Vice Principal (Accent on “Vice”) Attempts to Frame Student
Updated 27 July 2004: Charges dropped against Conroy (at bottom of post)
Assistant principal admits planting marijuana in student’s locker
Additional information from The Smoking Gun
Police say Pat Conroy told them earlier this month that he placed the marijuana in the male student’s locker at South Haven High School last year because he suspected the student was a drug dealer. Conroy told police he was trying to get the boy expelled.
Wow. What an unbelievable abuse of power and position. In today’s environment there is nobody who would have believed the student if the drugs were found in his locker. He was saved only because the police drug dog didn’t find the marijuana.
Conroy had plenty of weed to use for his entrapment scheme. He’s been holding onto any drugs (marijuana, pills, etc) that he has confiscated for the past five years. The Van Buren County prosecutor’s office is now looking into charging him with possession. I don’t see why they are looking into it. The man had a drawer full of marijuana and assorted pills and admitted that he’s had drugs in his posession since 1999. There is absolutely no realistic reason that he should have held onto them instead of surrendering them to the police. He should be held to the same standards that his target would have faced if that dog had found marijuana in his locker.
There is no mention of what will happen to Conroy for his attempt to frame a student. He has been placed on administrative leave and I hope that the School Board does the right thing and fires him. I’m not sure if his actions were criminal but they were absolutely improper.
(Tip credit to Victor)
UPDATE
Charge dropped against man accused of putting marijuana in student’s locker
You thought it only happened in the movies? Not so. Criminal posession charges against former assistant principal Conroy have been dropped on a technicality.
Van Buren County Prosecutor Juris Kaps told the Kalamazoo Gazette that the charge was dropped because of a technicality.
A document carried the incorrect date for a visit to the school to search for marijuana, The Herald-Paladium of St. Joseph reported.
Why this should matter when Conroy had openly admitted posession of illegal drugs is a mystery to me.
“My wife, family and I are relieved … and look forward with moving on with our lives,” Conroy said in a statement. “I made a mistake for which I am truly sorry.”
Sorry? Maybe. Repentant? Absolutely not.
(Tip credit to Mary Cahill)
Not sure if they were criminal?
Attempting to frame someone sounds pretty illegal to me. If a cop plants weed on you and arrests you, that’s not legal. This seems to be in the same vein.
The kid’s probably a loser as Conroy suspects, but in this case I think Conroy’s a bigger loser.
Carnival of the Vanities #75
I struggled for several days trying to come up with a theme for this edition of the Carnival. I finally…
Carnival of the Vanities #75
I struggled for several days trying to come up with a theme for this edition of the Carnival. I finally…
Intentionally framing someone for a crime they did not commit is a crime in every district in this country.
This person should been put in PRISON - wouldn’t th possesion charge alone take care of that? Not that I necessarily agree with that, but, hey, “zero tolerance”, right?!?
What is the crime called, though? Framing people is a massive plot device all over our movies but it’s always done from the point of the victim proving they were framed. We never see the cops going after the framer. Killing somebody is murder or manslaughter, stealing something is theft or larceny…what is framing called in criminal statute?
Attempting to pervert the cause of justice?/Perjury?
I am from South Haven, I know Pat Conroy personally. The story that has been circulating is false. Pat Conroy was mad that the police drug dog was not finding drugs in lockers of known offenders. So he picked an unassigned locker and put pot into it to see if the drug dog would find it in the next search, it did not, so he told the police the dog didnt work and what he did. THAT IS THE ONLY WAY ANYONE FOUND OUT. Did you honestly think he turned himself in for no reason? Look at the logic of your story…
That could very well have been his incentive to break the story to the police. However, he got the ball rolling and they kept it in motion. Conroy himself stated that his intention was to get a troublesome student expelled. See page 3 of the police report.
If the student had been found to have weed, he wouldn’t have gotten off on “a technicality”. Why is this douche bag principal being let off?
Rule of law is paramount to civilization, but sometimes it really sucks.
Very, very depressing!
Martin, that just doesn’t make sense. Mr. Conroy didn’t believe the dog was capable — what were his reasons for believing this? Supposing this was indeed a “test” of the dog’s ablities, that still does not explain or justify Mr. Conroy’s own demonstrated possesion of the drug he suspected his students of having.
How many kids at this school have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted when search dogs actually found the drugs Conroy planted?
I hope the families of every student at that school who has ever been convicted after drugs were found in the student’s locker will appeal those convictions. Unfortunately, they’d face substantial legal costs to get their children out of jail — even though their cases should be slam-dunks. (I’d prefer the office of the involved DA to immediately file to reverse such convictions, but I doubt that there are many prosecutors with such ethical standards.)
It would be nice if Conroy had to pay substantial civil penalties, but his assets are probably insufficient to tempt a lawyer to represent any family on a contingency basis.
The real issue here is the outrageous search and seizure that HS students are subject too. Imagine having drug sniffing dogs coming into your place of work for periodic spot checks. Absolute disgrace.
The Most Massive Link Dump In Recorded History
I save a lot of links in my blog surfing, thanks to FeedDemon’s NewsBin feature. Too many. But see, I usually have no time to blog. Thus, these entries are filed away in my newsbin, ported back and forth from home to office computers and back again, ju…
The Most Massive Link Dump In Recorded History
I save a lot of links in my blog surfing, thanks to FeedDemon’s NewsBin feature. Too many. But see, I usually have no time to blog. Thus, these entries are filed away in my newsbin, ported back and forth from home to office computers and back again, ju…
The Most Massive Link Dump In Recorded History
I save a lot of links in my blog surfing, thanks to FeedDemon’s NewsBin feature. Too many. But see, I usually have no time to blog. Thus, these entries are filed away in my newsbin, ported back and forth from home to office computers and back again, ju…
Watch for Mr. Conroy to surface somewhere else in a school system that is looking for someone who is “tough on crime”. Never mind that he was illegally in possession of drugs. Plenty of parents want a “disciplinarian” at their school. After all, his motives were pure…weren’t they?
The dirty truth is that public school administrators are only tangentially concerned with education. They crave power and control, and the front office of a school provides plenty of both. If the legal process suffers in their zealous pursuit of power control, so be it.
Yeah, well, the big picture is that he got off, you whiny bastards. ha ha =) He wins in the end, so stop bitching about it.
He should not have been reinstated he should have been canned for good.