Woman Sold Sugar as Fake Crack, Calls Police
A woman in Springfield, Mo. has been arrested and fined after calling police on a drug dealer that sold her sugar instead of crack cocaine.
Suzanne Basham, 47, told police on Tuesday that she paid a man $40 for what she thought was crack cocaine. However, the drug dealer swindled her and gave her sugar instead.
Sgt. Matt Brown, a police spokesman, says that Basham actually wanted the police to get her drug money back and arrest the dealer for stealing.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Brown said that when the police arrived at Basham's apartment, they found a crack pipe and arrested her for possession of drug paraphernalia. She was also ticketed for misdemeanor drug paraphernalia possession.
Police followed up on Basham's accusations and went to the home where she said she got her fake crack. According to Brown, the police asked a man at the home if Basham's story was true. He denied selling her anything and refused to let investigators search the property.
Basham was also previously arrested in 2010 for drug possession, according to reports.
Missouri is one of the primary markets for illicit drug sales in the Midwest. According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, the Kansas City metropolitan area has a population of over 1.6 million residents and is the intersection of many busy highways. These factors make the area a major transshipment market in the country, moving illicit drugs to and from other markets in the West, East and Midwest.
Crack cocaine and methamphetamine are the primary drug threats to the metropolitan area and crack cocaine distribution dominates the inner-city drug markets.
In 2010, a young boy in Missouri made the news after he brought his mother's crack pipe and crack to school, according to the Associated Press. The boy, who was in kindergarten, stunned his teachers at Sweet Springs Elementary School when he brought almost $4,000 worth of crack and a crack pipe into the school for show and tell.
