I live in Baltimore and I write about cops, guns, and drugs / Cowriter, "I Got a Monster" / Soderberg v. Carrion / bsoderberg.com
![Back in the early ‘90s, Morris himself overdosed. There was a bad batch going around, one that is now infamous among veterans of Baltimore City’s drug scene. There were horse tranquilizers in it.
“Twenty-one people died and I got hit too, but I was lucky enough to survive because I was around some family members when I used,” Morris said. “And I just snorted back then, you didn’t even hear of people OD-ing from snorting.”
A few years later, Morris’s brother and cousin both overdosed. Only one of them survived.
“Both of them got their heroin together and both of them got a bad batch but my cousin, he went back home to his bathroom and when he OD-ed, he fell and his wife heard him and was able to get him help,” Morris said. “But my brother, he was sneaking because he was ashamed. So he goes up in an [abandoned building] and uses, and there was no one to help him. He ended up OD-ing and dying. When they found him he was cold.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:k3m3afcct2ofiplprrlfwdqp/bafkreig6llmeweq6wqa4symsjetn3r5lqpdpetmeslfidw2zm3265gb7kq)
![A month prior, on May 25, 2023, Johnson, Gutridge, and detective Zachary Allman stopped A.A. (whose name is being withheld for privacy concerns*) for a broken tail light. When the officers approached the car, Gutridge claimed he could smell cannabis. While A.A. got his registration, Gutridge and others peered into his vehicle.
Allman told A.A. to open his passenger side window. Johnson looked in the car. “There’s definitely some shake [loose marijuana] on that seat,” Gutridge told Johnson.
A.A. was removed from the car. But body-worn camera footage shows no “shake” on the car seat. The officers asked if they could search the car and he said no. They asked again and he refused again. The officers searched the car anyway, telling A.A. that the cannabis smell meant they didn’t need his consent. But there was no cannabis in the car. Instead, the officers said they found a small amount of cocaine in his pocket and a handgun in the glovebox.
A.A.’s lawyer argued that the DAT members did not have probable cause or consent to search the car.
“Three high-ranking officers were attending to a non-criminal traffic stop of a car with a single occupant inside. Within 90 seconds, that occupant provided law enforcement with all of the information necessary to run his documents and complete the mission of the stop expeditiously,” reads a motion to suppress by A.A.’s attorney. “Upon receipt of these documents, [DAT] prolonged the stop by urging the driver to open the passenger window to enable another detective to investigate the car’s interior, without reasonable suspicion that evidence of a crime would be located therein.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:k3m3afcct2ofiplprrlfwdqp/bafkreifgpzeb7l6qec5sevdo7bfn4icciwjwkeexiicebxksx7ppuzxs3i)
I live in Baltimore and I write about cops, guns, and drugs / Cowriter, "I Got a Monster" / Soderberg v. Carrion / bsoderberg.com