Back in October, Metropolitan Police raided two Capitol Hemp locations in Adams Morgan and two in Chinatown, confiscating water pipes that they claimed were up for sale expressly for the consumption of marijuana. While offering these pipes (most people call them bongs) at head shops is perfectly legal, the police justified their actions by pointing to other items for sale in the store that expressly referenced cannabis use and evasion of law enforcement, such as the book Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, and the DVD 10 Rules for Dealing with Police.
The owners, Adam Eidinger and Alan Amsterdam, have been charged with misdemeanors and could lose their business if convicted. According to DCist, the duo’s lawyers have advised them to take many cannabis-related items off the shelves. The water pipes are still offered, but any merchandise that alludes to marijuana use, including the aforementioned book and DVD, has been removed. The fear is that their presence would cause another raid by police and further charges.
It’s likely that the owners of Capitol Hemp are targeting a particular, illegal market with their business model. Even so, their being charged with a crime before any evidence of illegal activity reflects a growing trend in law across the nation for pretextual enforcement. Since the Sep. 11 attacks, acts like these have become more frequent. After that day, Bush administration officials began detaining foreign nationals suspect of terrorist activities based solely on suspicion. Powers given to immigration enforcement through the Patriot Act allowed them to hold these suspects indefinitely, often without adequate legal representation. These practices persist under Obama, and the act of pretextual enforcement, in cases like the Capitol Hemp raids, has moved even outside of the realm of immigration and counter-terrorism.
It is widely unknown in which situations the federal government can collect information under the Patriot Act. But two people in the know, Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) of the Intelligence Committee, are disturbed by the government’s powers. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the two wrote that “there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.” If the legal limitations for the government to collect citizen information are lax, law enforcement has a very different understanding of our privacy rights than we do.
Couple this with the recently signed National Defense Authorization Act, and it seems that everyone is at risk of violations of due process and privacy rights. Under the NDAA, the government may now hold foreign nationals and American citizens suspected of terrorist activities indefinitely without formal charge or due process. Similar to the Patriot Act, it is unclear which grounds the government will consider appropriate for enforcement of the NDAA. Will domestic activism, such as involvement in the Occupy movement, be construed as anti-government activity serious enough to warrant arrest? As I saw last weekend with the re-occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York, local police forces already consider a resurgence of the movement this spring enough of a threat to resort to violent tactics.
Obama has said he will not utilize the controversial section of the NDAA, but if the movement gains more momentum and becomes more critical of his administration leading up to the election, he has the legal framework to imprison protesters as threats to national security. What is billed as an anti-terror bill can just as easily be utilized to challenge political upheaval at home.
Equally important is the legal precedent that these statutes set for local law enforcement. The truth is, no one in America truly knows their rights to due process or privacy with the current interpretations of these laws, and this can have consequences far more serious for citizens than petty drug charges.
If our laws were all just, all law-enforcement were ethical, and the entire legal system were fair, there would be no need for privacy rights. But police and politicians will always look to push the legal envelope to catch suspects, as it makes them seem competent. These laws, along with the acceptance of pretextual enforcement, allow authorities to detain you for something you haven’t done. Whether it’s drug paraphernalia sales or alleged terror acts, an individual’s innocence is now in the hands of the accuser more than ever before. And that’s bad news, whether you think you’re a law-abiding citizen or not.
Feel threatened? Hide your kids and especially your wife with Gavin at gbade@georgetownvoice.com
