United Parcel Service workers raised an alarm when a suspicious package destined for Orderville in Kane County showed up, calling in the Washington County Drug Task Force — Sgt. Jared Perry responded and discovered marijuana was in the box, according to a probable cause statement filed for the case.
Three arrests were made in the case: Lynn Ann Frost and Ivan Layne Frost were arrested May 4 and charged with conspiring to distribute marijuana,
United Parcel Service workers raised an alarm when a suspicious package destined for Orderville in Kane County showed up, calling in the Washington County Drug Task Force — Sgt. Jared Perry responded and discovered marijuana was in the box, according to a probable cause statement filed for the case.
Three arrests were made in the case: Lynn Ann Frost and Ivan Layne Frost were arrested May 4 and charged with conspiring to distribute marijuana, possession of paraphernalia, possession of drugs and cultivating marijuana.
Each were booked into Kane County Jail on $35,000 bail.
Ashley Nova Consiglio was also arrested and charged with conspiring to distribute marijuana, possession of paraphernalia, assault by a prisoner and two counts possession of drugs.
Consiglio was booked into Kane County Jail on $37,500 bail.
According to the probable cause statement, the package — which was heading to the Frost residence, where the three lived — was taken to the Kane County Drug Task Force.
Operatives got a search warrant and then delivered the package, monitoring it all the while, according to the statement.
Lynn Ann Frost took the package into the home and some time later Ivan Frost was seen disposing of the empty box and then leaving, according to the report.
Task force operatives caught up with him in Glendale and he told them where the contents had been stored.
With that information, officers executed the search warrant.
Consiglio was in the home at the time of the search, according to the statement.
Operatives found "glass pipes, bongs, rolling papers, grinders, baggies, scales" and other paraphernalia for the use and distribution of the drug during the search in addition to bags containing a "crystal substance that was later field tested and flashed positive for methamphetamine," a white, powdery substance which tested as an opiate, and a jar and baggies of "a green leafy substance," which also tested as marijuana, according to the statement.
Tramidol was also found where Consiglio slept, according to the report.
The wrapper that had been around the delivered box, as well as cellophane and dryer sheets used to mask the smell of the drug, were found along with seven marijuana plants and lights for growing, reported an officer in the statement.
While task force operatives were getting the suspects into the vehicles, Consiglio asked if she could smoke a cigarette and when told no she started to yell and kicked a deputy as well as multiple items inside and outside the home, according to the report.
Last week the Texas House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill that requires police officers to obtain a warrant before probing the anuses and vaginas of motorists during traffic stops. The fact that the bill was deemed necessary speaks volumes about the way the war on drugs has eroded our Fourth Amendment rights and encouraged cops to inflict outrageous indignities on people they suspect of violating pharmacological taboos.
How often do Texas cops decide to perform body cavity searches on people they pull over for routine traffic offenses? More often than you might think. Looking for the case that gave rise to this bill, I immediately found three cases, all involving young women suspected of marijuana possession.
Brandy Hamilton during the traffic stop (Image: KHOU-TV)
On Memorial Day in 2012, Alexandria Randle and Brandy Hamilton, both in their 20s, were driving home to Houston from Surfside Beach when they were pulled over for speeding on Highway 288 in Brazoria County. Claiming to smell marijuana, Trooper Nathaniel Turner ordered the women out of the car. After he found a small amount of pot in the car, Turner called a female trooper, Jennie Bui, and asked her to perform a body cavity search on both women. “If you hid something in there, we are going to find it,” Bui says on the dashcam video of the traffic stop. It turned out there was nothing to find. The stop ended with a ticket for possession of drug paraphernalia.
“It was extremely humiliating, especially with my entire family, including my 8-year-old nieces and my nephew…in the back of the car,” Randle told HLN. “They saw all of this happening, as well as everybody on the side of the road….I have a whole different feeling when I see police officers now….It’s a very touchy thing dealing with them.”
Randle and Hamilton sued the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) over the incident. Initially both troopers were dismissed, but Bui was reinstated. “It was determined that the relatively inexperienced trooper was directed by a more senior trooper to conduct the inappropriate search,” DPS Director Steve McCraw explained.
Randle and Hamilton’s ordeal was not unique. The same month they filed their lawsuit, DPS settled a case brought by two other women, Angel Dobbs and her niece Ashley Dobbs, who were 38 and 24, respectively, when they were stopped for tossing cigarette butts from their car on Highway 161 near Irving in July 2012. Trooper David Farrell claimed to smell marijuana coming from their car and called in a female trooper, Kelley Helleson, to poke around in their private parts. According to the lawsuit, Helleson conducted these “painful, humiliating, and shamefully embarrassing” body cavity searches “on the side of a public freeway illuminated by lights from the police vehicle in full view of the passing public.”
Like Randle and Hamilton, Angel and Ashley Dobbs said the trooper who searched them did not bother to change gloves between assaults. No drugs were found. The women got $185,000 for their trouble.
In this case, the trooper who conducted the search was fired, while the trooper who arranged it was suspended. Helleson was charged with two counts of sexual assault, while Farrell was charged with theft for allegedly stealing a bottle of hydrocodone. Last year Helleson pleaded guilty to two counts of official repression and received two years of probation, plus a $2,000 fine. According to the New York Daily News, “Helleson apologized in court, saying she was only doing what she was trained to do.” A grand jury declined to indict Farrell on the theft charge, and he is “back on active duty,” keeping Texas highways safe.
In yet another strikingly similar incident, Houston resident Jennifer Stelly says she and her boyfriend were pulled over for speeding in Brazoria County on the way to Surfside Beach in March 2013. The troopers claimed to smell pot, found a little in her purse, and decided a body cavity search was a good idea. “I was on my cycle,” Telly told the Fox station in Houston last December, “so she could not penetrate the vaginal area but she went to the anal area, and she penetrated and put her finger inside, and I just felt violated.” Stelly is suing DPS too.
According to DPS, searches like these are contrary to department policy, but apparently not all troopers got the memo. So you can begin to understand the motivation behind the bill that the Texas House passed last week, which was sponsored by Rep. Harold Dutton Jr. (D-Houston) and still needs approval from the state Senate. Dutton’s bill says “a peace officer may not conduct a body cavity search of a person during a traffic stop unless the officer first obtains a search warrant pursuant to this chapter authorizing the body cavity search.”
You might think Dutton’s bill is redundant, since we already have a Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable searches.” If these highly invasive, weakly justified searches do not qualify as unreasonable, what would? But while the courts probably would conclude that the searches described by these five women were unconstitutional, it is not hard to see how an overzealous drug warrior might think otherwise.
Harold Dutton (Image: YouTube)
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld routine strip searches of arrestees, even people accused of minor offenses such as marijuana possession or failure to wear a seat belt. In those cases the searches, aimed at finding weapons or contraband, took place in jail prior to confinement. But in 2003 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless inspection of body cavities in other settings as a “search incident to arrest.” The case involved Danny Joe McGee, a suspected crack dealer who was arrested for marijuana use. Based on a tip from an informant who suggested that McGee might be concealing crack “between his buttocks,” a police officer took him to “a secluded area” of a fire station and “compelled McGee to drop his pants, bend over, and spread his buttocks.” A “visual search of McGee’s anal region” revealed “several rocks of crack cocaine wrapped in red plastic in plain view lodged between McGee’s buttocks.”
The Supreme Court also has indicated that warrantless body cavity searches are permissible near the border as part of the government’s drug interdiction efforts. In a 1985 decision that upheld the detention of a Colombian woman whom customs agents suspected of swallowing balloons filled with cocaine, the Court said “we suggest no view on what level of suspicion, if any, is required for nonroutine border searches such as strip, body-cavity, or involuntary x-ray searches” (emphasis added). In other words, the Court assumed that such searches, aimed at addressing “the veritable national crisis in law enforcement caused by smuggling of illicit narcotics,” do not require probable cause, let alone a warrant.
In 2009 the Court ruled that public school officials went too far when they looked in the underwear of an eighth-grader suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school. But that decision left open the possibility that a strip search might be constitutional in a case involving a drug scarier than Advil if there was reason to believe a student had hidden it under her clothing.
The searches that prompted Dutton’s bill are different from the ones that have been upheld by the courts in several significant ways: They did not follow an arrest, they were not initiated by customs agents, they were conducted publicly on the side of the road, and they were not based on specific information indicating that the women had concealed drugs inside their bodies. Furthermore, the searches involved physical contact as opposed to a visual inspection.
Still, in at least two of the cases, there was evidence of an arrestable offense: marijuana possession. Perhaps the troopers thought a search in that situation was reasonable even without an actual arrest. Or perhaps they did not see an important difference between searching someone’s car, which police are allowed to do without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe they will find evidence of a crime, and searching someone’s anus or vagina.
That may be hard to believe, but it is also hard to believe that six troopers in three separate traffic stops thought it was reasonable to explore those private areas on the off chance that there might be some pot there. Such judgments can be understood only in the context of a prohibitionist mentality that sees bits of dried vegetable matter as a grave threat to public order.
Dustin Burrows (Image: YouTube)
“I was shocked to learn that these very intrusive searches were performed without a warrant and without regard to basic sanitary practices,” says state Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), who is sponsoring another bill aimed at preventing such incidents. “While I have a tremendous amount of respect for our local police and sheriff’s departments, I am concerned about the fact that this could happen to any of us, here or in other parts of the state, as we travel. The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, and I believe this bill is a natural reflection of that right.”
Burrows’ bill goes further than Dutton’s by requiring a warrant for a body cavity search of anyone detained (but not arrested) by police, whether during a traffic stop or in another context. It also requires that body cavity searches be conducted “in a private, sanitary place…in accordance with medically recognized, hygienic practices”; forces law enforcement agencies to pay medical costs associated with searches regardless of the results; and makes evidence obtained in violation of the new rules inadmissible in court. Sadly, the concern that people forced to undergo such searches will be stuck with the resulting medical bill, even when no contraband turns up, isno more fanciful than the concern that traffic cops will commit sexual assault in the name of enforcing our drug laws.
Thousands of parents kept their kids away from school in Ontario this week because the provincial government has developed the utterly bonkers notion that students should have some information about sexual activity before they choose to engage in it.
I know, what are politicians thinking?
It’s madness. We all managed fine with the random bits of knowledge that we cribbed from Judith Krantz novels, purloined copies of Penthouse, and that thing Scott’s teenaged cousin told him once, which he passed on in the baseball diamond but was too gross to be believed. Valuable, high-grade sex education was available at home, where, for example, I learned that my mother had been told by the nuns to place seven thicknesses of newspapers on a boy’s lap before sitting there. What more information could today’s kids possibly need, apart from “don’t try this with an iPad”?
The Ontario premier, Kathleen Wynne, and her education minister, Liz Sandals, plan to bring in the new health curriculum, which talks about issues of consent, body acceptance, gender identity and safety, in September. A minority of parents find this enraging. The last time Ontario tried to change the curriculum, in 2010, the government crumpled in the face of protesters’ fury like a potato-chip bag in a hurricane. Not this time, though.
I can see the protesters’ point: The world is changing too fast. Our children are reaching puberty too young. If we just keep them cloaked in the same half-truths, shame and misinformation we had, maybe they’ll stay children forever. If we squeeze our eyes shut and say, collectively, “there’s no such thing as a dick pic,” surely we wake up in Kansas again, to the smell of fresh coffee and the ring of the party-line phone.
Take the idea of consent. For many years “consent” was just a convenient Scrabble word when you had too many low-value letters in your hand. Why change things now? Under the new curriculum, students would be taught “about their right to refuse and about ways of showing affection appropriately and recognizing and respecting consent.” Why expose them to such dangerous nonsense in elementary school? They can learn about it themselves at the appropriate time and place: at a keg party at university, with pants off, after 10 beers.
There is no need for improved sex education when children have access to all the pornography sites they could want, available – and possibly even bookmarked – on their computers. Here they will learn that adult women are as hairless as Barbie dolls, as well-endowed as Pam Anderson, and that they achieve sexual pleasure merely by greeting a pizza delivery man at the door. As well, that a man in a state of arousal resembles a creature out of Greek mythology, half donkey and half jackhammer. They will gain the invaluable knowledge that every woman has been to a circus school that teaches sexual acrobatics alongside trapeze and clowning. These are the truths children will only learn outside of school, under the wise supervision of other 14-year-olds.
Many of the protesters have worried that there might be some classroom discussion, in later grades, about gender identity. Of course, there is a proper place to learn about trans people’s struggle for acceptance, and that is in the pages of People magazine, between a recipe for mimosas and Tori Spelling’s latest woes. Failing that, curious students can always learn how to smuggle contraband estrogen into prison by watching Orange Is the New Black, or how to tell your adult children you’ve been trapped in the wrong body for decades, as Jeffrey Tambor does in Transparent. This is how normal people learn about life, by studying the sacred texts of Hollywood. Why would we teach this stuff in classrooms when children can find it where it belongs, on their computer screens, after their parents have gone to bed?
Toronto’s former mayor, Rob Ford, has announced that the curriculum makes him “absolutely sick.” I think we should listen to the man. After all, he once talked about the lewd things he’d like to do to a rival mayoral candidate, and made on-camera jokes about oral sex with his wife, so he is a bit of an expert on what is sick and what is not. He might even be drafted as a guest lecturer for a seminar titled, “How not to talk to women” (Grade 6 and up.)
“A lot of this is pure perversion,” one irate citizen on Twitter wrote about the government’s plan, and it’s hard not to see her point. I mean, once you start telling first-graders that they possess a “vagina” or a “penis,” the end times are surely nigh. A person should not be taught to spell “testicles” until he’s old enough to use them. In the meanwhile, there are so many perfectly good words already available for our children to use. Consider leaving some old Harlequin romances around, and soon enough your kids will be referring to their “love pumps” and “jade gardens” instead of those nasty clinical words. As a bonus, this will keep them from actually wanting to have sex until they’re at least 60.
It’s a frightening old world we live in. Our appliances are already smarter than we are. Imagine if our kids were, too.
A Republican senator from Vermont was arrested on Thursday after he allegedly solicited sex from two women in exchange for overdue rent.
Norman McAllister, who is in his second two-year Senate term representing Franklin County, pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual assault, human trafficking and prohibited acts as he appeared in Vermont Superior Court in St. Albans on Friday morning.
He has been ordered to be held on $20,000 bail.
The 63-year-old dairy farmer and widower, who's one of the Legislature's most outspoken conservatives, was taken into custody on Thursday evening.
The allegations include that he either accepted or solicited sex from two women in exchange for overdue rent, officials told theBurlington Free Press, who broke the news on Thursday.
An affidavit of probable cause, which will outline the allegations in more detail, will be released at Friday's court hearing.
He has been charged with sexual assault, human trafficking and prohibited acts, state police said.
The case was investigated by the Northwest Unit for Special Investigations, a law enforcement team that investigates sex crimes and child abuse.
Before his arrest Thursday, he had spent the day at the Statehouse, debating issues including a bill on school governance.
McAllister is one of nine Republicans in the 30-member Senate.
He grew up in the southeastern Vermont town of Windsor, has a degree in agriculture management from Vermont Technical College and moved to Highgate, in Vermont's far northwest corner, while in his 20s.
He has sponsored legislation to require recipients of public assistance to undergo drug testing, a measure given little chance of passage in the current Legislature.
McAllister, who is also a dairy farmer, allegedly solicited two women for sex in exchange for the rent
McAllister, pictured left in the House Chamber of the Statehouse in Montpelier, served four terms in the house before he was elected to the Senate. His wife, Lena Mae, right, passed away in 2013
He served four terms in the House in the last decade before election to the Senate.
McAllister, who was named 'young farm of the year' in 1981 and 1982 by state institutions, has worked in several agricultural groups, led a little league team and is a member of the National Rifle Association.
His wife of more than 40 years, Lena Mae McAllister, passed away in September 2013, when she was 61.
They had two sons and a daughter together and he has six grandchildren.
Democratic Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell, of Windsor, and Republican Leader Joe Benning, of Caledonia, said on Thursday evening they didn't wish to comment on his arrest.
Monsignor Kevin Wallin has been sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison for running a methamphetamine distribution ring.
"I have never from the day I was arrested denied my guilt," Wallin, 63, said at the sentencing hearing in US District Court in Hartford, according to theSun Herald.
"The day I was arrested was a very good day. It took me out of that situation."
Wallin laundered his drug money through Land of Oz & Dorothy's Place, a sex and adult toy store he bought.
He also apparently engaged in 'unpriestly behaviour' with 'odd looking men' while wearing women's clothes.
US District Judge Alfred V. Covello said, on sentencing the priest, "For you, sir, this is an unhappy day."
The judge expressed surprise at the volume of letters that came in support of the meth-dealing priest, saying "It's a little like attending your own funeral, your own wake."
