- Jan 14, 2013
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Imagine trumping up charges so you can steal people's kids. The whole story is crazy. Small government fascists flexing their big government muscles and exploiting laws targeting meth lab fumes to non-existent marijuana fumes. Scumbags.
www.mlive.com
Alabama removes toddler from Michigan family found with marijuana
"Prock’s husband was smoking a cigarette outside the car. An officer smelled marijuana on his breath.
Todd Prock told police he had marijuana in the trunk of the car. Then they arrested both adults and placed the child in foster care – trapping the family inside a nightmare for possessing a substance that’s legal in their home state.
“If we could have taken our situation and transported it to Michigan, we would have been on our way,” Erika Prock said. “None of this would have happened. Nothing. Like absolutely nothing.”
In 2008, Michigan adopted medical marijuana. And in 2018, the voters of Michigan approved a measure to legalize recreational marijuana, which is now legal in some form in 19 states. Alabama is not one of those states.
“Although an officer may exercise discretion,” said Lawrence County District Attorney Errek Jett, whose office is handling the case, “there is no provision under the laws of Alabama to permit possession of marijuana if the individual is from a state where it is lawful.”
Local officials would later add charges unique to just a few states, charges used most often in a handful of rural counties in north Alabama. Weeks after the arrest, Prock and her husband were charged with felony chemical endangerment, a law originally meant to target parents whose children were near meth labs. The experience has highlighted the stark differences in consequences between Alabama and Michigan for parents caught in possession of marijuana.
...
Although her husband smoked cigarettes and marijuana, Prock said she never allowed a whiff of smoke near her child. That’s why her husband was standing 12 feet away from the car with a cigarette when the police pulled up.
“Like he was being kidnapped”
Prock admitted that in her initial panic she tried to help her husband hide some marijuana. And her husband had smoked marijuana before the Moulton police arrived, she said. But she said the couple quickly admitted they had pot in the trunk, alongside a locked box with Prock’s prescribed methadone.
The officer asked Prock to take a field sobriety test, which she said she failed due to a sprained ankle from a car wreck three weeks earlier. She was placed into the back of a squad car while a worker from the Department of Human Resources took her son.
They just ripped him away from me,” she said. “It was like he was being kidnapped.”
A judge dismissed marijuana possession and public intoxication charges against Erika Prock after she produced hospital discharge records for her sprained ankle and two years of clean drug screens from the methadone clinic.
That wasn’t the end of her legal troubles.
Life on hold
Two weeks after the arrest, authorities filed felony charges of chemical endangerment against the couple. That law was written to protect children against exposure to toxic fumes from meth labs, but in this case, officers alleged their 18-month-old was exposed to marijuana. A person commits the felony if he or she “knowingly, recklessly, or intentionally causes or permits a child to be exposed to, to ingest or inhale, or to have contact with a controlled substance, chemical substance, or drug paraphernalia.”
Alabama removes toddler from Michigan family found with marijuana
A family visiting Alabama from Michigan had their child removed after police officers found marijuana in the car.
Alabama removes toddler from Michigan family found with marijuana
"Prock’s husband was smoking a cigarette outside the car. An officer smelled marijuana on his breath.
Todd Prock told police he had marijuana in the trunk of the car. Then they arrested both adults and placed the child in foster care – trapping the family inside a nightmare for possessing a substance that’s legal in their home state.
“If we could have taken our situation and transported it to Michigan, we would have been on our way,” Erika Prock said. “None of this would have happened. Nothing. Like absolutely nothing.”
In 2008, Michigan adopted medical marijuana. And in 2018, the voters of Michigan approved a measure to legalize recreational marijuana, which is now legal in some form in 19 states. Alabama is not one of those states.
“Although an officer may exercise discretion,” said Lawrence County District Attorney Errek Jett, whose office is handling the case, “there is no provision under the laws of Alabama to permit possession of marijuana if the individual is from a state where it is lawful.”
Local officials would later add charges unique to just a few states, charges used most often in a handful of rural counties in north Alabama. Weeks after the arrest, Prock and her husband were charged with felony chemical endangerment, a law originally meant to target parents whose children were near meth labs. The experience has highlighted the stark differences in consequences between Alabama and Michigan for parents caught in possession of marijuana.
...
Although her husband smoked cigarettes and marijuana, Prock said she never allowed a whiff of smoke near her child. That’s why her husband was standing 12 feet away from the car with a cigarette when the police pulled up.
“Like he was being kidnapped”
Prock admitted that in her initial panic she tried to help her husband hide some marijuana. And her husband had smoked marijuana before the Moulton police arrived, she said. But she said the couple quickly admitted they had pot in the trunk, alongside a locked box with Prock’s prescribed methadone.
The officer asked Prock to take a field sobriety test, which she said she failed due to a sprained ankle from a car wreck three weeks earlier. She was placed into the back of a squad car while a worker from the Department of Human Resources took her son.
They just ripped him away from me,” she said. “It was like he was being kidnapped.”
A judge dismissed marijuana possession and public intoxication charges against Erika Prock after she produced hospital discharge records for her sprained ankle and two years of clean drug screens from the methadone clinic.
That wasn’t the end of her legal troubles.
Life on hold
Two weeks after the arrest, authorities filed felony charges of chemical endangerment against the couple. That law was written to protect children against exposure to toxic fumes from meth labs, but in this case, officers alleged their 18-month-old was exposed to marijuana. A person commits the felony if he or she “knowingly, recklessly, or intentionally causes or permits a child to be exposed to, to ingest or inhale, or to have contact with a controlled substance, chemical substance, or drug paraphernalia.”
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