"What's the Score on the Red Wings Game?"

Radley Balko | May 11, 2007

Via Mark Hemingway, who's guest-blogging at The Agitator, here's some hilarious audio of a 911 call from Cpl. Edward Sanchez, formerly of the Dearborn, Mich. police department. Cpl. Sanchez seized some marijuana from a drug suspect, then decided to keep the stuff for himself. He took it home to his wife, who then baked the weed into a batch of brownies. After eating an entire batch, Sanchez freaked out ("I think we're dying...We made brownies and I think we're dead. I really do.") and called for help.

He has resigned from the police force, but won't be charged with a crime.

Comments

|5.11.07 @ 11:07AM|#

In a rational world, someone this stupid never would have risen above cleaning semen off the glass at a strip joint. Instead, he got to strut around committing crimes under color of law, with the full protection and encouragement of a well-organized gang, until he did something so mind-bogglingly stupid that his fellows could no longer cover for him and still maintain the delusion that they act in the interests of those they supposedly serve.

|5.11.07 @ 11:18AM|#

This is both amazingly hilarious and absolutely pathetic.

The second time she asks him if there are firearms in the house, he says, "You already asked me that." But he changes his fucking answer from no to yes. Pathetic.

|5.11.07 @ 11:22AM|#

I'm surprised he didn't just get a paid suspension.

I guess this shows what our priorities are. Put a unloaded gun to woman's head and pull the trigger, and your job is safe. Eat some pot brownies, you need to resign.

|5.11.07 @ 11:25AM|#

Good point dammaged. The fact that he will get a pass on criminal charges should outrage everybody. It should be further noted that this moron (imbecile?) took what? ten, twenty, a hundred times, the standard dose. And apart from his boneheadedness while stoned past the ort cloud, is no worse for where. Try doing that with, alcohol, tobacco, or coffee. Hell, try doing that with fucking water. Marijuana really is as safe as even the refried pinko hippies say it is.

|5.11.07 @ 11:31AM|#

Careful, Radley. Dave W will no doubt arrive shortly to scold you for not also posting the story of a cop who didn't add seized marijuana into a Duncan Hines recipe, for the sake of balance.

|5.11.07 @ 11:33AM|#

Of course, this would be even funnier if he shared the brownies with his kids. Then again, while it's obviously not dangerous for adults, I'm not sure what effect it would have on kids.

dhex|5.11.07 @ 11:34AM|#

ok that made my fucking day.

thank you mr. balko.

highnumber|5.11.07 @ 11:34AM|#

Aaaaahhhhh!!!!

We were just talking about that episode of Barney Miller!

|5.11.07 @ 11:36AM|#

So, illegal drug posession AND evidence tampering, and he gets off with a simple firing? This must be the only time in American history that a Latino has escaped a pot bust.

|5.11.07 @ 11:41AM|#

My cousin is an officer in the same department - he was telling me about this back around Thanksgiving. Hilarious.

jpok|5.11.07 @ 11:41AM|#

"Time is moving really, really, really slow right now."

The cop is retarded for thinking he could OD on pot, but I can feel his pain just a little. Getting too high is just no fun at all. Which, as we all know, is why "pot 2.0" is nothing any booomer parent should get worked up about.

|5.11.07 @ 11:41AM|#

Man, I'm home sick and this has me feeling a lot better.

Freaking hilarious. I can't believe how stoned he was.

This audio should be in the new anti-drug commercials.

|5.11.07 @ 11:44AM|#

Just this morning a friend sent along that audio link with a note saying he'd gone to high school with this cop, and he was a known loser even then.

I've also had HS acquaintances who went on to become 'leos', and to a man (and woman) they were suspect humans. Power trippers, gun-o-philes, bullies and morons.

I know there are good police, and I've dealt with some of them. But the longer I live the more I come to believe that they're the exception. The rest aren't bad, necessarily, just unfit for that job.

|5.11.07 @ 12:06PM|#

highnumber,

The brownie episode? A classic.

Dave W.|5.11.07 @ 12:09PM|#

you for not also posting the story of a cop who didn't add seized marijuana into a Duncan Hines recipe

but he did do such a posting recently:

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119894.html

So the balance is good, and I approve both messages.

(Now if he would just get my home IP addy unblocked so I could straighten HnRers out when they mix up punitive civil damages and criminal sanctions, as they did on that other thd. I had no way to sort that out in a timely manner last night. V. frustrating.)

|5.11.07 @ 12:15PM|#

You'll never hear about something like this from a Seattle cop.

highnumber|5.11.07 @ 12:19PM|#

My all time fave.

|5.11.07 @ 1:18PM|#

Was Dietrich in that one? I somehow have this vision of him being unaffected.

highnumber|5.11.07 @ 1:36PM|#

You know I looked for a scene from it on YouTube to post at Urkobold. Nothing. Can you believe that?

I can't remember Dietrich in that one, but my research says he was in it.

Best line:

Nick Yemana: Mooshy mooshy.

|5.11.07 @ 1:38PM|#

Don't get too upset about the lack of criminal charges. 911 is an emergency service. Except under the most extreme of situations, it should not be used as a tool for self-incrimination.

I agree it's hilarious, and the guy deserved to resign his cop job, out of embarrassment if nothing else. But calling 911 shoud not be used against him. It's just as bad as forcing doctors to testify against patients in court.

The fact that he's a cop shouldn't matter in either direction.

|5.11.07 @ 1:47PM|#

It's got to be somewhere on the Intertubes, highnumber. In any event, I fully support posting Barney Miller stuff on Urkobold.

By the way, I didn't see the Top 10 Ways a Physicist (Boo, hiss) is Like Wile E. Coyote :)

Urkobold®|5.11.07 @ 2:04PM|#

Urkobold needs time to come up with that and would appreciate a little help. Hint hint.

Thrall|5.11.07 @ 2:09PM|#

Drugs shouldn't be illegal. But in a good world of legal drugs, this would still be illegal. You know, for stealing someones good 'ol weed.

It seems to me he was just..high. the sickness can also be caused by being stomach sick if he had a full stomach before eating the brownies.

I know cops do drugs, possibly more than Americans. And it's amazing how hypocritical they are.

Also, pot alone does not cause hallucination's.

|5.11.07 @ 2:15PM|#

C'mon guys, don't be ridiculous. It's not illegal when the cops do it.

Lupito41|5.11.07 @ 2:16PM|#

Hallucination's what?

|5.11.07 @ 2:17PM|#

Sanchez: "What's the score on the Red Wings game?...I just want to make sure this isn't some type of hallucination that I'm having"
911: "Why? What's the score say?"
Sanchez: "3 to 3."
...
911: "It's 2 to 2."

Worst. Hallucination. Ever.

|5.11.07 @ 2:23PM|#

Also, pot alone does not cause hallucination's.

Come on! Possessive?

bill|5.11.07 @ 3:05PM|#

Handle your high dude!!

|5.11.07 @ 3:34PM|#

I really could care less about some twatwaffle who can't handle his buzz, I just really want to know what strip joints Damaged has been hanging out in. They sound way better than the ones here, and I live in Vegas home of (insert verb here) and a tug.

eugene|5.11.07 @ 3:56PM|#

"Are there any guns in the house?"

"No"

(later)

"Are there any guns in the house?"

"No...well, yes.."

Reminds me of the "burn the witch" skit from Monty Python's The Holy Grail:


"Did you dress her up like this?"

"NO! No, no, ...no......yes...a bit."

davidst|5.11.07 @ 4:02PM|#

Pot does cause very mild hallucinations when smoked. I've also read that the hallucinagenic effect is increased significantly (up to 3x is the number I heard) if you eat it. If he shared a half a bag with his wife and ate it rather than smoked it, I'd say it was possible he had hallucinations (of the nothing looks *quite* normal kind, not the "there's a giant 3 eyed bug faced monster over there" kind).

|5.11.07 @ 4:32PM|#

I have hallucinated on pot. But only on very good weed. I suspect they were sativa varieties. But that's one of the problems with prohibition, you don't really know what's in the bag. Back when I was a younger man and the pot on the market was better (not stronger, just a high I liked better). When I got high, the world would go flat. Everything looked two dimensional and cartoonish. Everything that is except the television, that looked 3d and vivid.

Anybody remember the commercial for a video game called Burger Time? It ended with a giant hotdog slamming a drive-through window and shouting the words "We're closed now" in a Russian accent. The first time I saw that I was high like that. I'll never forget that.

Insurance Quotes|5.12.07 @ 8:34AM|#

Warren, if I ever get back into pot smoking (I guess I'm just old and cranky now, it only makes me paranoid) I want to visit you some afternoon. I'll buy the munchies, and you can roll one out of YOUR bag.

|5.17.07 @ 3:25AM|#

What a wonderful case of doubly poetic justice. Not only did this narc get back what he did to so many people whose only "wrong" was doing drugs -- but what triggered his fall was that he actually believed the propaganda that pot can kill you. I'll bet even most cops know better than to believe that. Then again, there are still a lot of Christian dupes out there who believe that gays recruit.

One hopes he'll eventually figure out that it's a myth -- and become the next spokesperson for L.E.A.P.