Arrest-Proof Yourself (16 page)

Grass has antinausea properties, so unlike drunks, potheads don’t throw up in police cruisers and pee and crap all over the seats. To patrol officers this is incredibly important. In fact, it’s so important that, in a later chapter, I recommend doing these things. That’s right. In an emergency, when a cop is about to arrest you for a petty offense, I recommend that you
poop your pants, pee down your leg, and barf all over your shirt
rather than go to jail. Timing is crucial. Do this
before
cops decide to arrest you. If you do this after you’re arrested, you’ll anger the officers and possibly get beaten.

Pot makes people visible, smellable, arrestable, and easy to handle. It’s a cop’s dream. When I look over my old arrest reports from my days as a Miami cop, most of them are nearly identical:

Stopped car.

Smelled dope.

Found dope.

Arrested one and all.

Most of the people in jail are charged with possession of small quantities of drugs.

The war on drugs has been responsible for severe erosions in our liberties. Congress, legislatures, and courts have weakened the protections against search and seizure on the streets and in our cars and vastly extended the government’s ability to intercept communications and seize property. This war means, in practice, hoovering up thousands of petty offenders. In any city, big-time drug dealers, with truckload quantities of dope and bags of cash, are arrested
once or twice a year
. The guys with a joint or a rock in their pockets are arrested
every hour of every day
, all over America, by the tens of thousands.

THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE EMPIRE

Widespread use of drugs and proactive policing have created a 30-year boom in jail, prison, and courthouse construction. In every city thousands of people make their livings processing clueless petty offenders. These include judges, bailiffs, attorneys, paralegals, cops, corrections officers, court reporters, file clerks, receptionists, security staff, maintenance workers, cafeteria cooks, jail bus drivers, mechanics, and so on. In my city, for example, the riverfront
skyscraper
that houses the courts is no longer considered sufficient, so a $300 million replacement is under consideration.

Ever seen a ticket to jail? This is what they look like. The
F
indicates a felony bust. I’ve removed the names to protect the guilty. The text indicates that I stopped a car and arrested the driver for marijuana possession. I sniffed some dope in the car and searched the car, for which no warrant was required. I found—surprise, surprise—a 480-gram bag of the magic herb. I arrested everybody in the car, then toodled downtown with a major point score for multiple perps and a nice sack of dope. For every serious offender, I arrested hundreds of clueless people like these.

Half the criminal justice system would be out of business if dope were legalized. You’d see cops on strike holding signs saying, “Bring Back Our Dope!” Defense attorneys in tattered suits, with holes in their hand-stitched Cole-Hahn loafers, would wander down the streets holding pieces of cardboard saying “Will Defend for Food.” Dope’s not only a moral and public health issue; it’s also a jobs issue for city and state employees and us poor little ol’ attorneys!

When you’re arrested and jailed, the state gives you a job, whether you understand this or not. Your job is to provide state and city employees with work. Think this isn’t so? Let me use an example. It’s a bit gruesome, but that will emphasize the point. Ted Bundy, “the coed killer,” was executed in “Old Sparky,” Florida’s electric chair. Afterward, a coroner performed an autopsy. This sounds routine, but let’s ponder. After an execution, is there any
doubt
as to the cause of death? After the electric chair does its job,
you’re toast!
Does it really matter whether you pop up light or dark or a bit charred around the edges? Was it important for a pathologist to discover that Ted had a touch of artery disease or maybe a kidney stone ossifying his nephrons? Basically, Ted was doing his job of providing work for state employees. Even death cannot extinguish this solemn obligation.

Just the other day a bail bondsman and I were enjoying fine adult beverages in moderation in one of the more elegant riverfront restaurants in my city. My friend looked wistfully across the water to the jail and offered a toast to “the gold mine.” The jail a gold mine? Of course it is. For thousands of city and state employees, it’s a job, insurance, and a pension. For my friend, and for many attorneys, it truly is an inexhaustible vein of golden ore. My buddy has a 44-foot yacht to prove it.

We’ll end this chapter with a fictional scenario that demonstrates just how an upstanding citizen, in a moment of bad judgment, can be swept up in a police dragnet and sentenced to the electronic plantation for life. Moral of story: Getting busted and dumped on the plantations is not just for poor people and minorities. It’s an equal opportunity disaster.

SCENARIO #2

BUSINESS WHIZ BECOMES PLANTATION TEMP

Our subject is a successful female executive in a large biomedical manufacturing firm. She has a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering and a master’s degree in industrial marketing. In her mid-30s and engaged to be married, she has just received a promotion to product manager and a substantial raise in her six-figure salary. She dresses fashionably, drives a luxury car, and lives in an elegant, two-story home.

One Friday evening, returning from celebrating her promotion with friends, she is stopped by a police officer. He approaches with a flashlight and asks her to get out of her vehicle. He says he is going to cite her for excessive speed and a burned-out rear tail-light, although he appears to be using the flashlight to get a good look at her black cocktail dress, diamond pendant, and matching earrings.

Suddenly the officer leans over and whispers that he might consider not writing the citations in return for a date. Outraged, she slaps him. Her ring cuts his face. He arrests her on the spot. At the police station she learns that she is being charged with battery on a police officer and resisting arrest, both felonies. She spends a night in jail.

The next day, with the assistance of an attorney, she is released on her own recognizance. The state prosecutor reviews a police cruiser videotape which corroborates her story, declines to prosecute and dismisses all charges. She is miffed at the $5,000 bill from her attorney, and annoyed that the officer only received a reprimand. The following Monday she returns to work, but does not mention the incident, which she considers embarrassing.

Six months later, she is called into her boss’s office and told that she is being terminated due to an internal reorganization, which has eliminated her job. She is given a small severance. Weeks later, she reads in a national business newspaper that her former company has been running background checks on its employees and firing everyone with an arrest record
or even an unpaid traffic ticket!
She discovers, to her horror, that her arrest record had been picked up electronically by a credit reporting company in another state. She hires a topflight labor attorney and immediately sues for wrongful termination.

There are months of document discovery, depositions, and motion hearings. She finds that, although the company freely admits running background checks, there is no documentation in which her arrest is
even mentioned
, nor any record that background checks were considered in terminating her or any other former employees, all of whom came from different departments with different skills and pay grades.

There is, however, a mountain of paperwork, including lengthy memos and e-mails, regarding a complex personnel reorganization. The company produces multipage spreadsheets and cost analyses. The fact that most, but not all, of the terminated employees had arrest records is, the company insists, just coincidence. Given the documentation, and the company’s essentially limitless litigation resources, the woman’s attorney persuades her to drop the lawsuit, then presents her with a bill for $75,000.

The woman is unable to find work. The biomed corporations to which she applies
will not even give her an interview
. She learns that all have begun to run background checks, and they will not employ anyone with an arrest record. Her education and training have been specific to this industry, and within months, finding herself effectively blacklisted, she signs on with a temp agency doing secretarial work. She is forced to sell her home, and now lives in a studio apartment and drives a battered used car. Her fiancé, a surgeon, has broken off the engagement.

THE MORALS OF THIS STORY

This scenario, about the use of background checks to fire existing employees, is based on news stories of actual events. The woman in our scenario discovered to her horror the following facts of life.