Thanks to Phil Bantz for this article about the Keene police’s position on the cannabis celebrations at 4:20 everyday in Central Square. While KPD is doing the right thing and ignoring the peaceful people gathering daily and toking up, it’s amusing to listen to them attempt to explain that they are serious about cannabis use and would be arresting people if they could only just determine that laws were being broken. Maybe someday they’ll actually admit that what they have been doing in the name of some arbitrary words on paper has been WRONG, and they are sorry.
Until then, leaving peaceful people alone will suffice. Here’s the story:
The marijuana protesters in downtown Keene are getting high on publicity, while city police have adopted a wait-and-see strategy.
Every afternoon for the past week, protesters have gathered at Central Square to promote the decriminalization of marijuana. They upped the ante Sunday by showing up at the Keene Police Department lobby, where they cheered and smoked.
No protesters were arrested during the demonstration at the police station. So far, just one protester has been arrested and charged with marijuana possession. (more…)
Recorded as it happened and unedited. The jumps in the beginning are me hitting the pause button on the camera. Kurt was sentenced to 180 days in jail for attempting to converse with Edward Burke, the robed man calling himself a judge.
Cheshire sheriffs demand we not record as Kurt Hoffman who minutes before was incapacitated by Eli Rivera, Keene PD’s prosecutor, is wheeled out from Keene District Court on a stretcher. They claim some words on paper called “HIPA” prevent the “free press” from recording people receiving medical care, even if the recipient requests cameras present:
Did you know that EMS workers are also now enforcers of some arbitrary words on paper called “HIPA”? (I didn’t – I thought they were good people who do their best to help. Guess that’s not true of all of them.) EMS workers and sheriffs claim that “HIPA” allows them to prevent you from recording video of what they do with patients. Apparently it doesn’t matter what the patient wants. Watch as this thug steals my camera. I then spent over an hour of my time waiting around to get it back. Watch for another angle and longer video coming from ObscuredTruth.com soon here at FreeKeene.com
Is anyone really surprised? A majority of the people calling themselves the Keene city council could have shown a little compassion and voted in favor of a resolution that would have encouraged cannabis decriminalization at the state level. This would have been a symbolic gesture, nothing more. Rather than choose to do that, they opted to do nothing as they similarly chose two weeks ago to do nothing for medical patients who could use cannabis to get relief from debilitating disease.
To their credit, some city councilors including Pam Slack, did take a compassionate position. Others claimed they favored the issue personally, but didn’t think it their jobs as city councilors to weigh in on decriminalization. Still others seemed confused and claimed they’d originally voted the wrong way.
Welcome to politics. People who know next to zero about an issue get to make decisions that will rule the lives of other human beings who did not consent to being ruled. Elected bureaucrats across the country are regularly doing nothing about the millions of Americans who have been arrested for possessing a plant, seed, or chemical. Yet, people still attempt to appease these political rulers by supplicating to them and obeying their every arbitrary demand, not to mention paying their capricious fines.
Thanks to the Concord Monitor’s Ray Duckler for this report:
Rich Paul smokes pot. So do dozens of his new friends. Each day lately, in Central Square, right in the middle of Keene.
They huff and they puff and they blow the smoke out, daring the police to arrest them while they make their point. Smoking pot, they believe, should be legal, because smoking pot is their constitutional right. The war on drugs creates violence and unnecessarily jams our prisons, they say.
And Paul alluded to these points yesterday, telling about 100 people through a bullhorn. His voice was measured yet confident. The rally started in the afternoon, at 4:20, the insider’s term for pot smoking. No one seems to know why. Nobody seems to care, either. (more…)