September 16, 2002
In a call to police dispatchers, an unidentified woman said: “One of the women here was caught buying crack cocaine tonight. And a lot of the women are upset because she’s been caught about five times.”Strange that their policy should change so abruptly. Don’t you think?Later in the call, she said: “She does this all the time and she gets out of it because she’s the governor’s daughter. But we’re sick of it here ‘cause we have to do what’s right, but she gets treated like some kind of princess.” […]
When Orlando police officers arrived at the west Orlando women’s drug-treatment residence, a worker told officers she found a “small, white rocklike substance” in Bush’s shoe. Police said it was 0.2 gram of crack cocaine.
Julia Elias, the employee who discovered the drug, completed a written statement but later tore it up and threw it away after her supervisor, Vilma Accison, told her to stop talking to investigators, according to a police report. […]
According to a police report, Williams told officers on Monday “that the treatment center’s policy is to turn these types of matters over to the police.”
However, Bruton, who arrived later, told police that the center’s policy is “to handle these types of situations in-house, rather than involving the authorities.”
Evidently, this is the Jeb Bush drug policy: Mandatory sentencing for you and yours; cushy rehab for me and mine.
There’s been an outburst of discussion of whether it’s appropriate to make note of the misdeeds of politicians’ relatives. But this isn’t about Noelle Bush’s misdeeds. It’s about Jeb’s. [08:05 PM]
Maybe they're afraid the police department will get the same treatment the bar owner who called the police on Bush kin in Texas got, and is probably still getting: family names and personal information on 'hit lists' with 'joking' suggestions about calling the bar's toll-free number to place orders nobody will ever pick up, and so on. "Will nobody rid us of these turbulent citizens?"
Here's an angle I've been wondering about: What does Noelle's behavior do to the rest of the people in her drug rehab program? I'd guess that watching someone violate the rules with impunity makes it harder to stay clean yourself.
Hard-Hitting Moderator: Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
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