By Christopher Moraff
The feds are fighting to
look at millions of private files without a warrant, including those of
two transgender men who are taking testosterone.
Marlon Jones was arrested for taking legal painkillers, prescribed to him by a doctor, after a double knee replacement.
Jones, an assistant fire chief of Utah’s Unified Fire Authority, was snared in a dragnet pulled through the state’s program to monitor prescription drugs after someone stole morphine from an ambulance in 2012. To find the missing morphine, cops used their unrestricted access to the state’s Prescription Drug Monitor Program database to look at the private medical records of nearly 500 emergency services personnel—without a warrant.
Jones was arrested along with another firefighter and a paramedic on suspicion of prescription fraud.
“I got a
call at work from the police chief, who I know and work with,” Jones
testified before a state senate committee last year. “He said ‘We think
you have a problem, you’re taking too many medications. We need to make
sure you’re no longer a threat to the community or yourself. So we’re
doing this to help you.’”
Jones described in tearful detail what happened next.
“There were three police officers pounding on the door. They said they had a warrant for my arrest and they were going to take me in,” he said. “It was the middle of the day, on my front doorstep, in front of my wife and daughter. I’m handcuffed and stuffed into a police car and they haul me to jail.”
Jones was hit with 14 felony counts but all of them were later dropped.
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Source: The Daily Beast
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