Pubdate: Wed, 21 Sep 2005
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2005 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:  http://news.bostonherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53
Author: Howie Carr
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

COPS HARVEST CROP OF IDIOTS AT HEMPFEST

I'm staring at the Boston police booking sheets with all the little 
darlings who got arrested at the big pot smoke-in Saturday on the 
Common. After a few minutes looking at these mugshots of 
double-chinned 19-year-olds, you start to feel like the casting 
director for the remake of "Wayne's World." Here's what stands out 
among all these pathetic losers: Tattoos. They all live at home with Mom.

Overweight, most of them. Have you ever heard of 20-year-old 
high-school seniors? Welcome to the Hempfest. Did I mention tattoos?

Do you know how difficult it is to get arrested for just smoking pot 
these days? I don't mean selling it, but merely consuming it. If you 
keep your nose clean and your head down, the legal jeopardy of doing 
a bone is next to nothing. Yet every year all these live-at-home 
stoners sashay in from the 'burbs, one toke over the line, and get 
themselves lugged.

The poster boy for this year's Beavis & Butthead crowd is a young man 
from Danvers named James Lawler. He's 20 and weighs 245 pounds. He 
has a job: "food handler" at the Subway at the Liberty Tree Mall. Jim 
didn't return a call, but one can assume he's the King of the Food 
Court this week.  "Dude, I heard you got popped at the weed fest. I 
bet you were wasted, man. Totally." Peter Butler is a 17-year-old 
Winthrop High dropout who now works as a painter. He was smoking a 
pipe Saturday when a cop came up behind him and grabbed it. "It was 
horrible," he said. "They put us in these holding cells for 10 hours. 
They were cold and tiny. Jail was everything my father told me it 
would be like." Butler had just pleaded out in court. He got a $150 
fine and 20 hours community service. I told him I was writing a 
column about what a bunch of idiots he and his friends are.

"We pretty much are," he said. "I told my boss and that's exactly 
what he said, too, 'You guys are bleepin' dumb asses.' " I called 
Wellesley, the address given by a Northeastern student named Timothy 
Montalto.  His tattoo is on his left thigh. He's a prodigy" only 26, 
and no doubt this close to graduating from Northeastern University. I 
got his mother Carolyn on the phone. "What's this all about?" she 
said. You mean the lad didn't tell his mother? You must be very, very 
proud of young, er, not so young, Timothy. By the way, ma'am, he's 
26" why the heck isn't he out of college and working?

"I don't wish to speak about this." Click. Don't you have to be a 
certain age" like, say, 18" to get a tattoo? Don't tell 17-year-old 
Nathan Fini of Leominster High School. According to the BPD, he's got 
multiple tattoos on his upper back. He's also got an arrest record. 
He didn't return a call.

Another lad who got pinched was George Haggie, an 18-year-old 
construction worker from Newton. He still lives at home, of course. 
He was at the BMC yesterday when I called his home. His mother, Lisa, 
picked up the phone. "I think he's a stupid kid," she said. "I knew 
where he was going. I told him, don't do anything stupid. But he does 
it, and he gets locked up for nine hours. His friend had to call to 
tell me he'd been locked up." And what did you say to him when he made bail?

"I said, 'Stupid kid, I told you so.' He's like, 'I know, I know, but 
I didn't even see the cop. He was undercover.' I said, 'What did you 
think he was going to do, announce it to you?' " Do you think he'll 
be going to the Hempfest again next year, Lisa? "I hope not," she 
said, "but he is a stupid kid." His tattoo, by the way, is on his 
left forearm. It's a cross. 
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