Pubdate: Fri, 20 Dec 2002
Source: Charleston Gazette (WV)
Copyright: 2002 Charleston Gazette
Contact:  http://www.wvgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/77
Author: Christopher Tritto, Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

STATE POLICE SUED FOR DRUG SEARCH

Barbour Sheriff's Dept. Also Sued For Stopping 2 Men On Way To Pot Rally

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the State Police and Barbour County 
Sheriff's Department on Thursday for establishing a drug checkpoint last 
year near a rally organized by marijuana-law reform advocates.

ACLU attorneys Allan Karlin and Jason Huber filed the lawsuit on behalf of 
Thomas Thacker and Brett Gasper. The men said police violated their 
constitutional rights in July 2001 when they stopped and searched them for 
drugs on the way to a Barbour County event held by the National 
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

Police violated Thacker and Gasper's rights to assemble and to due process 
of law when they used specially trained dogs to search them without their 
consent and without lawful justification on their way to the political 
rally, according to the lawsuit.

"I was asked if my car could be searched, and when I said no, the drug dogs 
were brought on the scene to pressure me to waive my constitutional 
rights," Gasper said in an ACLU media release. "I don't like drugs, and I 
especially don't like big German shepherds in my face, or dirty looks from 
policemen or insinuating remarks from the same."

The officers ran the checkpoint "in a manner that singled out and 
discriminated against NORML members, supporters and other festival 
attendees," according to the lawsuit.

"Members of law enforcement shouldn't have to violate the law to enforce 
the law," said state ACLU Director Andrew Schneider.

Neither Thacker nor Gasper was charged as a result of the search, Schneider 
said.

The lawsuit says that drug roadblocks are set up to investigate criminal 
activity and therefore require individualized suspicion.

Thacker and Gasper are seeking compensation and punitive damages and an 
injunction that would forbid State Police or the sheriff's department from 
establishing similar checkpoints.

Earlier this week, the ACLU settled a separate lawsuit against Mildred 
Mitchell-Bateman Hospital, a state-owned psychiatric hospital in 
Huntington. The lawsuit challenged a state policy that prohibited hospital 
employees from talking to reporters without an administrator's permission.

Monday's deal calls for the policy to be rewritten. Employees will not be 
disciplined or face retaliation for providing the media with 
nonconfidential information, as long as they do not imply that they are 
speaking on behalf of the hospital, Schneider said.

U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers approved the settlement.

"The First Amendment is based upon the belief that, in a free and 
democratic society, the public has a right to know how its institutions are 
being conducted, and our plaintiffs have a right to tell the public what it 
has a right to know," Schneider said in a media release.
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