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Memphis, TN


Conductor562

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Just got home from 5 days in Memphis, TN. If you've never been there don't waste your gas. The Peabody Hotel was fantastic. It was a 1st class establishment and I doubt you'll find one nicer south of New York City. Graceland was interesting as was the civil rights musuem. However, the town itself is a dump. I can't say that there isn't a nice part of town, but I sure as hell couldn't find it. The BBQ ribs are awesome though.

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  • 1 year later...

I have recently scratched the entire state of Tennessee off my 'I'd like to go there sometime' list - permanently.

 

Two years ago my daughter and her then fiancé were driving through central Tennessee on I-40 eastbound heading for Knoxville.

 

West of Nashville they were stopped by Tennessee's Anti Drug Task Force without probable cause. They were blocked from moving, ,extracted from their vehicles, forced to sit in poison Ivy while a drug dog was being summoned to the scene. They found a couple grams of marijuana (confiscated - possession of drugs). They also had vacation snacks and drinks in zip lock bags and a couple extra empty bags (confiscated those - possession for sale). They also had personal firearms locked in handgun vaults with the keys around their necks (confiscated - armed drug transporters). And, the vehicle, a one year old Odyssey (confiscated - drug transport vehicle). They were taken to a small county jail west of Nashville where the local cops had to hold them all the while apologizing and telling them they really didn't belong there. 

 

Both have since been tried and convicted of charges serious enough to keep the confiscated SUV as well as both glock 40's and their vaults. Tennessee has very liberal confiscation laws and an antiquated court system. The State and County Officials want only the cash money they can take from Westbound out of state vehicles and the cars and other property of value they can confiscate from Eastbound out of state vehicles. They do not want to imprison their victims. That would be a counterproductive expense to the state. It's simply a legal form of Highway Robbery. It's how Tennessee earns income.

 

They do all this under the guise of Drug Traffic interdiction. At any given time today on I-40 in central Tennessee you can see clusters of as many as six or seven of these black unmarked SUVs in the median looking for East or West coast plates and ready to pounce. Sometimes several of these unmarked vehicles actually pull out and compete with each other for who is going to get the credit for stealing from the poor sucker in their sights. When my ex-wife returned from having accompanied my daughter back there for trial, she said she was petrified by what she saw on I-40 during their roughly 35 mile drive from the airport to the adjacent county courthouse and back.

 

There is one obvious flaw to this whole story, however. The entire state of Tennessee, with a total population smaller than the incorporated City of Chicago,  isn't a spit in the ocean of a drug market. Any real drug trafficking could easily be rerouted to avoid the entire state and there are other roads besides I-40. But, here is the real kicker. If this activity really was interfering with major drug trafficking, after about the second major drug or cash confiscation several high ranking government and law enforcement officials in the Nashville area would be found dead one morning all wearing Columbian neckties. 

 

Should you have doubts about this story or think this can't really be happening; please Google Nashville's local News TV Station Chanel 5 coverage videos exposing this entire operation on You Tube, and yet it continues.  Where the hell is Scott Pelly & 60 Minutes when you need them?

 

All those nice Tennessee vacation spots will go unvisited by me. I don't want so much as the shadow of the rear view mirror of my rental car to fall on Tennessee soil.

 

My apologies if I've stepped on any sensitive non-involved toes. Color me just a bit pissed at how low the Tennessee state government has gone to make money. 

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You're not offending me. Sounds like your daughter got a raw deal.

I go where work forces me to go, but I'm a home body at heart. I have to spend a lot of time in Jacksonville, FL, occasionally Atlanta, and once a year I have to go somewhere like New York, Boston, or Memphis.

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