A U.S. college student imprisoned for three weeks for trying to take flour-filled condoms onto an airplane has settled her lawsuit against Philadelphia for $180,000, a city spokesman said on Friday.
Janet Lee, 21, a student at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, was arrested at Philadelphia International Airport in 2003 after police and security officials thought the flour was an illegal drug.
She was held in Philadelphia on drug-trafficking charges and released only when tests proved the substance in the three condoms was flour.
The condoms, which are sometimes used to smuggle drugs, were a joke among the students, and Lee was taking them home to Los Angeles.
Her civil rights case against Philadelphia, which had been set to go to trial on Thursday, was settled for $180,000, said Ted Qualli, spokesman for Philadelphia Mayor John Street.
OK… the story is stupid. What an easy way to make almost a couple hundred grand. As a joke carry some flour in some condoms and wait for them to find it, falsely arrest you, and cha ching. Damn if we Americans aren’t sue happy.
Tags: Interesting, Irony, Legal, Weird
There’s actually a lot more to this story than you reported.
The critical detail you missed is that the cops used a field test kit to test the flour for illegal drugs, and it supposedly came up positive for heroin.
So either the cops faked the test, or they were using bad test equipment, either way they should have known better.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of false positives out of field drug test kits.
Still, I think the city shouldn’t be on the hook for the money; it’s just going to come out of the poor taxpayers’ wallets. Instead, the cops involved should have to pay it.
This is the most incredible thing, that this woman should think she deserves to be rewarded for such stupid behavour! Society may indeed be in need of revolutionary change if overly ignorant people like this person is allowed to profit from stupidity. My opinion is that she has not learned anything and will do other stupid things like this again. Hopefully, next time it will be in Mexico, where she can spend some 40 years thinking about what she has done to the justice system of the greatest nation on the planet. Move out of the country girl, we do not want people of your low character here!
Martin, I don’t want people of your low immoral character in this country either. Why don’t you leave?
Then you agree with her and her actions? There comes a time when people have to find some sense of honor and take responsibility for their actions. She should go, and anyone who feels that the government owes them something should go with her.
Of course I’m not in total agreement. As I already said, the police should be paying her back for what they did to her, not the town’s taxpayers. They’re the ones here who you really should be throwing out of the country. There are too many bad cops already and we don’t need to be encouraging them.
I would agree with tossing law enforcement that does not serve the public interest, but again each problem has a root, and that should not be ignored either. What she did is the equivilent of yelling “bomb” in the airport. Security people have a difficult enough job. I do not feel that she should be rewarded for what she did, no more than the person who sued McDonalds because she spilled hot coffee on herself. However, the police did act in a disgraceful manner by not doing what they are paid to do.
The award is the result of the police’s incarceration of the girl for 3 weeks, not the immediate arrest and detention.
Normally, police are allowed to hold a person for between 24 and 72 hours on suspicion of a crime without pressing charges, which is more than sufficient time for a lab to test substances and determine the actual crime.
Holding her for 3 weeks was a violation of her civil rights.
Im glad she got money from the legal system. The cops were stupid enough to test it, and it coming up as heroin.
We the taxpayers deserve the bill because we elected an idiot for president. He says to “spread it around” so we are doing that by paying the dumb chick. Do whatever it takes to suck money out of the system. As long as we keep electing mediocrity and FAILures for office, we get what we deserve.