A DANGER TO SOCIETY, OR A VICTIM?

Wheelchair-bound grower
arrested and allegedly beaten by cops.

by Preston Peet- for High Times

posted at DrugWar.com
April 11, 2003

When is a 39-year-old wheelchair-bound man, who has suffered from spina bifida and other serious ailments all his life, a dangerous threat to society? Police and prosecutors in New Jersey say it’s when he’s growing marijuana.

Police moved in just before dawn on March 13, raiding and arresting John “Waldo” Cliver and his girlfriend, Henri L. Pestcoe, in their Cherry Hill, New Jersey home, and confiscating 156 plants in various stages of growth from an apartment Cliver rented in Pennsauken. Cliver was charged with a variety of offenses related to cultivation, operating a drug business within 1,000 feet of a school, and intent to distribute. Pestcoe was charged with possession of more than 50 grams of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Official estimates put the value of the plants at $624,000—or $4,000 each.

Cliver was awake at 4:30 AM when he heard the police at the door. “I was the one that opened the door,” he tells HT. “Right away, they bullied me into my room. I was pushing myself backwards until I got back into my room, where I started talking and they started talking. It was over what happened at this time that they stuck in a ‘resisting arrest’ charge. I tried to shut my computer off because I was online speaking with someone else. The police started playing around with my computer, clicking around on it, literally playing with it. I went to shut it off and that’s when about four of them pulled me off my wheel chair and put me on the ground.”

Police officers pulled a guy off his wheelchair and pushed him to the ground? “Well, they didn’t actually pull me, they hit me in the back of the head, knocked me right to the ground, and about four of them stomped on my head and my back. Knocked me right out of the chair. They were literally with their knees in my temple and knees in my back. It was ridiculous. I was screaming, my girlfriend was screaming, and my back is very screwed up as a result. They really did hurt me. They humiliated me. Because it is difficult for me to get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom, I keep a urinal by the bed. They were walking around here with the urinal saying things like ‘this is disgusting.’ My girlfriend kept telling them that I have spina bifida. They were just all-around rotten people.”

Approximately 1 out of 1,000 newborns in the US suffer from spina bifida, which is caused by the spine improperly developing and failing to completely close during the first months of pregnancy, according to the Spina Bifida Association of America. “Because of the paralysis resulting from the damage to the spinal cord, people born with spina bifida may need surgeries and other extensive medical care. The condition can also cause bowel and bladder complications,” dryly notes their Website. Its best-known sufferer was probably country-music legend Hank Williams, who exhibited many of these symptoms before he died of a drug overdose at the age of 29.

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