Taxpayers Shell Out $900k To Cover For Cops Who Charged 64 People With Possessing 1 Oz. Of Weed

You’ve presumably read the headline. Let’s take a look at how we got there.

On Dec. 31, 2017, Nija Guider finished her waitressing shift and headed to a friend’s 21st birthday party in Cartersville, Georgia. She had been at the party for less than an hour when, suddenly, the police arrived. Without a warrant or permission, they entered the house and detained everyone inside. Guider and more than 60 other guests’ wrists were zip-tied.

“Boom, we were all going to jail,” Guider, then 21, recalled.

Each guest was charged with possessing less than an ounce of marijuana that had been found in the home. Some spent days in jail, held under harsh conditions, Guider and other party guests allege. The district attorney’s office would eventually drop charges against everyone.

Dropping charges was the right thing to do but the right thing to do came long after the damage had been done. Most of those arrested were held over the weekend, denied access to legal representation, strip-searched, prevented from using the restroom or using their cell phones, and held in a 30-degree cell. Jail staff placed signs designating the overfilled holding cell as “THE PARTY CREW.” Some of those arrested were placed in solitary confinement after complaining about their treatment. No other drugs were recovered beyond the single ounce officers arrested 70 people over and charged 64 with possessing.

Here’s the law enforcement depiction of the incident:

At about 2 a.m. on Dec. 31, 2017, Cartersville Police Officer Joshua Coker was responding to a report of gunfire in the area when he drove down Cain Drive. Even with his car windows rolled up, he smelled marijuana, according to his testimony at a subsequent hearing.

He then saw four men in front of the home where Guider and others had gathered. Coker requested two other officers in the area join him.

The officers asked the men what was occurring inside; they explained it was a party. The officers then entered the home and announced everyone was being detained, according to police testimony. The majority of the guests were in their late teens or early 20s, according to booking reports.

“I had exigent circumstances to go inside and clear the residence … and make sure of no destruction of evidence prior to the Drug Task Force arriving,” testified Coker.

The “exigent circumstances” claimed by the officer was nothing more than the odor of marijuana, something he apparently detected while in a moving vehicle with its windows up. A warrant wasn’t obtained until two hours after officers had arrived, entered the residence, and detained the partygoers. The search — which produced a single ounce of marijuana and 64 criminal charges — was later deemed unconstitutional.

The party guests who sued police officers for their actions have been vindicated, as Liz Dye reports for Above the Law.

Forty-four of those arrested filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the various law enforcement agencies responsible for this debacle. And this week the parties came to a settlement, with the plaintiffs splitting a $900,000 payout. 

Of course, it won’t be the cops paying for this. It’s the city of Cartersville (GA) paying for it. And the city won’t really be paying for this either. It will be the residents of Cartersville footing the bill and being asked to fund police misconduct with no assurance they won’t be asked to do this again. As is standard with far too many settled lawsuits against government employees, the money is tied to exonerative boilerplate.

Police admit no liability, with the Cartersville City Manager telling Fox 5 News that the defendants were simply seeking to avoid the cost of litigation and acknowledge no wrongdoing.

If no entity involved in the wrongdoing is made to feel any financial pain, the perpetrators are likely to re-offend. Say what you will about the evils of the carceral state, but at least that side of the justice system forces perps to pay for their crimes out of their own pockets. The other side of the justice system often expects nothing from offenders — something that should raise far more concerns about law enforcement recidivism, and result in government efforts to reduce it. Somehow, it never does.