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Saturday, June 19, 2004

check your marshmallows

ok, you might not be a terrorist if you forget to check your marshmallows, but i guess this is the police-state that keeps us all safe from the fish….

A teacher’s aide who forgot to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate at Yellowstone National Park last year was taken from her cruise ship cabin in handcuffs and hauled before a judge Friday, accused of failing to pay the year-old fine.

Hope Clarke, 32, crying and in leg shackles, told the judge she was rousted at 6:30 a.m. by federal agents after the ship returned to Miami from Mexico. She insisted that she had been required to pay the $50 fine before she could leave Yellowstone, which has strict rules about food storage to prevent wildlife from eating human food.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John O’Sullivan, who had a copy of a citation indicating the fine had been paid, apologized to Clarke, who spent nearly nine hours in detention, and demanded that the U.S. attorney’s office determine what went wrong.

i don’t care what agency is following up what arrest warrant with bad paper – a delinquent $50 fine does not warrant (ahem) 9 hours of detention.

We were acting on what we believed was accurate information

i feel better already.

posted by roj at 5:44 am