “I personally do not. I know what the problem is — it’s opiates and methamphetamine.”
Hopefully, his sentiment will continue to grow among law enforcement, who are increasingly trolledwhen they boast of cannabis busts on social media. The Times reports that for now, it doesn’t appear any charges have been filed over the plants.
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3 Times Cops Posted About Weed Busts on FB This Week and Instantly Regretted It
September 22, 2017 at 5:01 pm
(ANTIMEDIA) — Drug warrior cops are having a rough week on social media. Police departments have taken to Facebook and other platforms to boast about drug busts, and in turn, they’re receiving strong pushback from internet users, particularly when cannabis is concerned.
From North Carolina and Ohio to Indiana, Missouri, and Texas, cops have been taking a beating.
On September 7, Lincolnton, North Carolina police posted a mugshot of a young man charged with PWISD (possession of a controlled substance with the intent to manufacture, sell or deliver) of marijuana, as well as “Possession of Marijuana Paraphernalia” and “Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.” They estimated the street value of the confiscated drugs to be a whopping $200.
Though the post went relatively unnoticed for over a week, by Wednesday, both trolls and serious commenters had descended upon it. “’Don’t do drugs, it’ll ruin your life.’ That’s true, in most cases it’s the government that ruins that person’s life,” one Facebook user wrote in a comment that received over 1,000 likes.
The comments ranged from sarcastic to serious:
Facebook users also bombarded their ratings section, where users can review pages. Fox 46 Charlotte reported that “The Lincolnton Police Department went from a five-star rated department to a 2.1 rated star department over the course of a few days.” In a post, the police boasted about the backlash:
“If you read the one star reviews you will notice we are being attacked because we enforce the drug laws of North Carolina. So basically the pro-drug crowd is rating us one star for doing our jobs. We see this as a good thing.“
Nevertheless, they ultimately removed their ratings system altogether.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, the state’s highway patrol posted on Facebook about a cannabis bust that yielded $3,000 and felony charges against two men. They wrote:
“2009 Cadillac with Ohio registration was stopped for failure to display a front license plate. Criminal indicators were observed and a Patrol drug-sniffing canine alerted to the vehicle. A probable cause search revealed 600 grams of marijuana. “
Once again, trolls and concerned citizens flooded the page, leaving over 1,600 comments and calling the cops out for everything from stealing property to violating freedom and wasting resources chasing a plant (their page rating has dropped well below a 3.0). Still others called out the hypocrisy of the drug war and the dangers of legal drugs Some even questioned the philosophical and moral legitimacy of policing institutions all together:
Some mocked the cops:
Others were straightforward and blunt (no pun intended):
Some commenters defended the cops, claiming the fact that cannabis is illegal justified the bust or that the cops were just doing their job. Other commenters made sure to respond:
The same thing happened on a post from cops in Mt. Vernon, Indiana, where Posey County police seized “Over 50 pounds of marijuana” and, in turn, received an internet lashing:
One commenter claimed marijuana was killing her friend’s son, only to be shut down by a slew of pro-cannabis commenters:
In yet another post, on Friday, the Wharton County Sheriff’s Office in Texas claimed to have seized $25,000 worth of “alleged” drug money. After dissenters streamed onto their post, complaining that they stole a private citizen’s cash without even finding drugs, they evidently modified their post (see screenshots below), removing “alleged” and adding that the suspect had been arrested for money laundering.
Original post:
Edited post:
Still, no evidence was presented, and in seven hours over 900 commenters had bombarded the post (some of the comments reflect the original post’s use of the term “alleged”:
When Anti-Media attempted to message the page for comment on what evidence they might have to warrant their actions, we received an “Action Blocked” notification (indicating they likely shut off private messages due to the spike in activity). Like Lincolnton police, they also appear to have removed their rating system (note the time in the upper right corner of each image):
These are just a few of the instances in which cops have received powerful pushback for bragging about enforcing a drug war much of the nation now believes is unwinnable. The increase in resistance has been largely assisted by at least one Facebook page: Liberty Memes. The libertarian page often posts about police brutality and misconduct, and last year made headlines when Facebook banned them over their anti-Hillary Clinton memes. According to their mission statement, Liberty Memes “uses memes to defend the libertarian principles of the rights to life, liberty, and property.”
The page has made a habit of sharing cops’ posts about drug busts and other controversial actions with their nearly 400,000 followers, providing a veritable alert system for those who want to express their opinions directly to the enforcement class.
As the page’s “Admin 2” told Anti-Media,”the intention is to very specifically get them to think twice about committing these actions, as they are in violation of their oaths and run contrary to a vast portion of public opinions.”
As the trend of trolling and confronting cops online grows, some departments have deleted comments, which experts say is unconstitutional. Several departments have been sued for doing so. Still, in many cases, the comments are left intact. This aligns with guidance from PoliceOne, a website for law enforcement that advises officers to leave comments on their pages unless they contain profanity or other potentially actionable threats.
As demonstrated this week, the internet is increasingly calling out cops for cannabis busts, both sarcastically mocking them and sincerely pointing out the ethical and logical problems that come with violently arresting nonviolent people over a plant that is increasingly found to provide medicinal benefits. But as this week also shows, it appears cops have yet to listen.
