(Mods - if this thread is inappropiate for the boards, my apologies, I don’t mean to cause trouble)
While I was out jogging today, I found a bong on the sidewalk of a fairly busy road. It was less than a quarter mile from an elementary school, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to leave it. After a moments thought though, I didn’t think I should carry it with me either. I was wearing light jogging clothes (nowhere to hide it), and I frequently draw attention from passing cars (police included) because of my large, unusual dog.
So, I kicked it down the sewer near where it lay. I have a feeling though, that there could have been a better solution. What should I have done?
that’s exactly what I was going to suggest. I suppose you could have called the non-emergency police number and tipped them off that there was a bong hanging out by the side of the road.
Bongs are illegal if they’ve been used to smoke an illegal substance like marijuana, since they would contain traces of a controlled substance. Depends on jurisdiction, blah blah blah…
I agree with something all three of you have said. Amp, I wouldn’t have picked it up either. seaworthy, a non-emergency call to the police probably would have been a good idea. Intent, given the proximity to an elementary school, getting it rid of it immediately probably wasn’t a bad idea. Ever think it might be there because of the near-by school, i.e., 6th graders toking? Shocking, I know…
As a general rule, I think you’re supposed to stay away from the crime scene as much as possible. The police don’t want your prints and trace evidence mucking things up. If a piece of evidence is a threat to others, like a loaded gun on the ground, you can move it. You’re supposed to mark the area where you took it with a rock or something. Unless someone got bonged to death, I think you’re fine in this case.
You might want to contact the school or the local detectives and tell them the location where you found the bong. Any sort of drug activity by a school is a big no-no.
Good job not picking it up and kicking it into the sewers. A simular incident like this happened at my work where a fellow employee found a bag of weed out in the parking lot. Instead of throwing it away or just leaving it, he decided to bring it into work. Gets worse. He then leaves it on the desk in the breakroom with a note to the security guard saying that he found it outside. Well, it then disappears. Everyone in my department has to get a drug test because no one fesses up to it. Funny thing was one of the earlier security guards took it and turned it into the police but forgot to mention it to anyone else. As a result, a person got fired because the drug test everyone had to take in the begining, showed that he smoked weed. Sucks to be him.
The moral of the story is, better to leave that stuff alone or do what you did. Only trouble can come with it if you did take it. Even if for good intentions.
I agree that you did the right thing. Kick it out of reach from passing schoolchildren. If you run there often, keep an eye out for suspicious activity, and report that. The drug dealers carry stuff that’s a lot worse than marijuana, in my experience. (My husband and I did a little urban pioneering and lived in a house in a “transitional” neighborhood, so…)
Somehow <bong on sidewalk = crime scene> seems like an exaggeration, IMO. Someone does too many bonghits and sets his bong down and forgets where he left it: not a huge social problem. People selling illegal drugs near a school: big problem.
Many years ago when she and I were but mere children, some young men came to a stop in the cul-de-sac in front of our house. One of the young men got out of the car carrying a strange object and approached my sister, asking here to fill the object with water. My sister brought it into the house and asked our father, “Daddy, what’s this?”
The object, of course, was a bong. Dad jumped up and asked her where she got it, and she told him. So my Dad took it from her and walked out to the young men’s car, whereupon he asked them why they wanted it filled with water. “To get a cool smoke, man!” they responded. The young men’s eyes grew very wide when my father, an off-duty police officer, pulled his badge from his pocket and asked them to step out of the car…
It seems that the young men were from a neighbouring town, and had thought to drive someplace where nobody would recognize them in order to smoke their herb. What better place then next to the home of a police officer?
P.S. My dad, after putting the fear of God into the young men, simply confiscated their bong and told them to beat it.
No, any list of illegal paraphernalia would probably include both terms. In some states a wide variety of scientific glassware is also illegal, and I’m sure all water pipes are included no matter what they’re called.
There are ‘legitimate’ uses for water pipes, though, and there are people who do use them for this purpose. Some people at my college started a club for smoking tobacco in water pipes (‘shisha’; there were already clubs for pipes and cigars, and for basically any type of alcohol yet prepared by humanity). They had a lot of trouble finding supplies, and I thought it was because of the association of water pipes with marijuana. Actually, I later found out that the real reason many tobacconists wouldn’t stock the supplies was because much of the flavored tobacco was being imported without paying taxes.
Anyway, I think it’s kind of disturbing that the right thing to do in this sort of situation is to kick the device in question into a sewer and pretent that nothing happened. This is the sort of situation where you should be able to do something, but the chance that you’d end up getting in trouble if you ‘do the right thing’ is quite real.
Yes, this was my biggest fear. I’m a teenager and I live in a notoriously strict county, where actions that would get you a slap on the wrist a few miles over will you get you thrown in jail here. I would have preferred to bring it back home and dispose of it properly, but I could just see myself meeting up with some law enforcement… “What’s that?” “Uh, it’s not mine, I just found it…” Yeeeeah.
Oh, and for the record, waterpipes are legal here, but my examination of this one yielded the remains of a substance that is not.
It is commendable that you considered the nearness of the elementary school and decided that you needed to take action. The world needs more people with that kind of civic mindedness.
However, I am going to be nature geek and suggest an alternate solution. In most cities, kicking the bong down the sewer is the same as picking it up and throwing it in the nearest creek. Currently many cities in the US are trying to educate the public about not treating storm intakes as garbage dumps. You’d be amazed at the things people think is OK to put in the storm sewer; paint, motor oil, litter boxes, if it can fit through the grate, someone has put it in the sewers.
I’d say if school was in session, jog back to the school and inform them. If school wasn’t in session, the risk that a kid would find it before you get home and call the cops is pretty slim.
Let me clarify that one bong in the stream is a good social tradeoff for a 6th grader using it, and was still a worthwhile action.
An even better solution would have been to call me. Since Tommy Chong’s business got busted, my order was cancelled.
My take on the situation is this:
Its a shame that we live in a society that forces us to be afraid to report an illegal act or dangerous situation to the very same people who mandated to protect us ,the citizens.If you saw a situation that you felt was dangerous to others you shoul have made the proper authorities aware.
Nadahappycamper
A bong is the drug name for a water pipe used to smoke marijuana. In a water pipe, there is a large reservoir of, surprise surprise, water. When you inhale through the mouthpiece, the smoke from the bowl is drawn through the water, thus cooling it. Marijuana smoke is often drawn into the lungs more deeply than cigarette smoke, thus making water cooling for pot more popular than cooling for tobacco. I um, got this from… um Google. Yeah.
