DOPE CHARGE
On July 14, 1999 Morgan Grams
borrowed a rental car.
When he didn't return it after three days the co-worker who'd loaned him the
car called the police.
When police finally tracked down the car that evening- with Grams still in it - they also
found enough marijuana inside for a felony
charge.
At the time, Grams - who was on probation and not carrying
a driver's license - got off without even a ticket, although
one of the other two passengers wasn't quite that lucky.
He was found to be in possession of 9 of the 10 bags of marijuana
found in the car, handcuffed, arrested and charged.
He pleaded guilty a couple of days later but, being 17, received
a sentence of a month at a juvenile detenction center.
So how was Grams, who's 21 years old, so fortunate as to avoid
a felony charge while on probation?
It turns out that the co-worker had also called Grams' father
U.S. Senator Rod Grams, a Republican from Minnesota, when
the car hadn't been returned.
Senator Grams had then himself called the Sheriff's Office to
ostensibly check on the "welfare" of his son.
Thus, after the deputies had ascertained that his "welfare" was
hunky and dory, they put the lad - on probation for drinking
and driving and with several prior misdeameanor charges -
in the back seat of the chief deputy's unmarked squad car
and returned him to Senator Daddy.
Chief Deputy Peter Beberg "handled" the Senator's call that
day, and claimed that sonny didn't receive preferential
treatment. When another deputy located the car containing Grams
and the two juveniles Beberg immediately headed for the location
and stopped the car himself.
His report claimed that he'd checked the breath of all three after
checking the car and finding 5 unopened beer cans, including
one at Grams' feet.
Beberg was about to let the juveniles go and return Grams to
daddy when another deputy who'd just arrived saw one of the
juveniles stash something in his pants.
When the deputy checked to make sure he wasn't pulling a weapon,
he found 9 bags of marijuana on him.
A third deputy then searched the vehicle again and found a 10th
bag under Grams' seat..
While Beberg claimed afterwards that everything had been
done according to standard operating procedure, the
director of the Minnesota Peace Officer Standards and
Training Board - which licenses peace officers - said
that normal procedure in such situations is to arrest
everyone in the car, question them separately, and
then book them with the appropriate charges.
Apparently the Senator finally ran out of phone calls to make,
since on Dec. 11 a
report
was released stating that many errors had been made by
deputies in the incident and that Morgan Grams would be
arrested and charged with possession of marijuana in a motor
vehicle, although it would be a misdeamenor rather than
a felony charge.
The Sheriff who wrote the report cited 15 procedural problems
with the stop, and wrote that he wasn't sure "if there was
anything done really correctly as part of the entire stop."
The report also concluded that the senator had not sought or
received special treatment for his son, and that there was
no criminal misconduct by Chief Deputy Beberg or the other
deputies at the scene.
The Country Attorney, who also "investigated" the incident,
dismissed charges that there was a conspiracy to
protect the senator's son by stating, "It was so obvious that there was so much miscommunication between the officers at the
scene, that there's no way there could have been a conspiracy."
Oh, those kwazy, kwazy keystone kops!!!! I guess the slapsticks
just weren't firing on all cylinders that day, although
Deputy Beberg will have plenty of time
to fix them since he took an early retirement in December.
He'd better hire somebody else to help him with tricky
things like counting and smelling, though,
since the man to whom the car hadn't been returned reported
20 empty and 4 full beer cans in the vehicle the next day.
posted by Steven Baum
12/20/1999 01:26:43 PM |
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