On February 1, 2009, a British newspaper published a photograph of Michael Phelps, the star of the 2008 Olympics, smoking a marijuana pipe at a party in Columbia, South Carolina. Although the photograph had been taken three months earlier, Leon Lott, the television-friendly sheriff of Richland County, known for his aggressive approach to drug enforcement, opened a narcotics investigation of the famous gold medalist swimmer.
Sheriff Lott, in September 2008, had overseen the purchase of an Army surplus armored personnel carrier equipped with a .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun. The combat vehicle was used to transport his SWAT team to drug raids. Six days after he had launched the Phelps investigation, a 12-man Richland County SWAT team, guns drawn, broke into a Lake Murray house rented by four University of South Carolina students believed to have attended the November 2008 party. After confiscating less than a gram of marijuana, Lott's deputies arrested the students for drug possession, and grilled them about Michael Phelps.As it turned out, none of the arrestees had attended the party, and were of no help in the Phelps investigation.
From Lake Murray, Sheriff Lott's SWAT officers traveled to Columbia and raided the party house where they seized six grams of marijuana and the bong depicted in the newspaper photograph. The deputies arrested four more students, and charged them with misdemeanor possession of marijuana. Thanks to the sheriff and his SWAT team, the peace and dignity of the great state of South Carolina was being secured, one marijuana possession bust at a time.
At a news conference on February 15, 2009, Sheriff Lott announced that his officers had not gathered enough evidence to charge Michael Phelps with a crime. (This must have put fear in the hearts of the good citizens of Richland County.) "We had a photo," he said, "and we had him saying he was sorry for his inappropriate behavior. That behavior [however] could have been merely going to a party....He never said, 'I smoked marijuana.' He never confessed to that. We don't have enough we could go and arrest him."
When a reporter asked Sheriff Lott why he, in an effort to make a case out of a 3-month-old photograph of an Olympic swimmer smoking pot, had deployed his SWAT team to raid houses occupied by college students suspected of attending the party, Lott, either missing or ignoring the point, said, "As a cop, my responsibility is to enforce the law, not to create it or ignore it. Marijuana in the state of South Carolina is illegal."
In response to Sheriff Lott's assessment of his law enforcement responsibilities, two reporters for Newsweek wrote: "If cops chased down every kid who took a bong hit at a frat party, the jails would be full, and the lecture halls empty. Half the professors would wind up in the clink, too." But the media's principal take on the story had nothing to do with heavy-handed, militaristic law enforcement. It focused on Michael Phelp's fall from grace, and the loss of millions of dollars worth of product endorsements.
The news coverage of Sheriff Lott's idiotic SWAT raids would have been different if one of the frat boys, believing the house was being invaded by criminals, had picked up a gun.
Sheriff Lott, in September 2008, had overseen the purchase of an Army surplus armored personnel carrier equipped with a .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun. The combat vehicle was used to transport his SWAT team to drug raids. Six days after he had launched the Phelps investigation, a 12-man Richland County SWAT team, guns drawn, broke into a Lake Murray house rented by four University of South Carolina students believed to have attended the November 2008 party. After confiscating less than a gram of marijuana, Lott's deputies arrested the students for drug possession, and grilled them about Michael Phelps.As it turned out, none of the arrestees had attended the party, and were of no help in the Phelps investigation.
From Lake Murray, Sheriff Lott's SWAT officers traveled to Columbia and raided the party house where they seized six grams of marijuana and the bong depicted in the newspaper photograph. The deputies arrested four more students, and charged them with misdemeanor possession of marijuana. Thanks to the sheriff and his SWAT team, the peace and dignity of the great state of South Carolina was being secured, one marijuana possession bust at a time.
At a news conference on February 15, 2009, Sheriff Lott announced that his officers had not gathered enough evidence to charge Michael Phelps with a crime. (This must have put fear in the hearts of the good citizens of Richland County.) "We had a photo," he said, "and we had him saying he was sorry for his inappropriate behavior. That behavior [however] could have been merely going to a party....He never said, 'I smoked marijuana.' He never confessed to that. We don't have enough we could go and arrest him."
When a reporter asked Sheriff Lott why he, in an effort to make a case out of a 3-month-old photograph of an Olympic swimmer smoking pot, had deployed his SWAT team to raid houses occupied by college students suspected of attending the party, Lott, either missing or ignoring the point, said, "As a cop, my responsibility is to enforce the law, not to create it or ignore it. Marijuana in the state of South Carolina is illegal."
In response to Sheriff Lott's assessment of his law enforcement responsibilities, two reporters for Newsweek wrote: "If cops chased down every kid who took a bong hit at a frat party, the jails would be full, and the lecture halls empty. Half the professors would wind up in the clink, too." But the media's principal take on the story had nothing to do with heavy-handed, militaristic law enforcement. It focused on Michael Phelp's fall from grace, and the loss of millions of dollars worth of product endorsements.
The news coverage of Sheriff Lott's idiotic SWAT raids would have been different if one of the frat boys, believing the house was being invaded by criminals, had picked up a gun.
No comments:
Post a Comment