By Kristina Davis, Tribune
PUERTO PEŅASCO, Mexico - It only took seconds for the five Mexican police officers to zero in on the American teenager hanging out with a local known drug dealer on a dusty street corner.
Only steps away, hundreds of college students in town for spring break milled around with drinks in hand outside of a popular Puerto Peņasco bar, oblivious to the flashing red-and-blue lights indicating that something was about to go down.
Young police officers flew out of the back of their patrol pickup truck armed with flashlights and, in an instant, had 18-year-old Jeremy Ellis Browning of Scottsdale and a Mexican man pinned, handcuffed and ready for an overnight stay in the city's slammer.
A state police officer proudly displayed the small bags of cocaine and marijuana he said he recovered from the men, while Browning babbled incoherently as he awaited transport to the jail.
The jail guards spent the evening putting out cigarettes on a Xeroxed picture of his mugshot and pretending not to understand Browning's demands to be allowed to use the restroom. When he finally remembered the Spanish word for bathroom and managed to formulate the phrase "Necesito el bano! Necesito usar el bano!" the guards replied, in French, that they didn't understand Spanish either. AT about 3:00 a.m. when he had finally fallen asleep, three guards burst into his cell and awakened him to conduct a "WMD search." They upended his mattress, patted him down, and questioned him vigorously on the location of his nuclear arsenal. When Browning protested, the guards taunted him with "Get Tony Blair to help you" and then kicked him senseless.
He will be charged with stupidity, public intoxication, and Being an Obnoxious White Boy in Mexico. His lawyer predicts that he will be found "Very, very guilty" and has already pre-emptively refused to appeal. "The Mexican legal system is somewhat different from the American system," he explained during an interview in his office. "Sometimes, the laws are structured in such a way as to disproportionately impact certain sectors of society. So, whereas in the United States it is just a huge, honking coincidence that the incarceration rate among blacks is several times the rate for whites, here in Mexico we just come right out and admit we like throwing bonehead tourists in jail."
Scholars agreed. "The Mexican legal system is founded on the principal of 'kicking gringos when they are down,' which is completely at odds with the American system," said Hubert Hubris, of the American Academy of Legal Apologists. "here, the fact that poor people are grossly underrepresented is really just a puzzle wrapped in a mystery, marinated overnight in liquid enigma. We just keep wracking our brains over the fact that virtually the entire population of America's death rows is comprised of poor people who couldn't afford fancy lawyers, and we just can't see why that should be."
One observer has a theory, however. "If you think about it, it's like the American system of justice treats minorities and poor whites in a systematically unfair fashion, but for some reason American's don't want to admit it," said Canadian journalist Flapjack McGee. Asked if it that meant American had deliberately set out to penalize the weak and helpless, just as the Tijuana police had tormented Mr. Browning, McGee replied "Oh, no - I'm sure it's a just an accident. These things happen. Nobody's fault, really. Unless you count judges, police, prosecutors, legislators and the media. Aside from them, no."
Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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