$153,000 Worth Of Painkillers Found During Traffic Stop
A routine traffic stop resulted in Kingsport Police taking more than $153,000 worth of prescription painkillers off of the streets, and it also landed two people in jail.
Kingsport Police stopped Bristol, Tennessee resident Jonathan Trenton Leonard’s Chevrolet Tahoe for speeding on I-81 on Tuesday. Bluff City resident April Shannon Hutson was the passenger in the SUV at the time of the stop.
Police say that they found about 1,800 oxycodone and around 1,300 hydrocodone pills inside of the SUV, after a drug dog hit on a scent.
Leonard and Hutson were both arrested for possession of narcotics for resale.
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I seen that happen in court in JC…. I was told I was a liar and all I done was tell the DA what I saw happen and the judge called 4 of us liars..
But another sad thing is the way they stick together to make a citizens life heck cause one of there own was caught and convicted of a crime and fired.. that is alot of why I have a attitude about them. I seen one directing traffic downtown today and he got a attitude with a driver casue he didnt come thru fast enough. Young and could tell he had a attitude by his persona..
The lady that her dad is a cop, he may be a very respected officer but the young ones is killing that respect.
If i get pulled over and asked if he could search would be told no quickly and politley. I have nothing to hide but under no reason will I ever give one permission to search. I am the rare one who will look them in the eye and tell them I am not scared of them.
Getting real,
I find it sad but true. Look around at todays officers. Tell me they don’t seem to adhere to this unwritten code of how a modern day police officer is supposed to look. Our police forces are nothing if not extensions of our military any more. They receive extensive military type training, former military personnel are given preference for the job, and they all have the same high and tight cuts as if they are still in the military. Don’t they know they don’t have to do that anymore? I especially like the ones who wear the black driving gloves. Now those are some real scaaaarrrry guys.
Has anyone ever thought to ask why we train our police force to trick people into foregoing their rights? Does anyone care that they can tell you a bald face lie right to your face and try to get you to incriminate yourself but if you lie to them it is a punishable offense? We don’t let surgeons or lawyers operate with H.S diplomas and military service do we? Why in the world are we allowing people with the minimum basic education become essentially the most powerful people on the street? The reality is that four years of military training and 6 months of police training doesn’t provide the best community service skills. A 24 year old kid straight out of the service isn’t equipped with the correct skills to deal with a civilian society. The type of power our police forces hve today calls for much more professional and educated persons than what is now required.Do we not understand that the most powerful person most of us will ever meet face to face is a simple city cop or county deputy? These guys have so much latitude in deciding your fate for you. And let’s be honest, when you go to court and it’s your word against his, you got a better chance of riding a snowball through hades then having the judge be impartial. All I can say is thank God for the hand held video recorder. It’s the only accountability we have left. And judging by the multitude of overzealous cops caught on tape we can only conclude that for every one on tape there are three who get away with it.
Educate yourself on your rights people. Understand that these guys are no better than you. They choose to do this job and it is your tax money which pays for their haircuts. An educated populace is their worst enemy. Check out this website: http://www.flexyourrights.org/
Now that was very well said!!!! All I will add is all he said about the young generation is true in all spects I have seen. I wonder how many of the young cops was picked on as kids and now feel they have this position to get even in thier own way.. Look I want these and all drugs off the street, but hey I still want to not worry about over bearing cops.. Myself, I have absolutley no repect for the officers under 40 and very little for the ones over. I am teaching my daughter to not trust them.. And I am one of those people who is not intimadated by police.. they put thier pants on like I do.. And just so you know I have worked closely with the older officers that would work DEA and those guys are alot different from the YOUNG PUNK TROOPERS as i heard a veterain officer call them.. Simply my opinion
Proud-Mom,
So then is it your contention that because a person calls a police officer a clown they are thereby corrupting a child?
The hilarious thing is that you don’t realize Deal’s point about your hypocrisy. You wrote: “Now it is obvious you have had a bad experience with the police” and “I am going to go ahead and assume you fall into one of those catagories due to your comment” and “I say this because it takes an idiot to post a comment like that. There are children that read this and to make that statement about our police officers could put that idea into their heads.“
He then returns the favor by assuming (just as you did) something about you. And you “put him in his place” did you? Did you not get his point?
Look, just because your father is a police officer doesn’t change the reality that police officers in general are narcissistic authoritarians. They certainly don’t do the job for the money. I find it hard to believe that anyone wants to help people by constantly asserting authority over them. So, that leaves us with the psycholgical reality that these guys love the idea of being respected and having power over others.
The problem is that we hire the wrong people for that job. The job is not a militaristic entity as it now presents itself. It is a community entity. If you get rid of the power hungry and uneducated person with a multitude inadequacies you can alleviate the problem of having jack booted thugs running around infringing on people’s Constitutional rights. We should pay them more, which of course should require a graduate degree and the personality tests should move away from the ones used in military formats towards human services professionals. Just by requiring 6 years of college and non aggressive personalities, you would get rid of a high percentage of the military crew cut, mirrored sunglasses, adrenaline junkies. Which of course is the problem.
The most important thing here though is the fact that this war on drugs is destroying our 4th amendment daily. The Supreme Court has ruled that using a dog to sniff a house, car, or person, is not constituted as a search! Can you believe that? We know for a fact that officers can initiate false hits with these dogs and acting nervous is not nor should it be probable cause. 90% of the public is nervous when getting pulled over. It is a natural reaction. Are you trying to defend the notion that being nervous should allow a government agent to search your person and private property whenever they wish?
Furthermore, a Kingsport city officer has no jurisdiction on a federal highway. He probably detained them waiting on the dog much longer than it would take to write a speeding ticket, and in case your daddy didn’t tell you, refusing a search is not probable cause to bring a dog either. By the way, your daddy is only allowed to detain a person as he waits for a dog long enough for him to write the ticket he pulled someone over for. How much you wanna bet this didn’t happen in this case?
Look…. having drugs like these and selling them for profit on others misery is immoral, I’ll give you that. But, we sure as heck don’t need to compromise our civil liberties to authoritarian thugs as we continue to fight a battle that can never be won. If there was not a lucrative market for these drugs, these people wouldn’t have had thousands of pills and the police officer would have no reason to stretch the 4th amendment to its breaking point. Get it?
Yeah, I asked my dad (former cop) yesterday about it and he said it depends on the milligram-oxy can get expensive. Normal loratabs though, are *cheap* comparatively.
BrightBetty, I done some checking to see if I could get some figures after I read your post cause I knew I had been told by a former friend who got messed up with them, I dont hang with people that do that it can lead to nothing but trouble and heart break for all around and I want no part of it. Anyway they do go for 60-75 each, Loritabs or Hydrocodone goes for the 6-15.
Raoul,
no, they don’t. Well at least they were not when I was living in a crappy apartment complex several years ago. I think people paid around 7-15 dollars for one, depending on potency. Still a habit I boggled at, though, since 7-15 can add up really quickly and most of my neighbors were eking by. I’m not a fan of painkillers, after observing first hand how they can mess a person up. And eveningstar is correct, there are far too many dr’s out there that prescribe strong narcotics without good reason.
So yes, PD’s up the “value”-it makes them look better, and people who’ve never lived in crappy neighbourhoods usually don’t think to question the value put on such things. Cops can also be underhanded at times, and abusive of their authoritative position. It’s a fact, not something to be swept under the rug.
But I daresay that is not the case in this matter, as these people did have drugs, and quite a few at that. The guy was probably sweating bullets when the officer came up to the window and it’s his own fault-who speeds with a ton of drugs in the backseat? I hope who ever provided him with the pills is sweating bullets as well, right about now-as more than likely someone is about to lose their medical license.
I say we waterboard them until they tell us how they got so many pills. These two are just clowns, who is really behind “The Poisoning of Appalachian Heritage”. I think I’ll write a book based on tricities.com comments alone.
I have heard in the 60-80 dollar range.. Would be a expensive habit to have. I am in agreement wit the question about how do they get that many?
So let me ask the crowd. Does hydrocodone actually sell for $49.35 a single pill? Seems a bit preposterous.
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