If I'm ever in trouble, I will not "Get Jesse" but "Get Dom" instead....

Thank you for making a meaningful difference in people's lives....

"The charges will be dismissed", but the mission was accomplished: harassing and jailing a man who was bothering nobody, for no reason other than to keep the message out to South County black people to keep moving, we're watching you, we'll pull you off the streets however many hundreds of times we feel like, because you are not a part of this community. It's a message of control. If you are black you can expect to have conversations like this every day of your life, whether you have pot on you or not.

What's interesting here is, giving a joint to someone is completely 100% legal. It's not until you take that five bucks (at the recipient's insistence, in this case) that you're committing a felony.

Escobar and Schwab, we pay you to fight crimes, not generate them. Do you really think the public wants, or respects, this kind of "policing?"

This should be bookmarked to every sloggers smart phone, for when that one person goes on about how "people don't go to jail for pot". 2 officers time, and the time of the prosecutors office, all spent on $5 worth of pot. They get to keep their jobs, another black guy gets to go to jail, real criminals have 2 less cops to worry about for the day, and we all get to pay for it. Except some of us are finally raising out hands and calling "bullshit"! Good work, Dom.

@3) Technically, convicting a person of drug delivery doesn't require a financial transaction under state law. But I think money is typically necessary to get the charges to stick, showing that an officer's cash ended up in the defendant's hands and that it was a consensual, deliberate delivery.

And they wonder why people hate the police?

@2 for the win. If we don't keep blacks in prison, who will provide our indentured servitude labor?

@6 true dat.

Meanwhile...

During testimony recorded by the Louisville Courier-Journal on Monday, [Rand] Paul claimed to be wearing a "hemp shirt" that he had been forced to buy in Canada due to an ongoing prohibition on the plant. He was one of several lawmakers to testify.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11…

Shit, the other day I was on the 7, and it started totez reeking of weed, and I start covertly peeking around, and then realize it's the dude in the seat across the aisle, and he's just rolling up a blunt on the bus. Then he hops out his seat and, holding the still unrolled joint aloft, starts searching his seat and the floor beneath it. He sees me watching and just exclaims, "I lost my ball of hash!"

John, are you planning to smoke Rand's shirt?

Fnarf, you can die happy, Will in Seattle has endorsed your comment. Or has there been a rapprochement? Or was the animosity always one-way?

Nice work Dominic. Not only for this, but for everything related to this issue. You are a real journalist, in the best sense of the word. Thanks.

@12, I would like to beat him to death with a tire iron, if that answers your question.

Undercover cops are street thugs.

I agree that the charges probably shouldn't have been filed, but @2 & 4, where does it say that this guy went to jail on this charge? I'm not defending the charge, but just because someone was charged doesn't mean that they went to jail.

@14 heh. Random question: do you like sour beer? Have you tried Russian River's sour styles? I've heard they're going to stop distributing to WA, so maybe it's a moot question.

@11,
If the cops had entrapped that guy into selling them a can of beer, I'm pretty sure the anger here would still be the same.

The guy wasn't trying to sell drugs, the cops went out of their way to ask him to sell drugs.

Yeah, still illegal, but a totally dick move on the cops' part.

@16 if they charged hiim with a felony, I am pretty sure he went to jail. Probably had to bail out too.

Racking up arrest stats on garbage like this is way easier and safer than fighting actual crime, especially when it entitles the local cop shop to matching funds and grants from Uncle Sam.

Even better is going after cancer patients for possession, almost zero chance they'll have the strength to fight back.

Well written and illuminating Dominic. These deputies are a disgrace.

This is racist to the core, and an example of how two University of Washington studies showed that our criminal justice system is plagued by systemic racial bias top to bottom. This type of thing happens almost exclusively to black dudes in the big city, and almost never to white dudes in the suburbs or rural areas. All things equal, blacks are more likely to be engaged (stopped, searched, targeted by undercover operations), more likely to be charged in any given circumstance, if charged, more likely to be tried, if tried, more likely to be convicted, if convicted, more likely to receive a longer sentence. It the substantial cause of racial disparity in our prisons and a disgrace. And it is not unique to Seattle, It happens everywhere.

I think that passing a joint is distribution, which is a felony in Washington, whether it's likely to be prosecuted or not.

Most often, I'd expect such a charge to be used as "an important tool for law enforcement agents" in order to pressure someone into pleading guilty to something else. That's the way we do it in the US, right? Threaten someone with the crazy prosecutions we tell the public never really happen in order to avoid having to convince a jury of guilt for some lesser accusation?

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't understand how half of what cops do isn't entrapment, from a lot of the recent terrorism prosecutions to the case of this guy and his joint on the bus. There's enough crime in this country, from Islamic terrorism on down, without the police creating more.

These sheriffs should be fired for wasting taxpayer $$$.This is just a create work action for them & the courts & judges.

I believe the cops involved in this case should be suspended for wasting county resources and lying to the public!

The laughable part is it took TWO cops to do this. So take your outrage on what a waste of resources this was and double it.

But then, three cop cars regularly show up to deal with ANYTHING - even the most docile of drunken bums. If Seattle is so short on resources, how about sending just two cops deal with such trivialities, instead of six?

It starts.

The real issue is that people in Seattle can get a joint for five bucks!

Who's gonna keep us safe from narcs on the bus?

Damn right they dropped the charges. 502 exists to protect exactly this 51 year-old black man from exactly this sort of entrapment bullshit.

According to Paul Craig Roberts, a former editor of the Wall Street Journal and former assistant secretary to the treasury under Ronald Reagan, "Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists as the greatest threat to the American public."

Thank you Dominic, for this article and activism and for all you have done over the years.

hi my name is beverly, my son was arrested a few days after his 18th birthday for selling $5.00 worth of weed to a undercover cop in 2008. the courts gave him drug diversion, probation and one other thing. ok we were at every court hearing i only missed one and as far as i know my son said that they didn't give him another court date. anyway 2wks. ago they got him in front of my apartment and he asked them why was he being arrest they said that he missed a court date. so they took him back to jail. it was on a friday so of course he had to wait until tuesday 4 days inside which was hell for him because he had never been in jail for those many days. now since 2008 he has been in any kind of trouble. they wouldn't give him drug diversion again, so they gave him 5yrs. probation, work projected in which they took that off because he is disable, but the slapped something else on him which was home monitor which meant that he would have to have a phone installed in the home. or he could just turned himself in on the 16th of june to go to jail for 45 days and my son is scared to death, but he said mom i'm going to take jail and from listening to other people say man jail they have gang member and u have to pick a side or u wanted be protected and get jumped. he said that he would rather kill himself because he don't know what to do. mind my son is not a criminal they are treating him like charles manson, or like he skipped town and ran. i don't understand what is going on i am a mother that is at her wit's end can anybody tell me what to do plz.