This ‘El Cheapo’ drug bust photo went terribly wrong for these Texas cops
Social media outrage has given rise to the saying, “Never read the comments.”
Well, in this case, you can forget that — the comments in this case are everything.
Police in tiny Tenaha, Texas, have either deleted or made private the department’s Facebook page after a Dec. 5 drug bust photo provided to media by the department went viral for all the wrong reasons.
Four officers are seen in the photo, sporting various levels of mean mug facial expressions, hands clasped at front, presenting the world with the department’s latest marijuana seizure.
“Officers with the Tenaha Police Department arrested three people on felony drug charges Monday after they executed a search warrant on a home and found marijuana, prescription pills, drug paraphernalia, packaging materials, guns, and cash,” the post read before it was deleted. The post lived, though, on East Texas television station KTRE’s Facebook page.
It all seemed pretty commonplace, really — until people started looking a little closer at the items on the table.
Since Dec. 5, when the photo and story on the bust were posted on KTRE’s site, the station’s post has been shared more than 75,000 times. And most of the more than 85,000 comments on the post are pure gold.
That cash on the table? Most of those bills are $1 bills. It all adds up to $70.
“Who was the drug dealer ... El Cheapo?” one user commented.
“Is that drug money or gas money?” another wrote.
There was also speculation about one item sitting on one of the digital scales police seized.
“Is this a Ferrero Rocher?” one user asked.
Another had a different theory. “So we just gonna pretend like this drug dealer wasn’t selling some bootleg golden snitches?” he wrote.
The Facebook comedians came out in full force. Nothing was spared in the comments: not the bag of weed that resembles a “bird’s nest,” the discount brand sandwich bags propped up behind the cash and guns, and not even the bottled water at the hands of one of the officers.
Three residents of the East Texas town — John C. Jones, 29; Latishana Gray, 26; and Carlton D. Horton, 28 — were arrested in connection with the raid, according to jail records.
But the photo?
“This is what happens when you start giving out trophies for seventh place,” one user wrote.
This story was originally published December 13, 2018 at 8:44 AM.
