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Posted on 04/27/2005 10:38:06 AM PDT by freepatriot32
ELKHART -- Police confiscated items used to take drugs and 19 switchblades from a local convenience store last week.
On April 18, the Elkhart County Prosecutor's office got a search warrant for the BP gas station at 935 N. Nappanee St., near Memorial High School and the Elkhart Area Career Center.
The prosecutor's office has been leading an effort to make sure businesses are operating legally, said Bill Wargo, chief investigator. "We're visiting a number of legitimate businesses, verifying licenses and ownership," he said.
Officers from the Elkhart Police Department and Elkhart County Sheriff's Department helped raid the convenience store and seize $1,800, the switchblades, along with scales, small plastic bags, hundreds of small glass tubes, steel wool (which can be used as a filter in a crack pipe), rolling papers, bottles of ephedrine and "one-hitter" pipes used to smoke marijuana.
Late last year, the prosecutor's office received information about the shop and an officer verified the sale of illegal items and talked to the store owner. Later, a plain-clothes officer purchased a switchblade there. The sale of items considered to be crack and marijuana pipes is a Class B misdemeanor. The store owner said he wasn't aware that the sale of some of the items was illegal. The prosecutor's office is considering charges, possibly including corrupt business practices, said Wargo.
Wargo said the items being sold represent a nuisance situation, but can't be allowed to continue. He's concerned that items were being sold so close to a school. "Our society is becoming more aware of, and more concerned about, violence in our schools and here we have a business selling switchblade knives almost next door to a high school."
He's urging other retailers not to sell the knives or items that could be used to ingest drugs.
Law enforcement officials, including an excise officer, are visiting bars and grocery stores, as well as jewelry and video stores, said Wargo. Officials confiscated around 100 bottles of illegal liquor being sold at Saleh's Market, where the owner only has a license to sell beer and wine. "He's got some citations coming too," said Wargo
I've bought every one of these items from krogers and tru e value hardware so when are they getting shut down? Hell I myself right now have two boxes of brillo pads and a box of sandwich bags under my sink right now! Should I flee to canada to avoid arrest ?If I do I'll send you all a letter from the united states post office after i wiegh it out on thier scales of course. I would also have a cigarette made from roll your own bugler or tops tobacco but appaerntly in the land of the free thats illegal now.Thank god the war on drugs protects me from brillo and bugler.Damn I might live to be 562 years old now because the goveremnt is keeping me so safe(well I would live that long as long as I dont get shot by the swat team in the middle of the night becasue some officer was so drunk he wrote down the wrong address for a no knock dynamic entry search warrent in his pursuit of keeping me safe from brillo and sandwich bags)
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Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
Yeah, great, because gangs
use switchblades in their gang wars . . .
(Or just at sock-hops?!)
I've got a whole rack of switchblades at work, but you can barely see them behind all the cables.
Police said that the confiscation of the switchblades, which they referred to as "assault pocket knives" was an "aggressive step" toward combating juvenile delinquency...
Hell, man, you can make a crack pipe out of a soda can and some cigarette ash. Who are these people kidding????
As for the automatically opening knives referenced in the above criminal complaint, I must have missed the part of the Second Amendment that says "accept switchblades". I also must have missed the part where any of the other above items could be made a "prohibited item" by Law in our Constitution.
Were they probably being used to smoke crack or dope? Yes. But without clear Constitutional standing, Laws like these only have as much force as the cops have firepower to enforce at the barrel of a gun.
In other countries, a government enforcing laws outside of its Constitutional mandate is called a "police State".
The War on Drugs is a war on sanity.
The War on Drugs is a war on sanity.
...and mothers everywhere in Elkhart, Indiana breathe a sigh of relief tonight as their children are forced to drive to a distant 7/11 to get some papers.
What do they want with Brillo? I feel so much safer now.
"Hell, man, you can make a crack pipe out of a soda can and some cigarette ash."
?You might be able to, but I can't. Whats the cigarette ash for?
It's used as the screen, up where the holes are poked in the can.
Should I flee to canada to avoid arrest ?
No they can get you on paraphenalia there too...
Until we stop the jobs program known as the WOD, we'll be reading this stuff. We'll also get to see the self-congratulating back-slapping of the LE who save us from steel wool and plastic bags while kids are missing and murdered.
Easier to grab a pot user than to actually look for criminals, I guess.
elkhart indiana made the nation news about ten years ago for havinfg the most unsolved murders for a town its size in the nation and the local newspapers dont even bother printing burglery reports in the police section and the cops wont come to your house if you report one they take your info over the phone and mail you a form to sign and bring back to the police department where it immediatly gets movedto the cold cases that will never be looked into or they just throw it in the trash directly.But by god if you kill someone usinga brillo pad or a bong they will crawl up your butt so far your tonsils will get bruised
Just another day in Elkhart. Can't believe this incident made a thread on FR. That BP station is less than half a mile from where I work. Went there to purchase some steel wool this afternoon and they were out of stock.
a few years ago I use to work at cana woodworks on phillips street about a mile away from this station and went there for lunch everyday and I might have bought some plastic sandwich bags from there if i rember right.Hell im lucky im not dead from a overdose becaseu as we all know that plastic bags lead to harder stuff like brillo pads and one hitter pipes .But then thats not good enough and before you know it your jonesing for a long stemmed rose glass tube and its shortly after that where you end up face down in the gutter on skid row begging strangers for rolling paper money.
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