Horsemint Marijuana Confusion: Texas Cops Haul Off Wrong Weed

gawker.com:

Cops in Corpus Christi, who are clearly very well-intentioned but maybe not the sharpest tools in the police shed, seized some 400 marijuana plants from a city park. Only, they were not marijuana, so much as, "horsemint."

A "teen riding his bike through Waldron Park" gave the Corpus Christi police a call on Friday night to alert them to all the marijuana plants that were growing there. And the police, ever the responsive, civic-minded public servants, showed up very quickly and "hauled away 300-400 medium-sized plants," stopping because it became too dark. Only...

Read the whole story: gawker.com

Comments

[Christian Cullen]

10:21 PM on 05/29/2010

Clancy Wiggum on the case!

[BLACKCAT66]

10:27 AM on 05/29/2010

How in the world did these a$$-clowns become cops? I hope the park dept made them replant every single plant. The really scary thing is these guys have guns too.

[SF TKF]

04:27 PM on 05/28/2010

Sounds like these guys are about as bright as the cop who was convinced that clove cigarettes were pot. They arrested my boyfriend and hauled him downtown before they finally found someone who knew what a clove cigarette smelled like. *rolls eyes*

[DevonTexas]

02:18 PM on 05/28/2010

And the world is a safer place because the Corpus Christi cops cleared the local park of horsemint! Good for that! LOL

[fumes]

11:57 AM on 05/27/2010

there's always that cop..

that pockets some of the take..

to smoke later and see what all the excitement is about!

[vinny]

08:35 AM on 05/29/2010

bet his house smells minty right about now

[maxfax]

09:31 PM on 05/26/2010

That's not quite as bad as this.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/05/war_drugs?page=2

[james4truth1066]

09:31 AM on 05/26/2010

Sargent Stadenko on the case, Hey are you going to eat that hotdog?

[KIVPossum]

05:32 AM on 05/26/2010

Cops are st.upid when it comes to plants. 40+ years ago my hometown had two HUGE concrete urns outside the police station. Each year they'd plant petunias or something and they would do well; the cops came out in the morning, and emptied their coffee cups in the planters. Sooo, on dark night a few of us visited the planters and put in a few dozen seedlings.

The cops kept them high on caffine until the plants were 18" tall - then they noticed what they were growing.

[KellyRyan]

06:23 PM on 05/28/2010

Lol .... Thanks for the humor.

[BlueZoo]

08:43 PM on 05/25/2010

Operative word in this story is "teenager." Firstly, I'd suggest these cops visit the little snitch and ask how he knows what MJ looks like! Secondly, somebody needs to give these cops a refresher course on weed! Horsemint and MJ don't remotely resemble each other and the leaves of the horsemint exude a pungent minty aroma that is quite pleasing, while MJ doesn't!

[HotheadPaisen]

08:18 AM on 05/26/2010

Well, clearly, the teenager doesn't know what MJ looks like.
I can see one cop making a mistake, but how many were involved here? How many did it take to pull and tag 400 plants and NONE of them knew what they were doing?
Good thing they never drag in and rough up the wrong people....oh- wait a minute...

[BlueZoo]

10:57 AM on 05/26/2010

You raise a good point re the pulling and tagging of the plants. Why tag them when they had no idea who planted them to begin with? Mint, btw, propagates itself and can take over an entire garden in less than a year!

[getsit]

02:11 PM on 05/27/2010

MJ smells like skunk to me. I don't like the smell. Here in Northern CA if you grow you have to hide the smell. These cops are none too bright. These plants look nothing like marijuana except they are green.

Time to make it legal and tax it. Some people need it and that's no lie. We're wasting our safety officers on marijuana growers, the price stays up which makes it attractive to criminals to grow and smuggle it, and it is already partially legal in many states.

Treat it like alchohol and tobacco-tax it and set age limits. The farmers will also pay tax.

[SF TKF]

04:29 PM on 05/28/2010

I love the scent of pot plants. Smells wonderful on a warm day. My best friend has a medical card and grows his own. I love going to viist and hanging out with the plants.

[Sequoia Hughes]

08:24 PM on 05/25/2010

I could understand maybe Japanese Maple, but this looks nothing like marijuana!

[SigmaChiGuy]

07:52 PM on 05/25/2010

So shouldn't these police be doing other things? Like writing speeding tickets or catching armed robbers? Not one to judge or anything but this sounds like a scene from Super Troopers.

[City of Evil]

11:13 PM on 05/25/2010

Not a bit of it. The guys from "Super Troopers" definitely knew what the weed looks like.

[dale wi]

06:39 PM on 05/25/2010

Light bulb goes on,,, yes,,,, next time you are in a park and come across a patch of nettle or poison ivy, call the police!! There are lots of weeds, and we need a war on every one of them! Police need to add Round Up to thier arsenal. Ever seen anyone with poison oak??? Big huge blisters that ooze puss,,,, it's aweful!!

[fumes]

12:00 PM on 05/27/2010

i think we should form a posse..

and round up all the canadian thistle..

and march it back over the border!

[robpmgc]

05:15 PM on 05/25/2010

This exemplifies a basic flaw in our Drug War mentality. Police don't confuse murder with jaywalking, speeding with fraud,or rape with auto theft. Rape, murder, etc., are crimes. Plants are not crimes.
Discrimination is based on factors that people are born with or into. By making plants illegal, we open ourselves to the very real potentiality that a government, perhaps in the future when we elect a radical muslim socialist as President, for instance, could discriminate against, take rights away from, anyone they disagreed with, at any time. The victim doesn't ever have to "do" anything wrong to lose all their rights. No witnesses, no criminal complaint, no victim. They just have to be found with the wrong plant on or near them. At any point, anyone could be arrested and punished if a government employee (i.e. police officer under a potential malevolent government) decides or is directed to place a bag of something that he sees every day in this persons' possession. The way I was raised, to respect the constitution, and fear big government, giving this power to the government was called a "slippery slope", and any law that resulted in hugely disproportionate enforcement on certain disadvantaged segments of our society was viewed as suspect. In modern America, neither party sees this as a concern, even though the disproportionate enforcement and government abuses from my potential example already exist. At least here, no one lost their freedom, we just wasted taxpayer dollars that we don't have.

[charlot]

04:26 PM on 05/25/2010

Those cops probably also think that people who smoke weed jump off of buildings because they think they can fly, and are known to get violent and murder their families with an axe.

Silly yokels. This story conjures images of the Dukes of Hazzard, or maybe Green Acres.

[onalimb]

03:54 PM on 05/25/2010

Wonder how they tested it?