Missouri cop trying to help duck and ducklings cross busy highway busts driver for pot

Man in a skunky-smelling car pulled up right behind cruiser parked on side of roadway

A Missouri driver is likely questioning his decision to pull up behind a parked cruiser after a cop sniffed out a suspiciously skunky smell coming from his vehicle and busted him for illegal cannabis.

While on patrol earlier this month, an officer with the Smithville Police Department (SPD) spied a mama duck and her ducklings trying to cross Highway 169, according to a police statement.

Presumably wanting to serve and protect, the officer activated the patrol car lights to slow any traffic and allow time for the family to complete its treacherous trek.

However, the duck apparently changed her mind. While parked on the side of the highway to make sure the duck family made it back into the adjacent tree line, a vehicle pulled over behind the officer, SPD reports.

A short video clip posted by police shows the officer approaching the duck family in his vehicle as they safely make their way to the trees and out of harm’s way.

It’s not clear if the driver thought he had been pulled over or if he had stopped to check on the officer.

Nonetheless, the officer decided to check on the driver to ensure everything was all right when a strong cannabis smell was detected coming from the vehicle.

“Since the driver was not in legal possession of the marijuana, it was seized and the driver held responsible,” notes the SPD, which does not specify the amount.

“This is just another example of how officers try to make sure that everyone in our community, person or animal, gets home safely every day,” the SPD reports.

While medicinal marijuana is legal in Missouri, recreational weed is not.

Legal MO 2022 is calling for the plant to be legalized for residents 21 and older to possess, purchase, consume and cultivate. The group would also like to see automatic expungement for Missourians with non-violent cannabis-related offences, new business licences for small business owners and among disadvantaged populations, and that all new licence-holders be selected at random by lottery.

As it stands, a first offence for possessing up to 10 grams of cannabis is a misdemeanour charge and a $645 fine, with a second offence punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,580 fine, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

If the amount on hand is between 35 grams and 30 kilograms, the charge is a felony carrying a maximum of seven years in prison and a $12,900 fine. Historically, having this amount of bud has been charged as intent to distribute.

With regard to the duck and her brood, it wasn’t the first time cops have made a weed-related discovery while rounding up animals.

Last year in Memphis, police trying to round up five wayward pigs that were making themselves at home on a property not their own found illicit cannabis plants sprouting outdoors on the property.

Yet another pig, this one in Utah, attracted sheriff’s deputies who had been called by a local animal control staff to help corral a domestic pig.

As deputies tracked the stray pig roaming the area, they located an unspecified number of cannabis plants. Obtaining a warrant, officers later returned to execute a property search and collected the plants inside.

A dog and the dog’s bite were at the centre of another incident in the U.K.

After housing association staff visited the apartment to check out the report, they found it was being sublet and the new tenant was growing cannabis behind a false wall. Last month, the man was sentenced to three years and three months in jail in connection with the discovery of cannabis, amphetamine and MDMA.