Object to War on Drugs? "You Might Be a Criminal and We Will Work On Finding You"

After the Columbia SC's police department arrested a man with possession of $40,000 worth of marijuana he posted about it on the department's Facebook page . In response a commenter suggested the Police Department should instead perhaps spend their time productively catching murderers and rapists. In response, the interim police chief responded by threatening the commenter.

Ruben Santiago, the Interim Police Chief in Columbia, South Carolina, did not take kindly to these comments. Yet, rather than simply defend his department’s actions or offer counterarguments expressing why he believed that this marijuana arrest was a good use of police resources, he decided instead to threaten one of the commenters. In a comment that was first reported by the libertarian-leaning blog Popehat, Chief Santiago logged into his department’s Facebook account and told an apparent advocate of marijuana legalization that the man’s political views provided “reasonable suspicion to believe” that he may be a criminal, and that police “will work on finding” him.

The comment was deleted, but he then followed it up suggesting that you can tell who is a criminal by their gang tattoos and that is analogous to objecting to the war on drugs. That too has been deleted but screenshots are here.

So to recap: the Police Chief knows nothing about the First Amendment and his own right to threaten someone who expresses a political opinion, and the amount of people who support legalizing marijuana far exceeds those who use it. Fail.