In the early '70s, about 2 A.M. one fall morning, a Taos cop stopped me for a busted tail light, came around to the side of my Jeep and shined his light into my window. I reeked of alcohol, and there was a plastic bag with about a pound of weed on the seat next to me.
Here's how the cop handled the situation -- he took me into the police station, which was deserted at that hour, opened the door to the bathroom, set the bag of weed on the back of the toilet, and walked out the door. He was gone for a long time.
Oh, did I forget to tell you? I was a nice-looking white boy, good family, hippie college kid. You can tell these things.
In that same era, a friend in Austin, Lee Otis, was in a circle of guys shooting the bull, when the guy on his left passed him a lit joint. Lee Otis didn't smoke, so he just passed it to the guy on his right. Who was a nark. Lee Otis was convicted for "delivery of a drug", and sentenced to thirty years in prison.
Oh, did I mention? Lee Otis was a Black Power, Uppity N##### with a ghetto mouth on him.
http://www.texasmonthly.com/...
P.S. Going to UT Austin, I lived in a little white frame duplex on 18th Street. (my daughter was born there). Lee Otis was "seeing" the girl who lived in the other half of the duplex. And a lot of other girls, I would expect. He used to borrow my reel-to-reel tape machine to record Black Power speeches and such. Once when he had been around, Mother's wedding ring, which I had left out on the dresser, disappeared. I wasn't particularly attached to it.
PPS. Oh yeah, the cop in Taos and the bag of weed sitting on the back of the toilet? I stood there and watched it till he gave up and came back in, sighed, and locked me in a cell. (Being from Texas, I figured it was a trap and if I touched the weed, he would run back in and beat me half to death with a nightstick). They charged me for "less than an ounce", and I paid a fine. I guess the cop dumped the rest of it down the toilet himself.