Bad breath ranks high in the list of personal hygiene crimes but it hasn't been an offense worthy of arrest until now. In a move of breathtaking stupidity, cops arrested a Brooklyn man on suspicion that the white breath mints in his pocket were actually ecstasy. Mint-scented MDMA, methamphetamine hard candies; what's next, dime bags of dank oregano mistaken for reefer?
In April, 46-year-old Ron Hankins was strolling on Herkimer Avenue when officers stopped him and demanded to search him, according to a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court. In his pockets they found several loose "Pow!" brand energy breath mints and, being thorough members of the NYPD, inquired about the pills' provenance. “Mr. Hankins explained to the officers that what they had found were mints and not drugs and asked the officers look at and smell them to confirm,” according to the suit. “He told them to break them up, to sniff them, to do whatever they had to do,” Gabriel Harvis, attorney for Mr. Hankins, explained to the Post. "But they didn't."
Cops turned down Hankins's offer, choosing instead to arrest him and throw him in the slammer for 30 hours. Charges were eventually dropped in October, but Hankins and his team won't let the case rest on principle. “There are groups of people in this city who can carry as many breath mints as they want without being interrogated and arrested,” declared Harvis. "Fresh breath is not a crime." Not yet, but Bloomberg still has a few more weeks.
