Cop Uses Well-Known Beatles Rumor to Capture Montco LSD Suspect
“Pink Elephants on Parade Blotter LSD Dumbo” by Psychonaught – Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. Not the actual LSD in the bust.
It’s Christmastime, which means one thing: The Beatles are in the news.
Usually this is because there is some new Beatles-related product you can buy for people at Christmas. We already have an enhanced 1+ album and DVD of No. 1 singles this year. And this morning music fans awakened to some news: The Beatles would be available on streaming services starting tomorrow, Christmas Eve.
But The Beatles are also in the news because of a Montgomery County police detective. On December 1st, a Lansdale cop arrested a Colmar man for selling him what the alleged dealer called LSD.
The Reporter’s Michael Goldberg describes how that alleged transaction went down:
A detective who is a member of both the Lansdale police Street Crimes Unit and the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office Drug Task Force alleged in court documents that on Dec. 1, he received information that someone had created a Craigslist post that read, “Lucy anyone? (Lansdale) lucy in the sky with diamonds … e-mail me and we’ll go from there.”
The detective said that based on his experience as a drug investigator, he knew that the term “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” is commonly used as a reference to LSD and he replied to the advertisement, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
Crime, including drug crime, is not a new Craigslist phenomenon, though it’s amazing how obvious this dealer allegedly was. The detective did not really need his experience as a drug investigator to know that this guy was selling drugs. He could have googled it, or looked up the song’s Wikipedia page, which has a section titled “LSD Rumors.” (Lennon, for one, denied it’s about drugs.)
In the meantime, don’t go selling any drugs on Craigslist while using popular, obvious song titles as code words. So no selling “Puff, the Magic Dragon” or “White Lines.” Certainly don’t label yourself Dr. Feelgood.
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