Pubdate: Fri, 07 Aug 1998
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)
Contact:  http://www.jsonline.com/
Author: Lisa Sink and Linda Spice

NEW BERLIN RESIDENTS GET POT-SALE FLIERS

Residents in a New Berlin neighborhood recently received a strange sales
pitch in their mailboxes: fliers advertising marijuana for sale.

The photocopies touted "Marijuana for sale," and gave the name and phone
number of a man in the neighborhood.

The mainstream sales method for illicit drugs has authorities wondering
whether the man made an inexplicable blunder or was set up by someone else.

"Maybe he's got a friend with a real sick sense of humor or maybe he
irritated someone. I don't imagine it was him going around stuffing
mailboxes," said Sheriff's Department Capt. Terry Martorano, head of the
Waukesha County Metro Drug Enforcement Unit.

Authorities who searched the Coffee Road home Wednesday found a small amount
of marijuana. They now are trying to determine whether the man actually
tried to sell drugs by dropping the fliers into mailboxes.

"It's hard for me to believe that some guy would go out to his neighbors,"
Martorano said. "That's just not how drug dealers work."

The drug unit is working with New Berlin police, who had received complaints
from neighbors about the fliers.

Police said the fliers were distributed in the vicinity of the man's
residence in the 18700 block of W. Coffee Road.

Martorano said officers did not have an opportunity to discuss the case with
the man when they searched his home on Wednesday. Authorities, however, plan
to interview him before they seek charges with the district attorney's
office of possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Mail carriers found the fliers stuffed in boxes on June 6 in the Coffee Road
area. Authorities had conducted garbage searches in the two months before
seeking a search warrant.

"I think that's probably the strangest thing I've ever heard of," Joan
Meyer, manager of the New Berlin post office, said of the fliers.

"Every single day of the week we find things in mailboxes," Meyer said.

In addition to letters and packages that aren't stamped, people return their
neighbors' tools and other items by sticking them illegally into mailboxes,
she said.

"We've seen notes saying, 'You weren't home so here's your Girl Scout
cookies,' " Meyer said. "But this (illegal drug advertisement) is the
strangest.

"We kind of got a chuckle out of it because we figured nobody would be that
stupid."

The 47-year-old man whose home authorities searched was tight-lipped when
contacted Thursday.

"We really don't know what's going on," said the man, who is not being named
because he has not been charged.

Asked if someone may have made the fliers to get back at him, the man said:
"Potentially. That's all I can say. I don't want to say anything now."

But his wife, 43, said she and her husband did not make them. "God, no," she
said.

Asked if she was angry about the flier, she said, "'Bewildered' is more the
word."

Neither would comment on the search itself or the marijuana, pipes, untested
white powder, vials and rolling papers seized by drug investigators.

Neither the woman nor her husband has a criminal record, state records
indicate.

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Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"