Pubdate: Thu, 05 Oct 2000
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Copyright: 2000 Bolder Weekly
Contact:  690 South Lashley Lane Boulder, CO 80303
Fax: (303) 494-2585
Website: http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Author: Wayne Laugesen

THIEVES IN THE NIGHT

Fred Hopson's head hurts so badly he'd like to lob it off. Furthermore, the
government took his cars and wants to take his home. He's a casualty in the
war on just plain folks, disguised as a war on drugs.

It was 1996 and Hopson, 26 at the time, was scraping ice from the second
floor windows of a building. He lost his balance and fell 26 feet, crushing
his head on pavement below. His skull suffered 28 fractures, which he later
learned saved his life. The brain swelling was so severe, and so immediate,
that the pressure would have destroyed his brain had the fractures not
allowed his skull to expand.

Hopson spent nine days in a coma, then two months in the hospital. The brain
damage was so severe he seemed like a child. He couldn't walk or talk much.
He remembers a therapist teaching him how to turn on a shower, and telling
him the difference between hot and cold water.

After his release from the hospital, Hopson traveled to North Carolina.
There, his twin brother and sister-in-law cared for him for the next 11
months.

In North Carolina, Hopson's brother put his own busy life on hold to help
out. He enrolled Hopson in one of the nation's best brain injury
rehabilitation programs.

"It was a very intensive brain rehab school," Hopson says. "I remember when
they taught me what a face is. They showed me a picture of a face and spent
a lot of time describing what it was, what it means and how it is used.
Later I progressed to learning about phone books. Basically I was just
re-learning a lot of things an adult needs to know." A year after his
accident, Hopson was functioning much better. He could use faucets, showers,
toilets, phones and walk around just fine. His head, however, was throbbing.
He could feel nearly every fracture line. He suffered routing spasms near
healed fractures.

"I just can't describe the pain," Hopson says. "My head literally felt like
it was 10 feet above my body most of the time."

His doctor prescribed a variety of legal narcotic pain killers. Hopson's
medicine cabinet became a drug addict's dream, full of varieties of codeine
and muscle relaxants some of the world's most harmful and addictive drugs.
They didn't help much, merely taking an edge off the pain. They left Hopson
moody, drowsy and confused. He hated the pills.

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The wonders of pot His brother did some research. He spoke with doctors and
chronic pain patients. He read books and took to the Internet. In doing so,
he learned that his twin might benefit from marijuana a drug that's illegal,
but generally considered less harmful and addictive than legally prescribed
narcotics.

The brother procured marijuana, and Hopson smoked it. "My headache
disappeared immediately," Hopson says. "For the first time since the
accident, I didn't feel confused and crazy. The doctors had given me
everything for pain, all sorts of different drugs with wicked side effects.
None of them helped much, but the marijuana was doing miracles." Hopson
immediately told his physician at the brain rehab clinic.

"This doctor loved me," Hopson says. "We had become very close. I was going
to take his advice, whatever it was. When I told him marijuana was working,
all he said was 'Don't use alcohol.' He said nothing about the marijuana. He
just continually warned me against using alcohol, which was no problem at
all because I don't like alcohol."

In 1997, after completing his brain rehabilitation, Hopson moved back to the
mountains of Colorado with the goal of leading a normal life. He could no
longer work construction or other physically demanding jobs. So he took
full-time work as a host at the Blue Moose restaurant in Breckenridge.

Although medical insurance paid his $250,000 hospital bill, it did not cover
the full cost of Hopson's rehabilitation. The company he was working for
when he fell did not have workers' compensation insurance, so he was forced
to sue them in an effort to pay the rehab bill.

In the spring of 1999, the case was settled and Hopson received $150,000 in
excess of the rehabilitation cost. His lawyer took half of that. Hopson used
his half responsibly. He put $43,000 down on a $143,000 home in Mosquito
Gulch, just outside of Alma. He bought a 1994 Toyota pickup, and he paid off
some debts.

To pay the monthly $1,000 mortgage on his home, Hopson found a better job
doing maintenance at a fancy Breckenridge hotel. This week, the hotel named
him "Employee of the Month" for finding ways to take recycling efforts to
new heights. "I frequently will pull stuff out of dumpsters so it can be
recycled," Hopson says. "The management decided to reward me for it."

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A wonderful life Hopson's life seems ideal. He survived what should have
been a fatal fall on his head. He recovered nicely from a coma and
near-vegetative state. He's engaged to a woman he loves. He has $50,000
equity in his home and paid cash for his truck.

But there's a crowbar in it. Local cops took the truck this summer, along
with a few older cars Hopson kept on his property. And now the cops and Park
County prosecutors are working hard to take Hopson's home. If they get it,
the two agencies will share proceeds from the sale.

They're destroying Hopson's life because they found him growing marijuana in
the basement of his home. He needs the drug to avoid being dazed and
confused on narcotic pain killers known to rot the liver.

"To buy marijuana, I was going to have to deal in some sort of black market
of drug dealers and spend something like $200 per week," Hopson says. "So I
grew it myself."

Only a handful of friends, he insists, knew about the plants. He suspects a
friend told a friend, and word spread to law enforcement. The Park County
Sheriff's Department's Special Response Team euphemism for SWAT raided
Hopson's home at 5:30 am Aug. 4. Hopson and his fiancee, 25-year-old Shannon
Scott, were naked and asleep in bed. They awoke to three loud knocks on the
door.

"Before we could even respond, they opened the door and stormed our home,"
Hopson says.

Eight cops with assault rifles stormed up the stairs, decked out in
camouflage, helmets and bullet proof vests. The assault rifles had
flashlights mounted like bayonets near the ends of the barrels.

"I'm standing there naked, and one offers sticks a f -ing gun with a light
right in my face," Hopson says. "They stand my fiancee up naked and stare at
her. They tried to force her out of the house nude in handcuffs."

Scott convinced the officers to allow her to at least put on some clothes.
As she dressed, $35 in cash fell from a pocket. The officers took it.
Soldier-like deputies confiscated a chain saw. They took an old truck used
to plow Hopson's driveway. They took the couple's birth certificates and
drivers' licenses. It was an orgy of confiscation, or "forfeiture" in cop
talk.

During the raid, Hopson recognized one of the officers. He'd attended a
benefit event for Hopson after the accident. "That officer knew about
Hopson's condition, and he knew that Hopson's marijuana was for medicinal
purposes," says Hopson's lawyer, Dennis Blewitt of Boulder. "Yet he went
along with this raid as if my client were a common criminal." Hopson is
anything but a menace to society. He's disabled, yet insists on working to
support himself. He's "Employee of the Month." He's so well liked that
friends and neighbors threw a benefit last weekend to help with his legal
fees.

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Public menace Yet prosecutors insist the home must be confiscated because
it's a "public menace." They insist Hopson was selling drugs. They took his
vehicles claiming he used them to transport drugs.

"I can't wait to see how they intend to prove that," Hopson says. "They
won't find one single person whom I've sold marijuana to, because it did not
happen."

Following the raid and arrest, Hopson gave up smoking pot.

"My head hurts so f -ing bad, I really can't even describe it," Hopson says.
"The prescribed painkillers and muscle relaxants make me so foggy and groggy
my fiancee barely recognizes me if I take them."

None of this is about Hopson being a menace to society. He's under attack
because the war on drugs is about power, control and money. The DA and the
cops have a vested interest taking Hopson's home and cars. A victory means
cold hard cash. It's how law enforcement is funded these days, and it makes
prosecutors and cops accountable to no one. Less and less do law enforcement
leaders have to beg politicians for funds. Instead, they can simply take
property and cash if someone is growing pot even to treat severe headaches.
The practice reduces purse string controls by elected officials and gives
law enforcement free reign to commit atrocities against the American people.

Look no further than Alma for proof. Cops attacked and looted in a scene
that's common today because the drug laws allow police and prosecutors to
raise money that way. The cops looked like soldiers and used military
tactics because the secret is out: They're at war with the public.

Let the Park County DA know how you feel! Call 719-836-2080.
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MAP posted-by: Don Beck