Cop Avoids Charges in Pot Brownie Caper
Thursday, May 10, 2007
DEARBORN, Mich. ? A police officer in this Detroit suburb was allowed to resign after admitting he took marijuana from criminal suspects and, with his wife, baked it into brownies.
The department's decision not to prosecute former
Cpl. Edward Sanchez left a bad taste in the mouth of at least one city official, who vowed to investigate.
"If you're a cop and you're arresting people and you're confiscating the marijuana and keeping it yourself, that's bad. That's real bad," City Councilman Doug Thomas told the Detroit Free Press for a story Thursday.
"That's like apprehending a bank robber and keeping some of the money for yourself."
The newspaper said Sanchez, who resigned last year, declined to comment Wednesday.
Police Cmdr. Jeff Geisinger left a phone message with Detroit television station WDIV saying Sanchez resigned during an internal investigation. Geisinger did not return subsequent calls asking why Sanchez was not prosecuted.
The department's investigation began with a
911 call from Sanchez's home on April 21, 2006. On a 5-minute tape of the call, obtained by the Free Press under the Michigan
Freedom of Information Act, Sanchez told an emergency dispatcher he thought he and his wife were overdosing on marijuana.
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"I think we're dying," he said. "We made brownies and I think we're dead, I really do."
Sanchez later told police investigators that his wife took the marijuana out of his police vehicle while he was sleeping. In a subsequent interview, he admitted he got the marijuana out of the car himself, put it in the brownie mix and ate the brownies.