Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd is the president of the Florida Sheriff’s Association and a spokesperson for Don’t Let Florida Go To Pot – a coalition that lobbies against the legalization of medical marijuana in the state.
Judd loudly advocates for keeping marijuana illegal on the job as well as off, using his position as sheriff to blame crimes committed by marijuana users on marijuana. To Judd – who is apparently unfamiliar with the post hoc fallacy – if marijuana was involved in a crime, marijuana caused it.
After 24-year-old Christopher Finlayson threw an 11-month-old baby across a room, Judd try to lay the blame for his crime at the feet of a plant. “This suspect admitted to smoking a blunt and a half of marijuana, staying up all night then becoming enraged enough to throw a baby across a room just because it was crying,” said the sheriff. “This is just another example of marijuana abuse linked to child abuse.”
Judd repeated this anecdote at a recent Tallahassee event. “I see the guy that’s up all night with a baby that’s screaming, so he smokes him a blunt and a half and he thinks that’ll help and ends up bouncing the baby off the walls.”
Finlayson says that he threw the baby to stop it from crying, telling the infant “I’ll give you something to cry about.” When the mother returned and found the baby unconscious, Finlayson told her the baby had hit its head on its playpen. He also admitted to having yelled at the baby in the past to scare the baby into being quiet.
Needless to say, it doesn’t sound Finlayson was a model parent before he smoked marijuana.
Related: Police Chief Says Marijuana Causing Mayhem in the Streets | The Libertarian Republic
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