Flibbertigibbet

January 09, 2007

Since When

Reuters: Woman settles case over flour-filled condoms

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters Life!) - A U.S. college student imprisoned for three weeks for trying to take flour-filled condoms onto an airplane has settled her lawsuit against Philadelphia for $180,000, a city spokesman said on Friday.
Janet Lee, 21, a student at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, was arrested at Philadelphia International Airport in 2003 after police and security officials thought the flour was an illegal drug.
She was held in Philadelphia on drug-trafficking charges and released only when tests proved the substance in the three condoms was flour.
The condoms, which are sometimes used to smuggle drugs, were a joke among the students, and Lee was taking them home to Los Angeles.
Her civil rights case against Philadelphia, which had been set to go to trial on Thursday, was settled for $180,000, said Ted Qualli, spokesman for Philadelphia Mayor John Street.

I don't understand why Philly settled this case.

Obviously, I do not support the "war on drugs" at all, but that's not the issue here. The issue is whether or not it's ok to pretend like you're a criminal and expect the police to ignore you. I contend that it isn't.

This woman was in possession of articles that under casual inspection appeared to be illegal contraband. The police, logically, detained her and upon finding out that it wasn't actually contraband, they released her.

Some news stories report that this woman claims that she didn't know drug dealers sometimes use condoms to transport drugs. Some say she also claimed that they were a toy that students squeeze to relieve stress during exams and she thought they were funny. Others say that the condoms were a joke. Is it a joke or a stress toy?

Her ignorance and naivete do not erase the fact that it appeared she was committing a crime. How else are the police supposed to react?

Further, the police's initial tests actually showed that there were drugs in the condoms, not flour. It was later testing that revealed that it was merely flour.

I couldn't find any news stories that give any indication about why the woman was suing. I am of the mind that the police would have been within their rights to press charges for leading everyone to believe she was commiting a crime -- although I would argue that after 3 weeks in jail, such charges would be excessive.

The settlement seems completely absurd to me. Why do the police owe her anything? In what way was she treated unjustly?

This looks to be more moral cowardice on the part of the state.

Posted by: Flibbertigibbet at 06:20 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Category: In the News
Post contains 439 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Apologies, Trey, but I have to disagree with you on this one. The lady's Fourth Amendment rights were violated, and she was improperly incarcerated.

Now, if the airline had a rule against carrying cooking ingredients.....

Posted by: Col. Hogan at January 09, 2007 06:34 PM (Zfa+E)

2 She wasn't improperly incarcerated, though. She was properly incarcerated in error. She was put into jail because the evidence initially lead people to believe that she was committing a crime.

When the evidence was more carefully examined and it showed that she was not guilty of a crime, she was released.

The only thing that makes me scratch my head about this whole thing is why it took three weeks to figure out that the powder was flour. And what about flour made their initial tests think it was cocaine? Methinks those tests should be abandoned.

Posted by: Trey Givens at January 10, 2007 03:50 AM (51mgz)

3 The question of whether she was properly or improperly incarcerated hinges on the question of whether the police acted honestly or not. You seem to be assuming the former, and that the "failure" of the on-scene substance test was just a regrettable quirk.

However, given the police and political culture when pursuing the drug war, their typical response to, shall we say, "regrettable error", the details that the Reuters article glosses over but which the Philadelphia Inquirer article (which your comment subsystem does not permit me to give a link to) suggests to be quite a bit more implausible (e.g., the substantial difference between "thought the flour was an illegal drug" vs. "substances likely contained opium and cocaine", although other googled articles claim it was opium, cocaine, AND meth - Hitchikers Guide quotes of "improbability levels" come to mind), the fact that that there are numerous articles on the web describing how to make stress balls out of balloons and the "naughtiness" of making them out of condoms being just the kind of thing a dopey girl might want to show off to her friends as being funny (i.e., a joke) and the fact of the settlement, itself, all suggest otherwise.

Posted by: SaltedSlug at January 10, 2007 04:47 AM (qdEWQ)

4 I totally agree with you. Flour in condoms is not a normal thing to carry around. Had the woman been incarcerated because of a make-up compact with face powder, or a bag of flour labelled 'flour' would have been one thing, but flour in a condom is something else. She ought to get a few extra days for stupidity. She sounds like the type of person I would meet in foreign countries who displayed contempt for local law enforcement by perpetrating little 'jokes' of this nature, and wound up in big trouble. She should be charged the cost of the incarceration as a learning expense. Truly a stupid woman. There are enough real injustices perpetrated without getting all misty about someone who got just what she was asking for.

Posted by: DavidShag at January 10, 2007 05:41 AM (AUP6W)

5 You make a good point, Salty, but that's why I looked for someone explaining the reasoning behind the settlement. I couldn't find anything in my initial Google news search.

You're also correct that I do tend to favor the police over people who are, by every appearance, morons. Although, she did get $180K for a mere 21 days in jail, so maybe she's not that dumb afterall.

Hmm... maybe I'll put flour-filled condoms in my luggage next time.

Posted by: Trey Givens at January 10, 2007 04:17 PM (51mgz)

6 There is really only one reason they settled - They calculated that it would be cheaper in dollars and PR. They probably calculated what they expected a trial to cost, factored in the intangible cost of the negative publicity for the "Woman imprisoned for flour" headlines that left out any of the mitigating details.

One point in her defense that I have not seen mentioned, is that condoms are indeed frequently used in narcotics smuggling, but they are usually carried internally. Not in a suitcase.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at January 10, 2007 05:12 PM (Z3kjO)

7 Stephen, I disagree. If you'll look through the archives of Radley Balko's blog (and others that record such things), you will find many instances recorded of innocent people being "accidentally" killed by police ... SWAT kicked in the wrong door, the wrong confidential informant/low-level drug dealer believed without corroboration, cop tripped on a root while incorrectly having his finger on the trigger of his gun, etc., etc.

The usual response to all of these is along the lines of "tough excrement" (or the more urbane "internal investigation") ... very little sign of any evaluation of dollars and PR. If they don't consider these issues in response to incidents that result in random killings, they certainly aren't going to do so for a college-age girl who isn't even a resident of the state.

Posted by: SaltedSlug at January 10, 2007 06:36 PM (qdEWQ)

8 Salty, I am not certain that these incidences you reference aren't exceptions as opposed to the rule. But I will conceed that I do have a tendency to trust the authorities in these matters.

I don't disagree that eggregious things happen in law enforcement and in the so-called Drug War in particular, but it may also be said that many arrests happen that are to the letter. Certainly a book about the routine, unquestionable arrests would not be all that interesting.

I tend to agree with Stephen's assessment that a settlement was reached out of a cost-benefit analysis including the amount of bad press it would cost Philadelphia and not because either party was standing on principle.

If the lady had a real point to make, she could have declined the settlement and stuck it to the city. This would have brought attention to the treatment she recieved under the hospices of drug enforcement.

If the city were interested in defending rational law enforcement practices, which include arresting people who -- by all appearances -- are breaking the law, then they wouldn't have even offered a settlement.

As for the condoms being transported internally v. externally, I thought of that, too, but I dismissed it as a significant fact in the case because there are any number of scenarios that may have led an actual drug dealer to not ingest or insert the condoms when transporting the drugs domestically.

I just need to figure out a plausible explanation like "stress toy" for why I might wrap oregano into cellophane bricks.

Posted by: Trey Givens at January 11, 2007 03:34 AM (51mgz)

9 The incidences I mentioned were not done so in an effort to point out that police are naughty ... exceptions vs rule or the existence of egregious things do not apply. My point was that if a cost-benefit analysis (with regard to dollars and PR) in the case of those far more egregious situations did not lead to settlements, then why would something of this, comparatively, trivial situation?

But it's possible you are correct (if you expand the analysis scope to include other issues besides the dollars and PR that Stephen established) ... the offer of settlement and the perceived admission of guilt might have been acceptable in this case, whereas in a situation in which the police officers could be charged with murder, it might not be. It may be this that prevents settlement offers in the more egregious cases. The likelihood that an Ivy League student wanting to go to grad school would accept enough cash to, coincidentally, cover grad school rather than take her principles (assuming they exist) to court may also have contributed to the willingness to offer a settlement in this case.

As for the condoms ... the whole point of wrapping the drugs in condoms is to make them easy to swallow, in material that is both impermeable and noted for its resistance to breaking. The point of swallowing the material is to be able to cross security checkpoints without discovery. Why would you wrap your bizarre mix of distribution-quantity drugs (typically supplied by completely different means of production, supply, and delivery) in condoms, intending to cross security checkpoints (of which you have a choice of two, carry-on or stowage, and intentionally choose the one that does include a visual inspection), and not swallow the things?

Do not spurn poor Mr. Ockham.

Posted by: SaltedSlug at January 11, 2007 08:06 AM (qdEWQ)

10 Maybe they figured some dumbass jury would award her a million since juries are generally filled with people just as stupid as this woman, then maybe they figured it was more cost effective to settle the case without a trial.

I have sat on a jury with some real bozos who are quick to give a hand out to the plaintiffs in these cases.

Posted by: Britton at January 11, 2007 12:31 PM (yxFJ1)

11 Wait. You're invoking Occam's Razor to explain why this apparent criminal put the drugs in her carry-on but you're rejecting it for the sake of the argument that the police are the real criminals who deliberately mistreated this woman?

By far, the simplest explanation is that an inspection of her bags resulted in something that appeared to be drugs. She was detained while the mystery substance was tested and initial tests indicated that it was drugs, so they put her in jail while they did more tests. Three weeks later, they found out that it was flour and they let her go.

She pitches a fit about being arrested even though she's the one who set up the situation that made it look like she had drugs and sued. Some ever-pragmatic PR agent at the PPD considered what it would look like to the public to try to fight this idiot-child's hissy fit -- not to mention the additional questions it would raise about police efficiency and perhaps their conduct in other cases -- and decided to settle.

I mean, that IS the simplest explanation here. All of the news stories I read imply that much, minus the explanation for why there was a settlement at all.

And, of course, I love the quote about not attributing to malice what could easily be explained by stupidity. Of course, I would also add to stupidity, a lack of integrity.

My favorite explanation of the sum of things here is that this girl is stupid and the city lacks the strength of its convictions.

Posted by: Trey Givens at January 11, 2007 03:00 PM (51mgz)

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January 03, 2007

Dear, Scientists. Please Call Me First.

Ok. New Rule for scientists: before you go and discover something, please call me to make sure I don't already know about it.

Scientific American: Back to the Future: How the Brain "Sees" the Future

Neuroscientists for the first time have identified regions of the brain involved in envisioning future events. Using brain imaging, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found that the human mind taps into the same parts of the brain while imagining the future as it does when recollecting the past. This means that the brain apparently predicts the course of future events by imagining them taking place much like similar past ones.
[Emphasis added]

What in the name of Aristotle's sandals did you THINK was going on?

How could it be possible to predict future events without some reference to similar, past experiences?

Let's imagine try our best to accurately predict what will happen next Thursday. Since I've had several Thursdays before, I predict that next Thursday will be much like the one tomorrow and the average of Thursdays past in recent months. Even if I "predict" that next Thursday will be nothing like, or radically different from, previous Thursdays, I still have to first think about Thursdays past.

Now, let's predict what it would be like to meet baby Jesus at the grocery store. That has never happened to anyone, so you have no idea how it will go. All you can do is remember what it was like to meet other infants and add to it some strange magical happenstance, like being struck my lightning or swarms of locusts descending upon the cracker aisle or maybe the baby turns water into HI-C. I don't know, but in order to imagine that I had to refer to my past experiences.

If I had no experience, upon what information could I possibly make ANY predictions. Guess what. Terri Shiavo is not very good at palm reading. The reason is pretty much the same.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm glad these scientists have plotted out which parts of my brain are doing what, but I want folks to stop with vapid conclusions like this one. Next thing you know someone is going to spend millions to observe that liquid water turns solid at sufficiently low temperatures.

Posted by: Flibbertigibbet at 11:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Category: In the News
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French Court's Shocking Display of Reason

Reuters: French court rules pork soup kitchen not racist

PARIS (Reuters) - A French court ruled Tuesday that an organization with far-right links can continue offering pork soup to the homeless, rejecting police complaints that the food distribution was racist.
Police banned the soup kitchen last month, arguing that the handouts discriminated against Jews and Muslims who do not eat pork on religious grounds.
The administrative court said the distribution was "clearly discriminatory," but could not be stopped because the organizers offered to feed anyone who asked for help.
The mayor of Paris condemned the ruling and urged the police to appeal the ruling.
"Faced by this initiative which stinks of xenophobia, I want once again to express city hall's desire to fight all forms of discrimination, racism and anti-Semitism," mayor Bertrand Delanoe said in a statement.
The food handouts are organized by a nationalist group called Solidarity of the French (SDF). It says its "pig soup," which uses pork fat for stock, is country fare much loved by French traditionalists.
"No-one has ever been able to prove that anyone has been refused soup or clothes on the grounds of their religion or race," SDF lawyer Frederic Pichon told France Info radio after Tuesday's court decision.

If those people are racists, it's pretty clever of them to choose something that the people they hate will refuse so that they don't have to refuse them. AND if someone tries to force them to change, they can just stop giving the handouts on account of the fact that people tried to force them to do something they didn't want to do with their charity. Then, everyone starves thanks to stupid multiculturalists.

That's what kills me about this: it's CHARITY.

But apparently, in France, people think that beggars can be choosers.

Posted by: Flibbertigibbet at 11:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Category: In the News
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