A $10 heroin bust in Cal Anderson Park

It's a flickr slideshow of the docs followed by a link to a pdf (which both worked fine for me). I really liked the use of the flickr slideshow to view the docs easily.

Here's a link to justin's flickr account with photos of the docs.

obviously these guys weren't just "people watching and leaving the park" Phil...

Cheesecake, that's a straw-man. I didn't write or imply that all these people were doing was people-watching in the park. Please re-read my comment if you thought otherwise.

You forgot one I see routinely near the playground...Watching people stick needles in their arm.

"Really" wrote:

"yeah you don't have to be a cop to notice people "acting suspicious" i see this shit all the time, I doubt it was because they were just climbing into a car and watching at the same time."

If not, then why did the police officer write so in his report? Like I wrote before, if he thought they looked fishy and it's acceptable to go question people who look fishy, then why write up the part about finding them gathering their things and leaving to be suspicious? Just write, "I thought they looked fishy so I went over and questioned them." From what (admittedly little) information is available to me here, I'd say the officer acted suspiciously like someone who did something he should not have.

"why dissect this?"

Because this is not a police state, and police are, for very good reasons related to our freedom, required to work within certain boundaries, not to simply do whatever it takes to get the job done as long as the ends justify the means. When one of them does something suspicious -- like writing a somewhat bizarre report about the reportedly-suspicious nature of someone looking at him citing someone in a park, then picking up belongings and getting into a vehicle, and using this as justification for escalation of the situation -- we have every reason to want to dissect what happened, regardless of whether the eventual outcome pleases us or not. This should raise our suspicion.

"I see so much scumaction I just wanna start carrying around a bag of water balloons and just start tagging dudes with belts around their arms. fuck'em."

Although I wouldn't put it... read more e way you did, I'm not crazy about hard drug use in public parks, either, although it's really the behavior that often surrounds such use that bothers me, not the drug use itself, and most of that bad behavior is already forbidden, so I'm more apt to support busting people for the other things than for choosing to chemically alter their states of mind. Our drug laws are woefully unjust, and I wouldn't wish the effect of them on anyone. In this case, all the guy was observed to have done was lay on a blanket next to a hypodermic needle that contained heroin. That's illegal, but not, in my mind, the slightest bit amoral. It's a pity that we had to blow several hours of police time on dealing with it.

I wish adults who want to shoot up had a better place to do so. Safe injection sites work well in other cities, but admittedly don't have the appeal of our beautiful park. I'd much prefer not to have the park be a place that people hang out and shoot heroin, but I'm not willing to look the other way while police side-step the boundaries within which they are required to operate in order to achieve that goal. I'm not saying that this is what happened, only that the situation as described in the officer's own words sounds suspicious.

meant immoral, though hanging out with a syringe is neither immoral nor amoral

I say that based on the info the cop acted appropriately. I guess it is subject to interpretation. The cop probably used his best judgment.

I'm no expert on Constitutional law or on law enforcement, so I can't say with any authority whether the cop acted appropriately. The actions describe lead me to believe that in my own opinion (not based specifically on what's legal, just my gut reaction) he probably acted appropriately, and I think our Seattle Police act appropriately the vast majority of the time. And in the end, looking only at this specific incident and not at the bigger picture, most of us probably benefited from his actions (though not, of course, the guy who's now tangled in our nasty drug war web). I'm not disputing any of that.

In his report, Officer Brownlee very specifically referred to watching police in a park then picking up belongings and leaving the park to get in a vehicle as suspicious behavior, and used that reportedly-suspicious behavior as justification for further action on his part. If he needed justification for further action (I don't know) then it seems that he acted out of line, because citizens should not be treated with suspicion just because they observe police actions in public, then choose to pick up their things and leave. If he didn't need such justification, then why did he go to the trouble of documenting it? If he didn't need such justification, then it seems he could have -- and likely would have -- just written something like, "I saw some people who looked like trouble, so I went over and questioned them."

Again: Must we all to avert our eyes and stay where we are whenever police are in the area in order to avoid raising their suspicion and setting ourselves up for... read more ssle?