FORGET MINISCULE MARIJUANA; BUST DRIVERS WHO BURN RUBBER

Belated congratulations to Chief Alfred M. "Jake" Jacocks Jr., who has been
named the new police chief in Virginia Beach.

Jacocks is an officer of considerable experience and reputation, so the last
thing he needs right now is unsolicited advice from someone who got the ink
stains on his thumbs from shuffling through newspapers rather than by
fingerprinting miscreants. But that hasn't hindered me before, so here goes
. . .

Virginia Beach is a relatively safe and well-policed city. But its officers
have, in the past, shown an inclination to react in some situations far in
excess of the level of threat to public order and safety.

Among the more striking of such situations was a case that was bounced
Tuesday morning from General District Court involving the misdemeanor
marijuana prosecution of Jamaican reggae singer Moses "Beenie Man" Davis and
three members of his band.

Last July, Beach police officers, acting on an anonymous tip, searched hotel
rooms where the band had stayed and a bus they were using. After combing the
environs -- literally, it seems -- for six hours, the investigators had
collected exactly 1.67 grams of marijuana seeds, stems and residue.

How much dope are we talking about here? Well, my understanding of metrics
is about as bad as most Americans', so let's put it this way: One of those
packets of sugar that you shake into your coffee holds 1 gram. So if you
were to convert the marijuana sweepings into sugar, we're talking about less
than most folks use in a glass of iced tea.

The street value, according to a story in Wednesday's paper, would be about
$3.50. This being too little dope to press felony charges of possession with
intent to distribute, Beenie Man and his traveling band were prosecuted on
misdemeanor possession charges -- upon which, if there's no prior record, a
conviction generally results in probation, counseling, and, if the suspect
behaves himself for a year, the charges are expunged.

Over the ensuing months, Beenie Man's band had to fly to Virginia Beach
twice from Japan, only to find that their case had been continued. To make
Tuesday's court appearance, they flew in from a tour stop in Europe.

The court found that because the search took place after Beenie Man's band
had checked out of the hotel, and one of the rooms searched was a suite with
a large common area, it was not possible to determine who had once owned the
minuscule amount of marijuana sweepings in question. Case dismissed.

Now, I do not use illegal drugs and do not condone their use. And I don't
think that celebrities should get a "pass" in court just because they've
been nominated for a Grammy. And, in a perfect world, we would all favor
zero-tolerance enforcement.

But this is not a perfect world. It is a world where we are reminded,
repeatedly, by city leaders that we have limited resources that must be
applied to unlimited problems. One of those problems seems to be the
inability to make an adequate determination of whether we should tie up an
entire police investigative squad for nearly a full shift, and then tie up
the courts and the prosecutor's office, to determine whether a couple of
reggae singers had fired up a joint in their hotel room after their
performance -- or whether the police and court time might be more rationally
applied to situations that present a greater threat to the common good.

For my tax dollar, I'd rather see those resources spent patrolling the
streets of a city where drivers, through habit, have come to believe that
speed limits are mere advisories, that stop signs are written on tissue
paper, and that a red light doesn't count if you're in a really, really big
hurry to get someplace.

Footnote: Coincidentally, the same day that Beenie Man was in court in
Virginia Beach, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the type of
search that was used to nab him is unconstitutional.

The nine justices, in a surprising unanimous decision, ruled that an
anonymous tip is not adequate basis to stop and search a suspect. There was
a time when such a ruling might have been written off as more whimpering
from a nest of Supreme Court liberals, but seven of the nine justices now
seated were installed by Republican presidents. And even the dependably
conservative troika of William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas
concurred, apparently believing that bagging a citizen solely on an
"anonymous tip" rings too much of Moscow circa 1937.

The court did give the police this latitude: If the anonymous tip involves a
threat of considerable danger to the public -- i.e., a bomb at a school or
an airport -- the search may be legal.

In doing so, the court affirmed the idea that it is perfectly reasonable to
match the level of police reaction to the level of perceived threat.

And that's all we're asking of Chief Jacocks and his able force.