Pubdate: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 Source: Virginian-Pilot (VA) Copyright: 2000, The Virginian-Pilot Contact: http://www.pilotonline.com Forum: http://www.pilotonline.com/webx/cgi-bin/WebX Author: Dave Addis FORGET MINISCULE MARIJUANA; BUST DRIVERS WHO BURN RUBBER Belated congratulations to Chief Alfred M. "Jake" Jacocks Jr., who has been named the new police chief in Virginia Beach. Jacocks is an officer of considerable experience and reputation, so the last thing he needs right now is unsolicited advice from someone who got the ink stains on his thumbs from shuffling through newspapers rather than by fingerprinting miscreants. But that hasn't hindered me before, so here goes . . . Virginia Beach is a relatively safe and well-policed city. But its officers have, in the past, shown an inclination to react in some situations far in excess of the level of threat to public order and safety. Among the more striking of such situations was a case that was bounced Tuesday morning from General District Court involving the misdemeanor marijuana prosecution of Jamaican reggae singer Moses "Beenie Man" Davis and three members of his band. Last July, Beach police officers, acting on an anonymous tip, searched hotel rooms where the band had stayed and a bus they were using. After combing the environs -- literally, it seems -- for six hours, the investigators had collected exactly 1.67 grams of marijuana seeds, stems and residue. How much dope are we talking about here? Well, my understanding of metrics is about as bad as most Americans', so let's put it this way: One of those packets of sugar that you shake into your coffee holds 1 gram. So if you were to convert the marijuana sweepings into sugar, we're talking about less than most folks use in a glass of iced tea. The street value, according to a story in Wednesday's paper, would be about $3.50. This being too little dope to press felony charges of possession with intent to distribute, Beenie Man and his traveling band were prosecuted on misdemeanor possession charges -- upon which, if there's no prior record, a conviction generally results in probation, counseling, and, if the suspect behaves himself for a year, the charges are expunged. Over the ensuing months, Beenie Man's band had to fly to Virginia Beach twice from Japan, only to find that their case had been continued. To make Tuesday's court appearance, they flew in from a tour stop in Europe. The court found that because the search took place after Beenie Man's band had checked out of the hotel, and one of the rooms searched was a suite with a large common area, it was not possible to determine who had once owned the minuscule amount of marijuana sweepings in question. Case dismissed. Now, I do not use illegal drugs and do not condone their use. And I don't think that celebrities should get a "pass" in court just because they've been nominated for a Grammy. And, in a perfect world, we would all favor zero-tolerance enforcement. But this is not a perfect world. It is a world where we are reminded, repeatedly, by city leaders that we have limited resources that must be applied to unlimited problems. One of those problems seems to be the inability to make an adequate determination of whether we should tie up an entire police investigative squad for nearly a full shift, and then tie up the courts and the prosecutor's office, to determine whether a couple of reggae singers had fired up a joint in their hotel room after their performance -- or whether the police and court time might be more rationally applied to situations that present a greater threat to the common good. For my tax dollar, I'd rather see those resources spent patrolling the streets of a city where drivers, through habit, have come to believe that speed limits are mere advisories, that stop signs are written on tissue paper, and that a red light doesn't count if you're in a really, really big hurry to get someplace. Footnote: Coincidentally, the same day that Beenie Man was in court in Virginia Beach, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the type of search that was used to nab him is unconstitutional. The nine justices, in a surprising unanimous decision, ruled that an anonymous tip is not adequate basis to stop and search a suspect. There was a time when such a ruling might have been written off as more whimpering from a nest of Supreme Court liberals, but seven of the nine justices now seated were installed by Republican presidents. And even the dependably conservative troika of William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas concurred, apparently believing that bagging a citizen solely on an "anonymous tip" rings too much of Moscow circa 1937. The court did give the police this latitude: If the anonymous tip involves a threat of considerable danger to the public -- i.e., a bomb at a school or an airport -- the search may be legal. In doing so, the court affirmed the idea that it is perfectly reasonable to match the level of police reaction to the level of perceived threat. And that's all we're asking of Chief Jacocks and his able force. - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk