Slashdot Mirror
The Germs' Drummer Arrested For Carrying Soap
dwrugh writes "The drummer for the seminal punk band The Germs, Don Bolles, was arrested in Orange County because a field-test kit indicated his bottle of Dr. Bronner's soap contained GHB, the date-rape drug. (Here is an interview with Bolles.) Using the same test kit, available on the web for $20 for a pack of 10, according to Bolles' attorney on NBC this morning, other soaps tested positive for GHB. But of course since it's just soap, when you test it in a real crime lab it comes back negative. Makes you wonder what other common household products also test positive, and how many others have been arrested based on faulty test kits who didn't have the resources to defend themselves."
The Germs. Heh. Haven't listened to them since high school. You can only play G.I. (their only good album) so many times until the lead singer's grating voice just becomes completely unbearable. Great music though.
... does anyone else find today's breed to pseudo-punk-acting bands just too funny for words? I don't follow modern music too much but have seen some music videos here and there and it cracks me up how all these new bands play this completely cheesepuff light rock ballad crap and have faux-hawks and punk-ish clothing and slam around like they're belting out hardcore. It's just so silly to see a bunch of guys jumping around acting like they're so tough and like the music is so raw all the while playing Justin Timberlake-esque fluff. I just couldn't do that with a straight face, I wonder how they manage it.
...
On a tangent only marginally related to the topic
The Germs were the REAL DEAL, the lead singer would spread peanut butter on his naked chest while cutting himself with a broken bottle on stage. They didn't just looked the part, they sounded the part too, with some of the rawest late-70's-hardcore-punk around.
Now to the topic at hand - so what. Not every test is 100% reliable. False positives exist. This is a headline story for what reason exactly?
And for the obligitary Slashdot tongue-in-cheek comment: I don't see how having GHB in soap is helping anyone. If you've already convinced your date to take a shower with you the GHB is kind of redundant
Best. Headline. Ever...
A very slippery situation. :)
Dropping the soap
Editors, I wish you'd take five seconds to review what you are putting up. TFA is from April 11 (that's eleven days ago), and since then he has been released. A discussion of the faultiness of field testing methods might be in order but you need to properly set the stage for said discussion, otherwise it gets derailed when people get alarmed about the fact that somebody is sitting in jail right now for a mistake and then somebody (in this case me) has to come and point out that the whole thing has actually been resolved.
audioLibre - freedom of music
What's this "soap" thing you're talking about?
This guy's the limit!
That must be great publicity. This incident will give that brand a reputation as a true, non-failing, anti-Germ soap.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
When I was in high school, I would have poppy seed bagels for breakfast every morning. When I turned 16 and started applying for jobs, I failed a few drug test even though I had never done any illegal drug. It caused a lot of stress in my family and was quite embarrassing. Even though my parents believed me, I could always sense it nagged them in the back of their minds. A few months ago I saw an episode of myth busters which proved having just one poppy seed bagel can cause you to fail a drug test. I downloaded the show and sent the DVD to my parents to clear my name.
I guess that's for the times when Axe brand shower gel and body spray aren't enough.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
However, TFA says that Bolles spent 3 days in jail, presumably waiting for the results of a test.
I've been stopped for a broken tail light in my country, and the police certainly did not use this as an excuse for searching my car. Is it usual in your country for people to be imprisoned for so long on so little evidence, after so minor a motoring offence?
the mainstream media just can't comprehend the fact that he "really" loves his soap ^_~.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This isn't exactly shocking for a county where our local Government, won't issue ID cards for those who have been prescribed medical marijuana. This county loves to be the uptight puritan neighbor to Los Angeles. The state says its okay, but the county is claiming that since the federal government says no, they can't risk getting sued. States rights? Ha. This county is known for its unbelievable government and law enforcement. Recently an inmate was killed in the county jail after the staff told other inmates that he was a suspected child predator. The Sheriffs department insists they did no wrong in this, and there pat answer is more or less, "Who cares, he was a child predator?" and "You can't listen to criminals to tell you the truth, they're people who do things that are wrong anyway." All local press fails to point out that he was never even convicted.
I don't mind a conservative government, and all, but here it's like being conservative just for the sake of being conservative, instead of any real reason behind the decisions of the local government. Law enforcement in Orange county seems to me, to serve mostly to harass the public, in hopes of catching some illegal immigrants along the way.
So yeah, this really isn't surprising.
P.S. In OC, if it had been a 30 y/o MILF in an SUV, she could have had the soap, had it tested positive for GHB, heck she probably could have had pure GHB and pot in the car, and still been able to drive off.
No, but one of the easiest ways of synthesizing GHB is with GBL, which is used as an industrial cleaner. If you've ever taken any significant quantities of GHB in concentrated form, you'll get that sickly feeling in your stomach whenever you pass someone cleaning off graffiti, etc.
So no doubt the test being used reacts to both GHB and GBL.
- These characters were randomly selected.
It seems that the test kits are a lot less reliable than 99% in some environments which makes them useless.
In situations where the event is rare, the failure mode of the test will dominate the effectiveness of the action taken.
The same faulty thinking is common in anti-terrorism procedures. Actual terrorists are rare and almost every action taken to detect or prevent terrorist acts has a very high false positive rate that makes it useless for the purpose.
Basically, Dr. Bronner's is the Time Cube of soaps.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Actually yes, the police use any pretext to search your car and person. It usually goes like this:
Officer: Do you have any illegal drugs or weapons in the car?
Citizen: No.
Officer: Then you don't mind me searching your vehicle then?
Citizen: Well actually I do mind.
At this point, the police will either 1)make up probable cause or 2) just bring in a drug dog, who, by the way, will *always* indicate (which means that the dog allegedly smells something). Inexplicably, SCOTUS does not consider a drug dog to be an unreasonable search. Go figure.
Either way, they will then search you and your car. Since they're already pissed because you insisted upon your having your rights observed, there's a good chance that they will plant something on you. If you're lucky, they won't, but I wouldn't count on it.
Why they'd test the soap for anything is just plain stupid. Several different soaps, bleaches, and other common household items are used in the military to simulate chemical contamination because they will cause the test kits to go positive.
Any police getting fooled like that, or even bother to test soap is either an idiot, hasn't even the most basic training in using the kit properly, or is trying to frame someone. (Possibly to get a more expansive search warrant. Assuming they still need one...)
Doesn't matter if this happened a couple weeks ago and the guy has been released. Kind of like getting arrested for being black in a Benz, and later released with no charges. That #### isn't supposed to happen in the first place and is a major issue. (To put it politely)
To be fair to the police, he was acting suspiciously.
police: "A drummer.... with soap? S'yah right! Must be drugs, you dirty hippy!"
[badum-ching]
A Human Right
The USSC (SCOTUS) considers the article 1, section 8 enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce ["among the several states"] to be the foundation of a rationale to regulate intrastate commerce. It considers the highly public listing of citizens as criminals to "not be punishment." It approves ex post facto laws without blinking an eye. It punts regularly on the government's blatant favoring of religion by law (fed and state.) It allows wiretapping without a warrant (and don't get me started on FISA.) It allows breaking into your home without notice. It allows theft of your home and property for any purpose whatsoever. It has had absolutely no problem turning consensual, personal, victimless choices into crimes.
Clearly, the USSC is long past being a useful institution, made up of shills for special interest groups (one of which is the government itself, of course.) It has zero problems pronouncing that black is white and night is day. This should not be a surprise, however, as the number of unauthorized government actions - meaning, absolutely unconstitutional - has skyrocketed in the past half century or so across the entire government structure, judicial, executive, and legislative. The USSC is just one part of an entirely corrupt and out of control government.
Remember to vote so you can pretend you have an effect on all this. That's what they want you to do. That, and complain. It vents the steam safely, as opposed to finding pissed off constituents at their doors. That is why freedom of speech is the least eroded right and will always remain so.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No. Soaps just select out the weak germs. That's why hospitals are sources for extremely hardy strains of germs. So the soap just makes the remaining germs grow stronger, and not have to compete for resources with weaker germs. Evolution, baby, running full speed at a hospital near you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If we're going to give anyone credit for popularizing the Mohawk, let's give it to the Iroquoi. I mean, after all... a punk rock band? Hardly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
otherwise it gets derailed when people get alarmed about the fact that somebody is sitting in jail right now for a mistake and then somebody (in this case me) has to come and point out that the whole thing has actually been resolved.
#1, I'm alarmed about the fact that he was arrested, period.
#2, I'm alarmed that these false positives have been happening for a while, and #3, that it is still presented as valid evidence in criminal cases despite knowledge that it has a high false positive rate. Follow-up tests should be automatic, not a matter of the defendant having money to pay for it.
How did the cop even get to the point of being able to search the car? Oh, cute. The old "broken taillight" routine:
Bolles, 51, was arrested on April 4 after being pulled over for having a broken brake light
The officer got permission to search the vehicle and a field test on a bottle of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap showed positive for GHB, Sailor said.
Never, never, NEVER agree to a search of your vehicle. Say, "I'm sorry, officer, I do not consent to a search", and if he says he's going to get a search warrant, LET HIM TRY. It's a scare tactic; if they had a legitimate, constitutional right to search you and your car, they already would have done so- and they certainly wouldn't need your permission.
Similarly, if you ARE stupid enough to allow a search (or they have a valid reason to search) and find something, SHUT UP. Don't say anything except, "I wish to speak to, and be represented by, an attorney." I don't care HOW much the cop says he'll "go easy" or who he'll "talk to". IT IS A LIE.
Please help metamoderate.
I think you've completely missed the point of what was being said:
The Germs. Heh. Haven't listened to them since high school. [...]
On a tangent [...] does anyone else find today's breed to pseudo-punk-acting bands just too funny for words?
See? He's not saying The Germs are 'today's breed'. He's acknowledging that they're old, then talking about today's breed "on a tangent".
Yes, it is true. America is a police state. Freedom and equal protection are just ideas here. We have them on paper, but no one really believes in it.
Here in Georgia we have a guy sitting in prison because when he was 17 he received consensual oral sex from a 15 year old classmate.
His sentence? Ten years. No parole.
It was the minimum sentence allowed for "aggravated child molestation." Aggravated, because oral sex is "sodomy."
At this point, the police will either 1)make up probable cause or 2) just bring in a drug dog
I'd just *loooooove* for them to try and search my car with a drug dog. I suspect the combination of four different kinds of leaking oil (engine, gearbox, diff and hydraulic), engine cleaner, brake cleaner, carb cleaner, hydraulic system flush, hydraulic system solvent cleaner *and* my rigger boots in a bag in the boot would probably send it over the edge. Hydrocarbon olfactory nightmare.
If you ever see a retired police dog with a nervous twitch and a fondness for Jefferson Airplane, you know it's happened.
No, it's called music (from beethoven to beatles to the circle jerks) - it's all composed of notes, rhythm, chords, etc. And you either like that particular sound (or individual group, or piece) or not - Genres are for those who only feel comfortable dealing with convenient labels, usually to site a close-minded preference "my genre is better than yours"...
No real punkers call themselves punk - it's the attitude, not the music.
Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody... - Dick Armey
Regular soap only makes the germs fall off. See http://chemistry.about.com/library/weekly/aa081301 a.htm.
Its the anti-septic types of soap that are dangerous.
rewriting history since 2109
Umm... they didn't find any pot, remember? Unless the officer, after seeing the box being hidden, chose not to search it, it most certainly did not contain any marijuana. Seems to me that "box full of pot" you're talking about is more a "person full of shit" talking out their ass.
"Music" is still around in 2007? Jesus, move onto a new form of entertainment alreadfy.
The lye in ordinary soap dissolves a layer of your skin, and all the various microbes simply wash away with it. Soap does kill some organism, of course, but it's not an antiseptic as such.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
>You're in charge of security. You care about letting innocent people free just as much as you care about punishing the guilty and you
>care about customer service, finances, and efficiency of processes. What do you do?
I hire people who are intelligent enough to realize that a substance saturated into Dr. Bronners' Soap is not going to be a very useful tool for assault. I also hire people who are responsible enough not to accuse someone of a crime (apparently the thoughtcrime of sexual assault, if you get down to it in this case).
Having failed to hire intelligent and responsible people, I expect to lose MY job, and possibly go to jail for the mistake. So this particular mistake does not get made on my watch.
The difference, I expect, is that the higher authorities have NOT stepped up and assertively accepted full responsibility for this error, the County has NOT made an offer of substantial compensation to the victim for the wrongful treatment, and the people who made this mistake remain in a position to make another one.
A false arrest should be so costly to the government that does it, that the taxpayers would never allow it to happen (or could never afford to let it happen twice.)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Cops look for a reason to arrest. If they "just know" that some civilian is guilty of "something," then obviously they can make a field test return a positive result with soap to give them more time to search or whatever. There's probably a short list of somewhat common materials people may have with them that tests positive on some specific test.
It's along the same lines as pulling someone over and asking the driver ten different times the basic question "Is it okay to search your car?" In progressively more confusing and convoluted ways because all the driver has to do is slip up once. Then the cop can get on with his job of figuring out what you're guilty of.
It's like developing a field test for explosives and then being able to arrest someone because their gasoline tank tested positive for highly flammable material.
Ok, you're right that all of that is possible, but I really don't think it is the norm. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but iI really don't think that every other (50%) person who refuses to allow for a search of a car then has the car searched anyway by some abuse of power. What tends to happen (at least from people I know in the situation) is that the officers ask if they can search the vehicle, and then the normally rights-minded individual in the car allows it for some reason. I had a friend whose whole family did some drugs and loved to drink. His dad was also a lawyer and told him that he should never allow the police to search his car under any circumstances. He then told all of us the same thing, and we told everyone that we knew to be careful as well. Then one day the kid gets pulled over, and for some stupid reason lets the cops search his car, at which point they find some seeds on the floor.
Another thing people tend to do is get scared when the cops say that you will be delayed as they need more time to process the information if you fail to allow a search or that now a dog will be called in. The problem here is that most people don't know that in many cases, you don't need to wait around. If the officer does not allow you to leave, then it's an unwarrented detention. You are not obligated to wait around for a drug dog to show up to sniff your car. Ask the officer, "Am I free to leave?" The answer is usually yes, whehter or not the cop lies to you, but I really think most will be honest with you if you ask the right questions. The problem is that they aren't obligated to be honest with you if you don't know which questions to ask. My lawyer friends have always told me that if I'm pulled over, be polite, but only crack your window enough to slip out your license and registration and don't say anything. You aren't obligated to speak to the officer at all. If he continues to ask questions, just repeat the phrase, "Am I free to leave?". Of course, repeating that phrase over and over might conflict with the "be polite" idea, so you have to use some judgement there.
Inexplicably, SCOTUS does not consider a drug dog to be an unreasonable search.
As for SCOTUS's opinion on this, I think they're closer to saying that a drug dog is not a search at all, so it can't be labelled as reasonable or unreasonable and they don't need probable cause. Of course, I didn't read that much about it so I could be misunderstanding the decision.
The real fun part of that story is that if he'd just had intercourse with her, he'd have been committing a misdemeanor and received a small fine. (Parental notification, really, being the point of that 'punishment'. Hey, parents, your 15 year old is having sex with this 17 year old. You might want to deal with that.) The age of consent here is 16, but if you're within 3 years of the same age and everyone's over, I think, 13, it's just a misdemeanor, subject to at most a year in jail, and that almost never happens. (And he's already served more than that.) And it's deliberately from being a 'sex offender' offense.
Except, and apparently no one realized this, they made the age 16 for sex, but forgot to do the same thing to the 'sodomy' laws, because everyone had been operating as if those laws were dead letter. The courts have held that you cannot legislate the private behavior of adults, but, quite obviously, you can of kids, and those parts weren't dead letter. The sodomy section doesn't include any exception for three years age difference. And because apparently someone doesn't know what 'sodomy' is, oral sex is included in there. (Although it wouldn't be much better if it was just actual sodomy.)
The Georgia Congress just fixed the law this, after this kid was found guilty, but didn't bother getting around to passing a 'And people arrested under the old law get should an adjustment of their sentence' statement. From what I understand, it wouldn't even have to be a law, just a statement that, on appeal, the courts should consider the new law. (Obviously, it can only do this if it's shortening the sentence.)
There have been some damn stupid op-ed in the newspapers about it, too, people yammering about child molesters and stuff, because approximately 40% of the people in this state are meth- or religion-addled morons. Oh, don't get me wrong, the stupids aren't opposed to the new law, which has already passed, just opposed to retroactively shorting people's unjust sentences for some reason. Sometimes people in this state are complete fucking imbeciles. And with this paragraph, I ruin all chances of running for local office.
And it is, literally, this one 17-year old guy, where some 15 year-old apparently got drunk at a party and decided to give him a blowjob. While the crime has obviously happened a lot, no one even realized the law could applied this way until it was, and the outcry fixed the law..
If the legislature doesn't get off their ass and get Genarlow Wilson out of jail, people are doing to start trying to get the governor to pardon him.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"Punks Not Dead" - but the apostrophe is on its last leg's
What the fuck are you people doing?
Since you ask, the last time that I got pulled over was with my wife while we were riding our road bikes on the country roads near where we live.
They are very lightly traveled roads (probably 10 or so cars will pass us during a two-hour ride), so we were riding side-by-side when a large unrestrained dog who has been aggressive with us in the past began barking at us. Although state law permits bikes or motorcycles to be ridden side-by-side, we usually switch to single file when a car approaches from behind, but with our attention focused on the dog, we didn't see the two cars coming up behind us (one regular car followed by a county sheriff). Once we did see them (at most 30 seconds), we moved over and let them pass.
The sheriff, all red-faced, pulled along side of us and shouted "you have pull off the road when cars come up behind you!" This is totally false; bicycles have the same right to the road as any other legal vehicle so I said, "That's not my understanding of the law."
Well, since I had the nerve to disagree with his scholarly interpretation of the law, I was in for some general harassment.
He starts going on about how we were impeding him while he's on official businessthe and how the law doesn't allow us to ride side-by-side and I keep saying that that's not my understanding of the law. He says that he doesn't know the exact statute but, if I give him my name and phone number, he will call me with it. I say that I'm not comfortable with giving him that information.
By this time, another car has come up behind and the sheriff's car is blocking the oncoming lane, so I say, "in any event, I done talking to you, and besides, it looks like you're blocking traffic." Of course, this enrages him and he says something to the effect of "oh, so you think that you're funny?" I say, "what if I do, this isn't the Soviet Union."
At this point, he he pulls up in front of us and gets out and I say, "am I under arrest, or am I free to go?" He says that he is detaining me to give me a ticket, demands my ID and proceeds to his trunk to get out his State Revised Code book to find something to charge me with. We sit there for fifteen minutes and he can't find anything, so he calls into HQ to see if they can figure something out.
Listening to the police radio I could tell that they ran my ID and saw that it was clean. Then they realized that my wife is a prominent professional in town and I was a business owner. I assume that the person at HQ must have realized that they had a little problem on their hands and told the deputy that he better unfuck the situation. So he gets back out of the car and comes back with a whole different attitude saying that "it appears that we (meaning he and I) were both wrong." By that I guess that he meant that he was wrong about the law and I was wrong for insisting on having my rights.
In any event, he let us go, but I couldn't help but wonder if it would have turned out so well if my wife and I weren't both 40-something, white, middle-class, with squeaky-clean records.
I don't believe for a second that you aren't doing something suspicious.
That attitude of yours is exactly how the police get away with this shit. After all if someone gets arrested they must be guilty, right? If someone gets pulled over, there must be a good reason, right? Or maybe it's possible that the police might detain two perfectly law-abiding people doing absolutely nothing illegal, demand to "see their papers" and try to find something to charge them with. And why? Because they had the temerity to insist upon their rights and to "talk back."