Yes, it’s been a while. I have no good excuses. So I’m making up for it with a doozey. Grab a snack and buckle up because this is a long one.
I will never forget the events of All Saints Day, 2011. Up to that day, I felt I had been blessed with a charmed life. I was living away from my hometown in northern Virginia and finishing my degree in Richmond at VCU. I only ever took the minimum credit hours to qualify as a full-time student and worked nights at a comedy club as a waiter.
I got to meet hundreds of great acts, from the moderately famous, to the not so famous, to the not at all famous. That aside the money wasn’t terrible. I might have struggled if I had to live on it, but I was also moving about a pound of cannabis a month through that club. Between comics who had to fly and couldn’t bring their stash with them and about 50% of my coworkers, I was raking in an extra few hundred dollars a week. Additionally, I’d drive back to my hometown every couple of weeks and hookup my friends there too.
On one such trip to northern VA, I brought up a little more flower than usual. A friend of a friend who used to only buy $100 worth or so had been hitting me up for more in the past couple weeks. I didn’t think much of it, and I was happy to oblige. I was also planning on making cannibutter cookies so I had plenty on hand. After spending Halloween in Richmond, I made my way to a friend’s place in Alexandria, where I planned to stay a couple nights. It was kind of a safe house, a home base if you will. My friend’s mom was practically my mom. She was cool enough to let me stink up her house and make some edibles, so we were close to say the least.
It was during the butter making process that I was to meet with this friend of a friend. Let’s call this guy Chris. After agreeing upon the deal, $400 for an ounce (I know, I know! It sounds crazy, but this was 2011 in northern VA. People were happy to pay that price back then!), Chris arranged to come meet me. Except a few hours before he texted me and said he got called into work, and his boy Nino would be coming to pick it up. I, being an idiot, thought nothing of this.
By this time, I had been preparing the butter on the stove for several hours and it was almost done. Nino texted me and asked if I could come meet him at the 7-11 a few minutes away, but I was just getting ready to finish up the butter so I told him I was stuck where as I was at. He agreed to come meet me by the house. This turned out to be a stroke of luck, but I’ll explain later.
It was around 7:00pm, and he texted me to let me know he was around the corner. I remember looking at the time and thinking I couldn’t wait for 8:00pm, because I promised my girlfriend I’d call her then. I walked outside to Nino’s car, a metallic off-green Altima. He rolled down the window and asked me to get in. I did, and told him to drive around the block as we made the deal. We made the exchange and half-way back, he asked me to reach for his lighter that fell under my seat. I didn’t initially, as I told to keep going, and he seemed to get nervous.
We got back to where I could see the front of the house and then reached down to look for his lighter. When I looked up, there were laser dots on my chest as two black Suburbans suddenly enclosed us in.
“GET YOUR HANDS ON THE ROOF!” was the order barked out by the closest black-clad officer with an AR-15 style rifle.
I immediately complied
The officer, covered head-to-toe in full tactical gear, approached the car, rifle trained on me. Then another officer approached on the driver’s side. They both opened the doors at the same time.
“STICK ONE ARM OUT OF THE CAR!”
I did.
I couldn’t see what happened to Nino from there. The officer on my side slung his rifle over his shoulder, grabbed my arm flung me onto the concrete, stuck a knee in my back and cuffed me. I may be 6’1”, but at the time I might have been 145lbs. The cop was a good 6’4”, 250lbs easily. Not only were my glasses scratched on the concrete, but since that day, a rib will pop out on my sternum every so often. It’s not pleasant. I wasn’t resisting in the least. But I’m glad that officer got to feel like he was beating up on a hardened criminal. I hope he got a shiny button or a commemorative pen.
Outside of some traffic infringements, this was my first up close and personal encounter with the law. I didn’t know how to respond or exactly how to assert my rights, like my right to an attorney and my right to remain silent.
I did sit there on the curb, mostly silent. One officer was trying to convince me that anything I say could only help me at this point. This was before I was even Mirandized. I wasn’t buying that one bit. I could see two other officers talking to my friend’s mom. Not only was the butter still on the stove and stinking up the place, I had another ounce and a half of cannabis inside. She initially refused a search, twice. After some coercive threats though, she let them in. The police really didn’t know how to collect the evidence for the butter, so they had her dump it all outside. They eventually found the rest of my stash, plus some that she claimed was hers.
By this point, they had enough to charge me with two felonies, and her with a two misdemeanors. I don’t know if it’s gotten much better, but at the time, VA had some of the most draconian cannabis laws in the country. Anything over half an ounce (14g) is considered a felony. If I had been in 1000ft of a school, the sentence would have carried mandatory jail time. That’s why they were trying to get me to meet at the 7-11. There’s an elementary school across the street.
They confiscated everything and took me in for booking. Nobody knew what was going on or how to help me. I was interrogated by the arresting officers, two giant men who probably played football in high school, peaked, and were now reveling in picking on a scrawny college kid like me.
I definitely divulged more information than I should have. Everyone in the US, please remember, DO NOT TALK TO THE POLICE IF YOU ARE ARRESTED. THEY ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS. SHUT UP AND REQUEST A LAWYER. Sorry, but if you take nothing else away from reading this, I want it to be that.
So I get charged and booked and have to go through the whole gambit of dehumanizing bullshit that is our justice system, all for a plant that God created. After getting strip searched and my shoelaces and belt taken away, I was put in a single cell at a holding facility where I was told I would get a phone call. Well, it just so happened that the phone on the men’s side of the facility wasn’t working that night, and I had to wait an additional couple of hour for the last woman prisoner to be cleared out so I could make a call.
Unfortunately for me, and most people in my generation, nobody remembers phone numbers anymore. The one I did know was my parents’. I don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to anyone that my dad was not happy to receive a phone call from a correctional facility at 11:00pm. To make matters worse, my mother was in the hospital at the time because one of her kidneys was failing and had to be removed. Me and my impeccable timing…
My bail was set at $10,000, meaning it’d be about $500 cash to a bail bondsman to get me out. So my father, using very different language, told me to enjoy my night in jail. Thanks, pop. I had no one else to call, though I probably should have just thumbed through the phone book for an attorney. It turned out to be a good thing that I didn’t though. Again, I’ll explain later.
All of my hope was shattered at this point. I couldn’t reach out to my friends or anyone else and I had no idea if anyone was trying to help me from the outside. My grim reality started to set in. I was pretty certain I’d be looking at jail time. Of course, even in a backward state - sorry, commonwealth - like Virginia, first offenders rarely serve time for something like this. I may have known that in my subconscious, but I was definitely not thinking it.
They transferred me to another facility by the courthouse where I was to spend the rest of my time until my hearing. There was no cell this time though. It was just a large glass-walled room with uncomfortable plastic seats bolted to the floor. It was the drunk-tank more or less from what I gathered. It was past 3:00am at point, but I sure as hell wasn’t sleeping. I had no idea what to expect next.
Then my name was called. A guard escorted me out and told me my bail had been posted. He led me around a corner and at the end of the hall was my girlfriend. I couldn’t believe it. After not being able to reach me all night she got a hold of one of my friends that I was hanging with. She drove the two hours up from Richmond and spent the next few hours trying to figure out how to spring me out. I dropped to my knees and held closer than I ever had.
Obviously though, she wasn’t happy either. She actually wasn’t into cannabis at all and she mostly looked the other way when it came to my dealings. This was the beginning of the end of that relationship, but I’m still forever grateful for what she did for me. But the story doesn’t end there.
I was given a few weeks until my court appearance. It was time to start seeking legal counsel. I had gotten a couple suggestions for some lawyers but I wasn’t quite sold on anyone yet. It was a lot to think about and selecting the right attorney could make or break your chances of remaining on the outside. So I did what I always do when I need to clear my head. I went to play a round of disc golf by myself.
I went to my favorite park in northern VA, and started throwing. Just a few holes in, I caught up to two middle-aged guys throwing a round. They were drinking straight vodka out of a large water bottle and they invited me to play the rest of the game with them. How could I say no?
I didn’t divulge my situation to them initially. We talked as we played and they generally seemed like good dudes. When we got to hole 12 and I pointed out the carving on the bench: The Bowl Hole.
“You got some weed?” one asked.
“No.” I told them. I explained I had just been arrested for it so I was staying clean and looking for a good lawyer.
“Oh! You gotta get Whitestone!” the other exclaimed. “He’s gotten me off 5 DUIs!”
I found my attorney. I had managed to sock away $5000 over the last couple years. Whitestone was worth every penny. After several months of getting continuances on my court date, he finally settled when he got a judge he knew didn’t care as much about cannabis. My friend’s mom was also willing to testify in court that she did not in fact consent to a search until coerced. This dropped one of the felonies entirely. Additionally, I could identify one of the officers appearing in court as Nino, and he never identified himself as a cop at any point during my arrest. I’m not sure if that bought us any leeway, but the last felony was dropped to a misdemeanor. My final sentence was a $300 fine, a suspended license for six months, and I needed to not get arrested in the next year. I wasn’t even on probation.
So to recap, Fairfax County police spent what I assume amounts to tens of thousands of dollars to arrest some college kid for two ounces of pot only to have him pay a $300 fine. Excellent police work there, boys. Way to keep the streets safe.
To say that this unfortunate series of events doesn’t affect my life anymore would be inaccurate. While I live in Ohio now, where medicinal is more or less legal, I can’t get my record expunged for another year. I’ve applied for both Uber and Lyft and was denied to work for either simply because of a misdemeanor marijuana conviction. I really could have used that extra income!
The moral of the story: Always lawyer up.
Thanks for reading.