Holy shit. City Pages just put up a story about how Minneapolis cops are supposedly cruising Occupy protests to find people who are high and take them to a facility to take part in an impairment study. Allegedly, if the cops can’t find anybody who is high, they’ll get them high and sometimes even stop at a McDonald’s drive through and get them a McDouble for their trouble. The article even said they took one person who was kind of high already and got him really high before taking him to the study.
It’s no secret that I’m afraid of cops and spending a night in jail did nothing to alleviate my fears but now I have to worry about cops getting kids high?
Great. I knew we were going to have to do the “drug talk” with my stepson sooner or later but now we’ll have to amend it completely. Here we go –
Jared. You’re going to be 12 in just a couple of months and as you get older you’re going to have to make new decisions. Your parents, stepmom and I aren’t going to be around you 100% of the time so we’re trusting you to use good judgement and common sense.
I don’t need to tell you that “drugs are bad”. You’ve heard plenty about the dangers of drugs in school and you’re a smart kid but you need to realize that hearing about it in a classroom is very different from dealing with the situation in real life. I just want you to know that if a police officer tries to give you drugs you need to say “no” and get away from them as fast as possible.
If a cop ever offers you drugs you need to get away and tell somebody. Find a trusted adult like… shit. Cops used to be the “go to” people when thinking of trusted adults. I guess we don’t really have that option anymore. Go and find a… priest? No. Not a priest (at least not a Catholic one). Uh… how about a fireman? Go and find a fireman or something and tell them what happened.
It may not be easy. You may feel pressured into doing the drugs the cops are trying to give you because they’re in a position of authority and you’ve been told since you were a toddler that the police are here to protect you. They also carry loaded firearms so that kind of ups the intimidation factor.
It doesn’t matter. You have a bright future ahead of you and you don’t need to ruin it just because some police officer needs to meet some quota for a drug study.
DARE to resist drugs from cops.