Nugs For Thugs At Sai Om APD – April 1, 2012
ARCATA POLICE DEPARTMENT, APRIL 1 – Sai Center operator Steven Gasparas, having successfully defied City regulation over operation of his unpermitted Sai Center cannabis shop, has taken advantage of another loophole in the law to open up a new market and extend his empire.
The Arcata Police Department lobby now hosts Sai Om APD, a cannabis kiosk.
The cubicle offers several strains of bud to qualified 215 patients, a segment of the populace well represented among visitors to the police station.
In another harangue to the City Council last week, Gasparas claimed APD had violated his rights by denying him the right to set up “mobile franchises” in the back of APD cruisers on Friday and Saturday nights.
Gasparas told the council that he had video of Police Chief Tom Chapman refusing to let him ride along and sell pot to arrestees in the back seat. “I’m saving that for the next lawsuit,” he promised.
“My medical outreach to victims of police harassment is protected under state law,” Gasparas said. “How many times do I have to teach you the law? Nugs for Thugs is a 501(c)(3) and I’m a medical practitioner,” he said, adjusting his leather baseball cap.
Gasparas further demanded that APD officers give his sales associates piggy-back rides during foot patrols, to help enhance medical care to underserved citizens. Under the Sai Om Ride-Along Program, Gasparas-anointed medical providers would sling nugs while the officers would handle the cash transactions.
U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag helpfully promised that her office would use its limited resources to prosecute any police officers who denied those in custody access to medicine by Gasparas’s peripatetic puffologists.
“Otherwise they’ll just get it at one of the dispensaries across town from the Ball Park, where kids watch baseball at least one-fourth of the year,” Haag said. “Think of the children.”
