Pharmacy prescription pickup gets man arrested with 6 days in jail
The pharmacist didn’t bother contacting the prescriber about illegible and properly filled out Rx.. just called police and the pt is not suing the pharmacist/pharmacy ?
http://www.recordonline.com/article/20150913/NEWS/150919708/101008
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Posted Sep. 13, 2015 at 7:45 PM
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A Pennsylvania man has filed a civil rights lawsuit against three Town of Warwick police officers, saying he was unlawfully arrested and prosecuted for having a painkiller prescription filled at a pharmacy.
Joseph Quattrochi’s lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, also names the Town of Warwick and the Town of Warwick Police Department as defendants.
The three officers – Michael Moon, Jason Brasier and Felix Oresto – are being sued individually and in their official capacities.
The allegations stem from a July 3, 2014 incident when Quattrochi, a Tamiment, Pa., resident, came to pick up the painkiller, oxycodone, from the Apple Valley Pharmacy in Warwick. The prescription, written by Dr. Carl Anderson, had been dropped off a couple of days earlier.
According to the lawsuit, a pharmacy employee had contacted Warwick police and reported that the prescription was illegible and not properly filed.
After Quattrochi left the pharmacy with the medication, he was stopped by the three officers and arrested for forgery and unlawful possession of a controlled substance.
Quattrochi told the officers that the prescription was not a forgery and was given by his doctor, the lawsuit says, but he was taken to town court, arraigned and denied bail.
According to the lawsuit, Quattrochi spent six days in jail and was released July 9 without bail. All charges against him were dismissed Sept. 5.
The lawsuit says the three officers had a duty to contact Dr. Anderson or take other steps to determine if the prescription was genuine.
By arresting and prosecuting Quattrochi, the lawsuit says, they deprived him of “his constitutional right to be free from false arrest under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.”
Warwick police did not return phone calls for comment.
James Gerstner, deputy supervisor for Warwick, said the town has received the lawsuit and had forwarded paperwork to its attorney and its insurer.
Quattrochi is seeking unspecified monetary damages and attorney fees.
heasley@th-record.com
Filed under: General Problems
Because of accounts like these, I do not trust anyone in the law enforcement profession. I personally have never had a negative encounter with a LEO, but I reckon that it is just a matter of time if enough encounters occur. For the record, I’ve never been arrested, indicted or convicted of any crime. I’m an educated, middle-aged, native-born, Caucasian American Male. My plan is to avoid encounters and attempt to keep the odds in my favor. Now granted that most LEO’s are honorable and decent, but I won’t take the chance and put my property, health, well being, freedom and life in needless jeopardy (or that of my family). Quite literally, calling the cops is my last resort to any situation. I just am not willing to be the interest, for any reason, of an individual that has a state sanctioned monopoly to commit violence against me and/or lock me away in a cage for whatever prevaricative excuse that the corrupt LEO can come up with.
When I was a child, we knew the local sheriff’s deputy or policeman as a Peace Officer. Now five decades later, they are Enforcers. The shift in the lexicographic description of that profession should be telling, in and of itself. I believe the so-called “War on Drugs” to be a major element in this shift.
The intriguing angle here, is the “pharmacy employee” who reported the alleged forgery. The pharmacist filled the prescription. The “employee” had a duty to protect patient privacy, which he willfully disregarded by contacting the local PD. The three officers, defendants, likely comprising the town’s narcotics detail, had appreciable time between receiving the (illegal) report, and making the false arrest…as much as two days. During that time, they made no attempt to verity the allegation that the prescription was forged. A simple phone call to the prescriber’s office would have been sufficient for that purpose.
Plaintiff, Quattrochi, was arrested and held several days, then released and the charges dropped. What’s problematic about detaining him six days while sick, is that this appears, too, to have been done for an improper purpose. Although not discussed in media accounts, it is entirely possible that Defendants planned to offer Plaintiff some confiscated heroin out of evidence in a different arrest, in exchange for perjured testimony by Plaintiff against Plaintiff’s physician.
Had Plaintiff agreed to do that, the illegality of the evidence leading to Plaintiff’s arrest, would become a moot point…he would simply be another everyday hero taking a doctor out of circulation,..his new heroin habit would be a matter between him, and three corrupt cops, and the local media would dutifully repeat the corrupt cops’ story and treat it as news, not as propaganda.
Repeat this scenario, day in, day out, and the outburst of angry rioting that struck Ferguson. Missouri, is fully understandable.
It’s also fully intolerable.
Police corruption endangers honest cops. The people of Ferguson demonstrated that very clearly. There’s great peer pressure to protect fellow officers, and the vast sums of money that can be made in the narcotics trade, draw people in.
South Africa ultimately resolved a similar problem of institutionalized violence. They abolished apartheid. And then offered conditional amnesty: Confess to any crime, even a capital crime, and be pardoned from criminal prosecution. And also barred, permanently, from ever working for South Africa’s government or running for elective office.
Perhaps the US needs to do likewise.
But to get there, we first must abolish the Drug War.
Insanity