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Ex-cop makes a stand against arrests for cannabis
By Hempology | June 26, 2007
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, TX
20 Jun 2007
EX-COP MARKETS DVD ON AVOIDING POT BUSTS
BIG SANDY — Barry Cooper sells a DVD on how to stash pot in your car without getting caught. This fall, he is planning to release a second one on how to keep police from raiding your home for marijuana.
Now for the kicker: Cooper, 38, is a former cop and a star of the West Texas Permian Basin Drug Task Force.
Six months ago, he released Never Get Busted Again, in which he gives tips on hiding marijuana ( dashboards have lots of nooks ) and throwing off drug-sniffing dogs ( coat your tires in fox urine ).
“I’m not helping them to break the law. It’s clear the law is already being broken,” Cooper said. “I will do anything legal to frustrate law enforcement’s efforts to place American citizens in jail for nonviolent drug offenses.”
Cooper says that as a law officer, he took part in 800 drug busts, seized more than 50 vehicles and $500,000 in cash and assets, and made a case against a local politician’s son. He last worked as a police officer in Big Sandy but quit in 1998 in frustration with small-town politics.
Some law officers regard Cooper as a traitor.
“He was among the best we had,” said Tom Finley, who was Cooper’s supervisor on the drug task force. “I don’t understand why he would turn like this.”
And some pro-pot activists say Cooper’s antics actually undermine their cause.
“This is like waving red meat” in front of police, said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “They take great professional umbrage with this. They are not our opposition, and we don’t want to agitate them.”
Cooper said he has sold more than 10,000 copies of Never Get Busted Again, primarily over the Internet and at a few smoke shops.
Defense attorneys have called him to testify about unlawful tactics he says police use. For instance, he testified that drug-sniffing dogs can be made to “false alert,” which gives officers legal grounds to search a car or a home. Cooper said he had used that ploy himself.
Cooper said he has begun filming a DVD called Never Get Raided and is planning a documentary in which he will give 50 partygoers beer and marijuana and film what happens next. The aim, he said, is to prove that partygoers who get high are less dangerous than those who get drunk.
Frederick Moss, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, said Cooper appears to be protected by the First Amendment and probably cannot be charged with conspiracy or aiding and abetting because he has no direct relationship with the customers he counsels in how to break the law.
Cooper has owned car dealerships, started a limousine service and dabbled as a cage-fighting promoter. He lives in a pine-canopied hideaway in this East Texas town of 1,400. He filed for bankruptcy in 2005, blaming a divorce and the stock-market downturn after Sept. 11. He has also filed a $10 million lawsuit over a 2005 raid of his home during which his children were bruised — an incident he says convinced him that police are hurting more families than they help. ( Cooper says sheriff’s deputies came to take his children away after his ex-wife complained that he was not sending them to school or sharing custody. )
“My critics want to kill my credibility by claiming I’m doing this to make money and trying to keep any sincerity out of this,” Cooper said.
“The people who have seen me and know my work, they know I’m sincere.”
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