His crime was smoking pot.
Oh my God, this story just gets worse and worse. He was handcuffed the entire time. And now the Associated Press is on the story, and you have to think that there's more to this if AP is buying it.
As we noted yesterday, this college kid was apparently getting high with his friends on 4/20 day when DEA agents busted in, arrested them, and without even charging him with anything, threw him in a holding cell, handcuffed, and left him for 4 days with no food, water, a toilet, anything. They just left him. The kid had to drink his own urine - an expert says this may have saved his life - and he finally tried to commit suicide after having hallucinations, and with his vital organs starting to shut down.
If this story ends up being true, a lot of heads need to roll, and this kid needs to get the $20 million he's seeking and then some. Horrific story.
After two days of being handcuffed in a tiny holding cell and desperate for food and water, Daniel Chong said he realized he had to stop wondering when he’d be let out and start thinking about how to stay alive.This feels like part of the larger "don't f--- with me" attitude that we've seen in law enforcement, and even flight attendants, since the nation lost its mind post-9/11. Don't question anyone in authority or they'll beat the bejeesus out of you and/or have you arrested. (Though even private citizens have a growing sense of angry entitlement that's getting scarier by the day - the people who get out of their cars and threaten you after THEY blow a stop sign and nearly run you over.) Our country is getting nastier, and the war on terror hasn't helped. In many ways, bin Laden got exactly what he wanted, to change who were are, for the worst, at a basic level.
Entering what he called “survival mode,” and already drinking his own urine, he futilely tried to trigger an overhead fire sprinkler for some water, stacking clothes and a blanket and swinging his cuffed arms in an attempt to set it off.
Chong, 23, a student at the University of California, San Diego, had been picked up in a drug sweep but was never arrested or charged.
He spent four days forgotten in the windowless cell before Drug Enforcement Administration agents opened the door.
