A guy I work with was talking about raves the other day, and someone asked him what they’d do if the cops showed up.
“We’d tell them that we were all on acid” he replied. I was a little confused by this, and he explained that it is illegal for a police officer to arrest someone they know to be under the influence of LSD, because once the person is restrained they will get very violent in an attempt to get free.
This sounds like a load of malarky to me, so I turn to the Teeming Millions for an answer.
For givng his ravings any merit, one would suspect you all were “under the influence” at the time.
From reputation, your sensitivity to pain may drop precipitously if you are on LSD. Most methods of safely arresting and restraining an individual require that said individual has some sensitivity to pain, or at least pays attention to the fact that he or she is under restraint, etc.
This is something LSD might have in common with PCP.
There is no law I know of saying that you can’t arrest someone on LSD, or PCP. I would venture it happens daily.
However, it is likely to be a bad scene for all involved. Taking someone down when said someone ignores blows or holds that you apply to them means that you’re likely to break a couple of fingers, wrists, arms, ribs, etc when you do it.
Additionally, you would probably want more backup for a situation like that than normal. If you fight someone in this state by yourself, you may wind up needing a little bit of help.
There may have been, or be, a couple of police departments that have POLICIES indicating not to arrest persons under the influence of PCP, preferring to have an officer simply follow said individual until said individual is no longer high. I can’t cite such a policy, though.
Sigh!:rolleyes:
Tell that goof that admitting that your under the influence of an illegal sustance is one of the fastest ways to get arrested. Or at very, very least detained and thoroughly frisked
On second thought, don’t tell him. He sounds like someone who needs to learn things the hard way.
Y’know, there are threads where the title alone is enough to clue you that it is going to be totally bogus. This is a nice example of the phenomenon.
As a side note, the phrase “illegal to arrest” + “LSD” turned up zero hits on google.
>>This is something LSD might have in common with PCP.
um - or not. (i was tempted to say you should lay off the crack, but i suspect it wouldn’t have come out quite as funny as i intended it.)
on the original question, i suggest going back to the person who made that claim, and feign surprise that your research showed that he was indeed right.
it should make for another amusing anecdote in a couple of months.
cruel? maybe. but it’s the only way to educate ravers…
Feh. I’ve seen people get arrested while under the influence. It depends entirely on the person. The few I’ve seen were quite mellow about the whole thing.
I can attest first-hand that the police will arrest you while they know you are on LSD.
There’s a LONG story that I won’t share that ends up with me being arrested peaceably while watching my not-so-calm friend take the beatdown of his life (he was taken WAYYY toom uch, which is what lead to the arrest in the first place.)
A lot of stories get handed around about weird little “get out of jail free” cards, where you say the magic words or do the magic dance and you cannot be arrested or ticketed. One that I used to hear a lot in high school and college was that if you were pulled over for a traffic stop and you were anywhere near your house, gun it and make it home. If you can make it to your home, supposedly the officer couldn’t give you the ticket and had to leave in frustration. I like to think this also required you to climb onto your roof and yell “sanctuary! sanctuary!” at the police.
Needless to say, this is total bullshit. A man in Texas eventually found out the hard way when he was pulled over for speeding and tried to make it home. His closing garage door was stopped by the hood of a pursuing state trooper’s cruiser. He protested that he had made it to “home base”, so to speak, and was surprised to learn that he was not only still in trouble for speeding, he was now being arrested for felony evasion.
Obviously your friend has never seen an episode of COPS.
:smack:
That is utter B.S. LSD and PCP are completely different drugs with completely different psychoactive actions. If you believe that someone tripping on acid reduces sensitivity to pain, I’d like to see your citation. Where’s your evidence?
Mine is based on personal experience. If anything, LSD has been known to increase sensitivity to pain.
While I’m not advocating any kind of drug use, I simply cannot stand to see unsubstantiated and blatant misinformation spouted about.
Possible. I have seen a picture in an intro psych textbook of a PCP arrest. Five or six police officers had the guy in a huge net. But my WAG is the guy was doing stuff that called for six cops and a net, and they didn’t know when they arrived at the scene that the guy was on angel dust.
LSD, AFAIK, doesn’t have that kind of effect.
Officer Friendly: “Do you know how fast you were going?”
Doofus: “Haha, jokes on you. I’m all f*cked up on acid.”
bad boys bad boys…whatcha gonna do when they come for you…
Your friend is wrong- the police can certainly arrest someone who is under the influence of LSD. Does he really think they would let a murderer walk just becasue he was under the influence when they caught him ? He may have misunderstood something else, though. It is entirely possible that there are places where it is not illegal to be under the influence of LSD, and that the police therefore cannot arrest someone just because they are under the influence.
Not only is it NOT illegal to arrest someone currently under the influence of drugs like this, the Northridge police officers’ (successful) defense in the Rodney King trial was that they thought he was on PCP because he wouldn’t lie flat and kept getting up even after getting wacked with batons.
This is up there with “An undercover cop has to tell you that he/shw works for a law enforcement agency if you ask.”
Another good one is “cops can’t search your car without your permission.”
How do people believe this shit?
Haj
Sometimes they can’t. If the officer has no reason to suspect illegal activity in the car, he does not have the legal right to search it, and you may refuse permission for him to conduct a search, and he must comply. However, if he has “reasonable suspicion”, he is allowed to search your car whether you give permission or not. However, if you do give permission, anything he finds maybe be allowed into evidnece, even if he didn’t have the legal right to search the car otherwise.