Posted on 05/25/2007 6:43:30 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
MISSION — For some elementary school students, the familiar ice cream truck jingle apparently meant an easy way to buy drugs.
Police are stunned that children in the third grade were buying pot from an ice cream truck driver, whom they arrested Thursday afternoon.
The driver, police said, was selling $5 and $10 bags of marijuana to students coming out of O’Grady Elementary School at the intersection of Farm-to-Market Road 495 and Holland Avenue.
Customers included third-, fourth- and fifth-graders.
“I can’t visualize any of these kids that age smoking marijuana,” Mission police Chief Leo Longoria said. “It’s a scary thought, but that’s the info we received.”
The driver, a Mexican national, was arrested after police received tips from children about the drug sales.
“What an idiot,” Longoria said of the driver. “But the important thing about this is kids reported it.”
The driver is expected to be arraigned today on drug possession charges. Police are still weighing the possibility of bringing drug distribution charges against the man because they did not catch him selling to anyone.
Police arrested the driver about 4:15 p.m. Thursday several blocks away from the elementary school.
They seized the truck, several bags of marijuana and, presumably, a whole lot of ice cream. ____
We're on the same side of that fence and I agree. String him up. String him up again for using the attraction of the ice cream truck to lure his business, 3rd graders no less. Kudo's to who ever ratted him out. Blackbird.
Cheers!
Did they find a frosty, shivering Cheech in the freezer?
Doesn’t everyone know that ice cream trucks sell drugs???
My husband tells a story of a similar ‘ice cream’ man in his neighborhood growing up — although they weren’t ELEMENTARY SCHOOL students (according to everyone the man only sold the stuff to the older ‘kids’ on the block). Bad either way, I agree, but ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS?!? I don’t recall even hearing about pot until I was in high school — honestly. Where are these kids learning about these things?
A neighbor’s child, who was in Jr. High at the time, told me something interesting a few years back — that she and her friends learned more about drugs, and how to do them from the DARE program in her school... She also said that they overexaggerated things (in relation to pot, for example) with things more akin to the information in Reefer Madness than with the truth. These kids knowing that they were overexaggerating by the time they got into Jr. High saw the program as a joke by that point. Perhaps we should be careful about how MUCH and exactly what information to give our kids — if they are lying about the real dangers, the kids won’t respect the truthful parts.
I’m all for teaching kids the dangers of drugs, but one has to wonder exactly what they are learning...
Back to the article though — this man deserves the highest punishment possible. I highly doubt these children would have access to the drugs if it weren’t for him. Even older people who USE the stuff wouldn’t have given it to children — at least not the people I’ve known over the years...
I fully agree with you in regards to the WOsD’s and this man deserving punishment. Absolutely unbelieveable that someone would do this...
(You may also be interested in what I wrote in post #65.)
One enterprising dealer had somehow got ahold of an old ice cream truck, and sold his wares from the back. My friends have stories of, when living in the dorms, they'd wake up late at night to hear bursts of automatic weapon fire, and sometimes, the eerie jingling sound of the ice cream truck's music as it drove around. I guess eventually the guy got busted.
I never liked the words ‘pot’ or ‘weed.’ I prefer to say ‘The Maryjane’ myself. Never touched the stuff, though I have smelled it on many a walk through Washington Square Park in the 1980s.
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