Friday, September 30, 2011

My "Criminal" Past

As most (if not all) of you know, I'm going through a lot of legal bullshit right now (as explained in previous blogs), but I wanted to explain in detail what I've been through previously here in the 'sunshine' state.

    I guess the best place to start is the beginning (derp).  When I was 19 I had just moved back to the states from a little island in the pacific (really little...20 kids in my graduating class little).  I hadn't even been in the state for a year before I got to meet some of "Florida's finest."  Apparently 'protecting and serving' includes wasting your time bothering the local youth when they try to congregate at a private household, while not even playing music or being loud in any way (though we did have the audacity to sit on the front porch).

    My 'crime'?  I happened to be at a place where they had alcohol.  That's it.  Not that they caught me with a beer, not that I was drunk in any way.  Simply that I was at a residence that had alcohol.  I shit you not.  That is a CRIME in Florida...IF they want it to be.  The wonderful thing about our laws are that they can be interpreted by any asshole with a badge, and are written to give that asshole to power to either help you out or fuck you over.  I could have easily fought this case, but after dragging me through the local PD, then hauling me off to the other end of the county to 'hold' me, they shipped me back to the county jail and put me with a bunch of real criminals before releasing me with a court date and eventually fining me...wait for it...$50.  Who the fuck is going to fight a $50 fine with days and days if not weeks of court dates?  Not me, that's who.

    So after that I was fine for about a year before "Florida's finest" assholes decided it was time to fuck with me again.  My friend drove me to another friend's house to hang out for a while, and on the way home he got pulled over.  He happened to have weed in his pocket and got nabbed for that, and then the cops searched his van.  After cuffing me and sitting me in the mud in front of a main intersection for an hour, they stood me up to let me go.  i grabbed my wallet and my backpack, and they grabbed me and cuffed me again.  Turns out I apparently had an unused old piece of shit metal pipe in my bag somehwere, and they were going to charge me with possession of drug paraphernalia because my friend had weed on him.  Again I got to go through the local PD, across the county to be 'held' for hours before being trasported back across county to the county jail in order to be bonded out.  After I was bonded out, I had a court date where they fined me about $600, and I was on my way.

    About a year or 2 after that, I was driving and encountered a DUI checkpoint.  I was (yet again) completely sober, but the cop told me that my car would be searched by a K9 after it was done with the van in front of me.  At the time I had 2 small bags of weed in the car, and figured it would be better to tell them where one of them was and hope that they didn't find the other.  My plan worked, but I was obvioulsy still arrested for the bag I admitted to.  After going to the county jain AGAIN, I was bailed out and had to get my vehicle out of impound.  After paying some crazy amount of money, I got my car (and the bag that was left in it) and had a way to get to court (yay!).  This time I was sentenced to serve 6 months of probation to go along with my fines and court costs.  If any of you have ever had to go through probation, you know how terrible it is.  You have to report to your probation officer constantly while at the same time getting piss tested all the time AND having to attend drug counseling  (where they also do piss tests).  As a victim of the state of Florida, you are required to pay for every single one of these meetings (piss tests included), while at the same time missing work in order to be there.  After paying out the ass for all of this, I eventually completed my probation with the completion of my counseling outstanding (meaning I had to complete the counselling before I was actually off of probation).  Of course towards the end of my counselling they told me that I needed even more counselling (17 weeks wasn't enough for a tiny bag of pot), and I knew the reason they were doing that was that they got paid per session, so the longer they make you attend, the more money they make.  I told my counsellor that I would not be attending additional meetings simply because they felt like I needed it (and they needed more money).  She immediately piss tested me and said that she would send a letter to my probation officer saying that I had failed if I didn't come back for more classes.  By this time I was fed up with the whole thing and basically said fuck it.  I got a carbon copy of the letter sent to my probation officer saying that I failed to complete their counselling, and figured the next time I got pulled over I would be going to jail.  Somehow I got lucky and the next time I did get pulled over I had no warrants or anything.  I figure either they fucked up the paperwork or they were helpless to fuck me over again because I had technically finished the state's version of the probation.

    And then I had this latest charge, which was once again a victimless crime that I had committed against the state of Florida that they were bound and determined to get their money out of me for.  Maybe that's the problem...that they can't tax something that is illegal, so instead they charge you for it and force you to pay huge fines so they can still make their buck off of you.  At least if the legalized it and taxed it they could save their police force and jails the trouble of having to book potheads and be able to spend more time trying to catch murderers, theives, and rapists.

    It seems like the priorities  of the state (and the country) are all backwards.  We legalize cigarettes and alcohol which kill millions, but then outlaw marijuana which has never killed anybody.  They choose to treat someone in possession of cannabis as if they are some kind of threat, when that person is in fact LESS of a threat because they are more likely to be non-violent and just trying to snack on some tacos.  Its almost like they trump up stupid shit like pot to try and justify themselves, but the only people they're fooling are the ignorant and misinformed.  They tell me that I'm living in a "free" country, and then tell me that at the age of 30 I can't make a decision as to how I would like to relax or medicate myself.  If the government wants to punish people for victimless crimes, and in turn make the person charged a victim of the state, this is not a free country at all.  It is a complete fake that only fools those that are too fucking stupid to simply take 2 minutes and look behind the curtain they been duped into staring at their entire lives.

    I am not a criminal.  They have tried to make me feel as though I am, and they did a good job, but I know that I am a good person and have never been in trouble for anything like theft or any kind of violence.  In the end they failed to do anything but make me lose faith in their system, which I didn't have much in the first place.  I'm just about ready to move, which is saying a lot because I actually pay a mortgage and would have to go through some serious bullshit to sell this house, plus I have a family who live and go to school here.

    So in the end, here I am.  A rock.  A hardplace.  woo-hoo.  I know that many will say that I put myself in this position, and they are partially correct, but ONLY because the laws on cannabis are retarded in the first place.  Nobody has ever suffered because of me smoking a joint, and I'm pretty sure potheads are what keeps places like Denny's and Taco Bell in business.

until next time, cheers
-C0c

Sunday, September 25, 2011

So I Got Arrested...

    Alright, first of all let me thank the few of you that donated in the time I had the video up or while I was doing the blogtv explaining the situation.  I decided to take the video down because i felt like I could have done a better job with it, but before I could record another attempt I had to leave town for a little over a week (just returned a few days ago).

    For those that don't know, my first court date is set for the 21st of this month (September).  If I have enough money prior to that point, which is a slim chance, I will retain a lawyer.  Most likely what will happen is that I won't be able to afford a lawyer, and I'll have to settle for a public pretender...err, defender.  In that case, he basically just folds to whatever they offer me, which will probably include fines, court cost, public defender leans (yes, that's how they charge you), and probation, which includes monthly fines and piss tests (that I have to pay for), and that will probably include some form of drug counseling where you do an interview and they assign you some crazy number of meetings with them because you have to pay for each one...they will probably also drug test at my expense and require me to attend NA (Narcotics Anonymous) twice a week, along with the weekly counseling meeting.

    It would be funny if it weren't true, but I will most likely become a slave of the state and end up paying about $3500 over a tiny sliver of marijuana that probably weighed 0.2 grams at most, and I'm not exaggerating.  If I fail to do any of these things, or if I fail a single drug test, I will be found in violation of my probation, and will be arrested and re-charged (end get fucked over EVEN MORE).

    I've been seriously thinking about why I would want to live in a state this stupid, in a country this fucked up?  I'm starting to think I might be dead, and this (Florida and the USA in general) might be hell...

    Until next time,
    -C0c

Monday, September 19, 2011

Over-Zealous Cops

    I'd like to talk about a topic that is related to my situation, and that is the police.  I have never felt very comfortable around the police because they always make me feel (and often treat me) like some sort of criminal.  I know I'm not a criminal, but unfortunately all it takes is one over-zealous cop to tarnish your record forever and actually make you a criminal on paper.  It seems like our system has become obsessed with raising revenue, and in doing so have decided that being complete assholes to normal citizens in order to take their hard earned money for simple, small infractions (often to ridiculous laws).

    Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good cops out there, but it seems a large percentage of them didn't get the memo about 'protecting and serving.'  many officers have taken to harassing and demeaning productive members of the community simply in order to make a buck for the state.  I've been fucked with so many times that my heart still races when a cop gets behind me while i'm driving, even though i'm not doing anything wrong.  A cop can pull you over for ANY of a number of reasons if he wants to.  The is no escape from being pulled over if the cop feels the urge to pull you over.  no matter how perfectly you drive, he can find a reason, and once he does he can use his own discretion to determine how much harassment you deserve.  Unfortunately for me, I seem to encounter a lot more dick-headed cops than ones that treat me as a human deserving of a little respect (the same respect they DEMAND from you).

    All in all this is a result of allowing certain people that don't do something (like smoke weed for example) to judge those that do, and it allows those people to decide what the punishment should be for a totally victimless crime.  Here in Florida, we actually have mandatory minimum sentences for certain amounts of marijuana (mandatory 3 years for 40 plants, for example).  By doing this, we are allowing our prison population to explode with "criminals" who have never committed an act of violence or stolen a thing.  The cost of housing and feeding these "criminals" in those prisons for all those years is not cheap, and of course it is the tax payer that foots the bill.  I don't want to get off track too much, so I'll address marijuana legalization in a future blog.

    My main point is that when the cops are around, I don't feel safe.  Instead I feel like if they wanted, they could find a reason to fuck with me and make my life miserable.  That is the power that we afford them, and many of them choose to abuse it by clogging our courts and prisons with people who have committed no real crime other than one made up by snotty assholes that were given an ounce of power themselves.

Until next time,
-C0c