You go, girl!
Posted on 07/08/2005 10:18:07 AM PDT by Dashing Dasher
Eric Laverriere was celebrating last New Year's Eve at a friend's house in Waltham when police broke up the party. They took him into protective custody and kept him locked in a cell for nine hours until the effects of a night of beer drinking wore off.
In what legal experts believe to be a first-of-its-kind legal challenge, Laverriere filed suit against the Waltham Police Department in US District Court in Boston, contending that he has a constitutional right to get drunk on private property ''so long as he causes no public disturbance."
Laverriere, a 25-year-old computer systems specialist from Portland, Maine, argues that the Massachusetts Protective Custody Law is intended to target public drunkenness and that Waltham police overstepped their bounds when they used it to seize him from a private residence.
''One thing people should be able to do is drink in their own house," Laverriere said in a phone interview yesterday. ''That's the beauty of the land of the free."
The state's Protective Custody Law, enacted in 1971, replaced a law dating back to Colonial times that made public drunkenness a crime, subject to arrest, conviction, and a criminal record. The law, which does not explicitly say whether it applies to those in public or in private, authorizes police to take incapacitated people to their homes, a treatment facility, or a police station, where they can be held against their will for up to 12 hours.
Under the law, people have to be drunk and deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. They are not charged with a crime.
Laverriere asserts in his lawsuit that he had ''a constitutional right to be drunk in private, a privacy and liberty right founded in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution."
{SNIP}
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
You go, girl!
Oh, the cruel mods can take him away, remove him from the FRorld, but I can still ping him in my mind . . .
BERTHA WILL NEVER STOP PINGING THAG!!!!
Actually - Version 2
Police: X you have the right to remain silent anything you blah blah blah
Xenalyte: But sir, I... I... I didn't know until I read it on Free Republic
Police: You're a FREEPER!!!
ROCK ON!!!
I like that pic! ;)
(Now that I've posted 3 times to this thread, I guess I should go read the actual article to see what it was about.) < /Lazamataz mode>
LOL!! Oh my, quite a bit of "information" there, eh? ;)
This is America.
The language is English.
Learn it.
Use it.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, you have written the numerals in Spanish.
oh, gosh, please help me, I am possessed
Is it just me, or do those outfits look slightly vulgar?
Children's books - as they should be!
I have a collection, you know.
The version I have is MUCH larger - I had to change the size to keep it semi-respectable.
I could post the original somewhere and ping you to it - if you'd like!?
;-)
one-track mind.
Oh my....what nice....helmets they have!!!
As long as we're on the same track - who cares!?
;-)
Ok, just don't get in trouble, I look forward to your posts, they crack me up! ;)
heheheheheh.
Dang! Excellent comeback. I am surprised I have never heard that before. Almost as surprised as I was a couple of years ago when I saw my first snake skeleton and realized I had never seen one before.
Check your pings.
Thanks, I appreciate the Kudos!
;-)
Thanks for the offer, but, if I feel the need I will blow it myself.
Up, I mean blow it up.
Thag, Bertha's a comin'. . .
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