Couple arrested after fighting over possession of drug-filled teddy bear

[Video Link] Why isn't this couple smiling in this eerily silent video? Because they are being videotaped by police after they were spotted arguing over a teddy bear stuffed with heroin. Now, neither of them want the bear, but the police are making them hold the bear, and its contraband stuffing, for the video.

• [pupdog]

  Teddy Ruxpin, how could you?!?

  • [That_Anonymous_Coward]

    I’m guessing he was a little annoyed having packets of drugs shoved up his ass…

• [millie fink]

  Yeah, so? 

  Context, please. I notice there isn’t any at the linked source either.

  What are the conditions that drive ordinary impoverished people to do such things? What could be done to improve such conditions?

  Without such context, we’re invited merely to gawk at these two people. Worse yet, to laugh at them. Without such context, this is poverty porn.

  • [Benjamin Terry]

    I’d say the lack of context prevents us from even knowing just how ordinary and/or impoverished these people are.  We can just blindly speculate (or not). Without context, the story is a canvas one can project their preferred narrative upon.

• [Tim Wayne]

  Don’t assume this is true because of the photo. 

  My friend, acupuncturist, health-food advocate and Yoga master David Carmos (google him) was traveling in Mexico. At an airport, the Mexican pigs found his acupuncture needles and a bag of powder (he thinks maybe his ginseng powder) and arrested him.  They forced him to hold the bag of powder and pose for a photo just like the above photo (they punched him in the face a few times when at first he first refused).  The pigs then dragged him back to his cell. He found out later that, while he was in his cell, he had been sentenced to ten years in a Mexican prison for narcotics possession. 

  The powder they accused him of possessing cannot exist in solid form, only in liquid form. That’s Mexican justice in a nutshell. 

  He was in that Mexican prison for five years before the State Department finally intervened and got him out of prison. 

  If you go to third world countries with Napoleonic laws, you are risking your life and liberty. 

  • [Zod]

     Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans believe that USA laws will protect them when they are in other countries….they don’t understand Napoleonic laws….

  • [Stephen Schenck]

     ”The powder they accused him of possessing cannot exist in solid form, only in liquid form”

    Exactly what was this supposed to be – what I can find suggests they thought it was some phenethylamine precursor, but which?

    I’m a bit confused by your claim about chemicals that cannot exist as solids. I mean, at STP, sure….

    • [Tim Wayne]

      I don’t know what it is they said he had. What little evidence I’ve seen (a spectrometer readout) was in Spanish. 

      Regardless, there’s no reason to take my word for it. Did you google his name, like I said? There are many articles about his case.

      “David Carmos” AND prison. 

      Here’s a WaPo article: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-737637.html

  • [twianto]

    If you go to third world countries with Napoleonic laws, you are risking your life and liberty.

    Funny, this is why some family members refuse to visit our American relatives. It’s a shame really, the chances of losing your “life and liberty” are rather low in the US and Mexico.

    My point: if you wanna go somewhere, just go but take precautions. You don’t travel to Mexico with any kind of powder, you don’t enter the US without wiping your laptop.

    • [Tim Wayne]

      “You don’t travel to Mexico with any kind of powder, you don’t enter the US without wiping your laptop.”  I’m pretty sure I’m wrong, but it kinda sounds like you are blaming the victim, here. 

      I mean, I realize *you* are too smart to ever have anything in your suitcase that a Mexican cop could claim is contraband, or have room enough in your suitcase that something could be planted. But some people, perhaps even the people you are traveling with, will not be as fortunate. Perhaps you could expand your field of vision to include them.

  • [Stephan]

    Calling the police pigs reveals a  general contempt for law enforcement.
    You should work on that or at least hide it, if you want to be taken serious as a critic of police behaviour.
    But thats just my humble advice.

    • [Tim Wayne]

      That’s a fair enough criticism.

      I do have respect for the police, *here*. But I’ve seen enough of Mexican cops and Federales on my trips down in Baja to hold them beneath contempt.

      • [D Wyatt]

        The cops are surely corrupt as hell in many towns, specifically border towns.  I knew of some directly, I traveled to mexico over 30 times in the 90′s.  I was informed that stolen conversion vans were brought to the border police and traded for either 6lbs of marijuana or 600$.  At which time the person doing the deal also had to drop either $100 or 1lb at the border to another corrupt agent.  This isnt hearsay, I was there, saw it myself, I didnt know we were in a stolen van though until after.  Stolen in scottsdale Arizona, left in mexico.  Then my friend would bring his 5lbs back and sell it for a few months instead of a job and do it all over again.  Without corrupt mexican cops and border authorities this wouldnt have been possible period.

• [bloopeeriod]

  Smacky The Bear

  • [D Wyatt]

    Only you can prevent junkies.

• [slowtiger]

  Ever wondered why police all over the world like to pose with “evidence” ever so proudly? And in case the evidence is not big enough, they force suspects to carry it?

  I think this is a direct offspring of those old photographs of hunters presenting their prey, or, just the same, “soldiers” posing with their loot. And what makes it even weirder to me is that this forced posing of suspects seems to dreate an “evidence” of its own: “Look, judge, they clearly were in posession of it, we caught them with their hands on!”

• [Palomino]

  Suspicious, two adults one teddy bear. They should have had a young child with them, and everything would have gone according to plan. 

• [YakHerder]

  I am concerned that this (common) practice undermines the Mexican criminal law’s presumption of innocence.

• [Tim Wayne]

  .. .

• [Tim Wayne]

  Well, Felix, I’m not sure what assumptions you’re talking about. I stand by what said. 

  I’ve heard David Carmos tell stories about the prison he was in. Yes, in fact, I do think 30 to 50 guys in a standard cell is worse than the jails here. People sleeping on the floor so close that they have to coordinate rolling over all at once. Newer prisoners having to sleep sitting up, for lack of floor space. One single water source for all showers and drinking water – a floor-level spigot you might see in any back yard, for the entire prison population. Every guard on the take; rich prisoners one to a room, everyone else, like I said: 30 to 50. 

  I think, actually, you’re the one making the assumption here: that the couple in the photo above are guilty based on what you’re seeing in the video, alone. Perhaps they are, perhaps they are not. But what I’m trying to get across to you, if you’ll listen, is where the Mexican justice system is concerned, things like this are not always as they appear. 

• [D Wyatt]

  Regardless of what happened to these 2, I agree about their system being flawed, ours as well.  When they say, “anything you say can and will be used against you” believe me they mean it.  They are searching to fit a charge to anything you say.  They should add that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING you do or say will be used to help you.