Posted on 08/19/2009 8:53:20 PM PDT by ellery
KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- A man is suing the Kissimmee Police Department for an arrest over mints. When officers pulled Donald May over for an expired tag, they thought the mints he was chewing were crack and arrested him.
May told Eyewitness News they wouldn't let him out of jail for three months until tests proved the so-called drugs were candy.
May said he was just minding his business, driving home from work, when a Kissimmee police officer pulled him over near 192.
"I don't know how it occurred," he said.
May was pulled over for an expired tag on his car. When the officer walked up to him, he noticed something white in May's mouth. May said it was breath mints, but the officer thought it was crack cocaine.
"He took them out of my mouth and put them in a baggy and locked me up [for] possession of cocaine and tampering with evidence," May explained.
The officer claimed he field-tested the evidence and it tested positive for drugs. The officer said he saw May buying drugs while he was stopped at an intersection. He also stated in his report May waived his Miranda rights and voluntarily admitted to buying drugs.
May said that never happened.
"My client never admitted he purchased crack cocaine. Why would he say that?" attorney Adam Sudbury said.
May was thrown in jail and was unable to bond out for three months. He didn't get out until he received a letter from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the State Attorney's Office that test results showed no drugs were found.
"While I was sitting in jail I lost my apartment. I lost everything," he said.
While May was behind bars, the Kissimmee Police Department towed his car and auctioned it off. He lost his job and was evicted. Now May is suing the city for false arrest and false imprisonment. He wants to be compensated for the loss of his car and job.
May's attorney and the city of Kissimmee discussed a possible settlement last year, but failed to reach an agreement.
ping
Government Gone Wild.
I hope this guy gets $100,000,000.00 and the cop goes to jail for 25 years in general population.
Compensated? He!!, they should give him the numbers to the Mega Lotto!
in central florida he’s lucky he didn’t wind up w/65 slugs in him.
Don't settle pal....Sue these government freaks till it hurts...
It’s pathetic that you are left hoping that the officer is really that dumb, instead of that corrupt.
Give him the Mayors home, and the police chiefs salary for 60 years. Give the mayor and police chief Burger King applications, and tell them to get it.
Note that they also seized and auctioned his car before he was even tried, much less convicted. Good thing he was only renting — I expect they would have auctioned off his house and everything in it, too.
Suing the city will just get passed on to the taxpayers. The cop and his superiors need to be personally sued.
I hope this man ends up owning Florida.
There is more to this story than meets the eye.
If I am being pulled over for anything, it is not the time to pop a few breath mints. Not unless I am covering up something on my breath I don’t want the officer to smell.
And, if I have just put one in my mouth prior to the stop, it is going to get swallowed, just as a normal part of being polite, long before the officer comes to my window.
Where are all the “If you have nothing to hide what are you worried about” jerks now?
Bet me...
Here is what ya do.
Give this guy a 10 million dollar cash award, and then to pay for it, reduce the salaries of every single over paid government employee in the city, and as a bonus, fire the cop involved, and cut the police chiefs and mayors salary in half.
Do it!
“Not unless I am covering up something on my breath I don’t want the officer to smell.”
Yep. That would be me too. Except I wouldn’t swallow it or spit it out, I keep it there to keep doing its job.
Oh, you see, I like a good cigar, and those things give you nasty breath. It is considered polite to keep breath mints handy for afterward.
This could have easily been me.
Cigars are still legal, right?
Agreed, the cop and everyone above him should lose everything they have, but if the taxpayers feel the heat they will start making sure this crap doesn’t happen again.
Isn’t that the truth?!
The Lee County Sheriffs Dept (in sw Florida) is just as bad.
When I read the article, I immediately thought “I wonder if this happened in Lee County?”
I didn’t realize Florida HAD a “SW”. NW, NE, and SE, yes, but SW?
Yep, Naples - Fort Myers - Port Charlotte are considered to be part of sw Florida.
Good GOP turnout in those areas too.
Hope he sues their eyeballs out.
If I were on the jury, any award not large enough to impact the chillldren of Kissimee would be too small.
Time for the drug wars to end.
$lap the $hit out of the dumb-a$$ cop$, including ALL respon$ible for thi$ fia$co.
Make it hurt so much that they have to fire cops because they are short of money paying this guy off.
Where was the damn oversight on this one?
The problem is not so much the cop -— all people make mistakes -— but the system that allows a mistake not only go uncorrected but amplifies it.
Hey, in FLA, if it’s South, it ain’t West, and if it’s West, it ain’t South! ;-)
You SO have the right idea, and I agree with you wholeheartedly! The poor man in the story finds himself in a terrible situation because of a jackass cop on a power trip. This type of abusive behavior on the part of law enforcement seems to be happening with more and more frequency these days. It's frightening!
If you are not guilty you have nothing to fear! /s
I eat wintergreen lifesavers like...candy...so good chance I’d have one without even thinking about it.
OTOH, there might be another side to this.
Liberty raped again. Thanks for the ping.
I note that there is absolutely no evidence or allegation that the police shot or otherwise destroyed his dog.
So man up, Mr. May, and stop the whining already!
Count yourself lucky that you’re still alive.
If there are mints in the car, I'd eat them, especially if I were to get pulled over by the police. Nervous habit.
Maybe he had just eaten some particularly pungent food. Like garlic. Just good manners.
I agree. Far more frequent criminal prosecutions for their on-the-job actions would be good, too.
Even when this criminals in blue get fired, too often they just join another department and continue their crimes.
I would laugh if there wasn't so much truth in your statement.
-he wasn’t arrested for a duii.
-and it’s still legal to eat candy...even in front of an officer.
What if the cop was tellng the truth?
There is NO MENTION here of the guy being BLOOD TESTED for drugs
If I thought someone swallowed Crack Cocaine, I would be worried that tthe guy was going to OD for swallowing too much to avoid arrest
So, where is the blood test? Is there one?
Is this a part of the story?
The Mints would be useful for making your mouth water so you COULD swallow better...
Just Saying...99.9% of all cops aren’t going to just make stuff up
ping
So you really believe the cop saw May buying drugs from an unnamed, unidentified, unknown "drug dealer". And May further cheerfully waived Miranda and admitted to buying drugs?
A cop lying on an arrest report is not a "mistake", it's corruption.
At least Lifesavers™ look like candy on the original form.
Try to convince a dumb cop that Crown Mints™ 
are not crack.
Sure they do. Most cops now look at society, and government as the enemy...Most LEOs look and their own county, city, state governments as corrupt entities, and they will do what is required for self preservation.
Can't really blame them. This is what happens when government at all levels becomes compromised and undermined by wide spread corruption.
Could you point out where in the article it stated he "popped" the mints in his mouth as the traffic stop commenced?
Thanks.
Have you ever had a breath mint?
If you had, you would know that they usually dissolve in a about a minute in your mouth. Time one someday, with a real watch. A few crunches with your teeth and they are gone in seconds.
Every time I have been stopped for a traffic infraction, there is a wait long enough to dissolve a lot of mints while the cop checks the license plate before approaching the car.
It is just not feasible that he had the breath mints in his mouth before being pulled over. And, how many times have you ever put multiple breath mints in your mouth unless you were trying to cover up some breath problem?
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