Guilt by Ass-Shakin' Association
Flint, Michigan, police raided a dance club this weekend. (The paper insists on referring to it as a "rave" for some reason; sure sounds like a Saturday night at a dance club to me.) Anyway, plainclothes cops made their way around the place and were able to buy a few rolls of E, some LSD, and some mushrooms from some club patrons. They then swept in, raided the place, and arrested everyone. Many folks were searched, apparently without any individual basis for suspicion. Apparently 17 people got hit with felony drug charges, seven got charged with drug possession, and "police wrote about 80 tickets for frequenting a drug house, a misdemeanor that carries up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine." In other words, if you go to a club where some of the other people there have drugs (also known as "a club"), even totally clean, you can get slapped with three months in jail.
Update: Ah, reading is fundamental. The drug possession and tickets for "frequenting a drug house" referred to another party bust from 1999, though being old doesn't make it less outrageous. I'd skipped to the end and missed the reference to a previous party in the antecedent paragraph. And even absent that feature, the current raid is fairly insane sounding: It still entails arresting and searching a whole club full of people on the grounds that (shocker!) you found a couple dealers in the mix.
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