DOOBIEOUS BUST

Undercover Cops Infiltrate A Pro-Pot Event, But Don't Weed Out Much From
The Crowd

May 4 was more than just another Saturday night at Fitzgerald's. Roughly
500 people gathered at the gritty rock 'n' roll venue to mark Liberation
Day, an international event for the decriminalization of marijuana. While
bands jammed on the upstairs and downstairs stages, drug-reform advocates
dutifully distributed information on medical marijuana and postcards to
send to politicians and editorial boards. An occasional whiff of ganja
sweetened the dark, smoky air.

"It was a liberation fest. It wasn't a crack house," says 26-year-old
Taunya Poole, a volunteer for the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws. "I've seen more drugs at a rodeo or a Willie Nelson concert."

For the police, the event made an irresistible target. The posters,
distributed around town by the thousands, had billed the occasion as the
"Million Marijuana March" and promised "a fat sack of some of Houston's
finest rock performances." A large marijuana leaf adorned the promotional
art for good measure. Police spokesman Robert Hurst says that officers were
well aware of the planned event.

"Officers had developed some information through undercover
intelligence-gathering that there would be some people inside the club
during the event that might be selling controlled substances or marijuana,"
he says.

The police designated no fewer than 20 officers to stop the reefer madness.

From the beginning of the evening, the crowd of mostly twentysomethings
detected strangers in its midst. It wasn't so much that these individuals
were older or dressed in a forced-casual style. It was their crazy
desperation for drugs. Some attendees say the strangers repeatedly badgered
patrons to sell them pot, coke, ecstasy -- anything, man.

Trent Moss, the bass player for the band Geek, had just left the stage and
was hanging out on the balcony with friends. The 19-year-old had spent the
week working construction, thinking of sweet moments like this when he
could kick back with a beer after another rockin' set. An African-American
man who appeared to be in his thirties approached him and asked if he had
any weed. Moss brushed him off with a noncommittal "maybe later."

After that, Moss could not go anywhere without an annoying tap on the
shoulder and the reminder, got that weed? Moss says the man really wanted
to buy, but Moss wasn't selling. The young man finally gave him half a bowl
to just go away.

"I said, 'Dude, if you want some so badly, I'll smoke this with you.' "

Throughout the bar, others had similar encounters. The undercover sniffing
became an out-and-out raid sometime around 10 p.m., when several squad cars
and a paddy wagon converged on the bar at Studewood and White Oak.
Narcotics officers stormed through the crowd, zeroing in on selected
individuals and slapping handcuffs on them. Officers patted down suspects
- -- women included -- without reading them their rights or telling them what
they were being arrested for, says Sara Fitzgerald, who has run the
Heights-area bar for about 25 years.

"Is this not an overkill?" she thought to herself. "Why are you ruining
these young people's lives?"

Jennifer Johnson, 26, says she was thrown up against a wall and handcuffed
to her friend John Holmes before the cop realized he had mistakenly
detained her and let her go. Holmes would be charged with selling an
ecstasy tablet.

As the officers worked the room, alarmed patrons urged their friends to get
rid of their drugs. The police made two more sweeps of the bar that night.
All told, eight people were arrested and seven charged with drug offenses,
according to spokesman Hurst. The total booty coaxed from the offenders:
about one gram of marijuana -- enough perhaps for a few joints -- six
ecstasy tablets, two Xanax and a dozen tablets of the prescription drug
Tenormin, a beta-blocker that a 15-year-old girl sold to an undercover cop.

The charges were "very damn minor for such a rampage on a peaceful
setting," says Dean Becker, one of the event's organizers and vice
president of the Houston chapter of NORML.

Moss got busted for the delivery of one-third of a gram of marijuana.
Another quarter-gram was found in his shoe. He was packed into the paddy
wagon with the others and spent the night in jail. He is charged with a
class B misdemeanor, which carries a maximum of 180 days in jail and a
$2,000 fine.

"He's pursuing a career in music, not trying to be a fucking drug dealer,"
says friend and bandmate John E. Corrigan, who believes Moss was entrapped
by the pesky narc. But spokesman Hurst says undercover officers who suspect
illegal activities "will do anything they can to see if it's true."

"They're good actors," he says.