I have a question and an experience to share.
OK a number of years ago, I must have been around 16, I was walkin down a dark alleyway late at night (coincidentally taking the alleyway because the street looked a little dodgy and I didn't want to get attacked) after going to a local school for a few pipes. So me, a mate, and my girlfriend at the time were walking along, when a car pulled into the alleyway. Naturally we got out of the way, but just our luck it was an unmarked cop car. So the police get out, hassle us for a few minutes convinced we were buying drugs from one of the houses in the lane (perhaps they knew something we did not). Anyway we were all really stoned, and the cops proceed to search everything we had, emptying my girlfriends bag out onto the bonnet of the car, looked at the chain attached to my wallet calling it a weapon, one of the cops slammed me up against the wall, for no reason other than me being too stoned to answer his questions in a sensible fashion. Anyway he finds a tiny bag of weed in my wallet, only 2 cones worth that we had promised to save for a mate who was at the house we were returning to. I hand the bag to the cop as I assumed he would want to confiscate it. He refuses to touch it and instead asks me to empty it onto the ground, and then when i offered him the empty baggie he again refused to touch it.
Anyway they took our names, gave us a warning, and said the record would be wiped when we turned 18 (hah I highly fucking doubt it).
So my question: Why did he refuse to handle the weed, and even the empty baggy? What's the protocol? What if say i'd had a big bag of coke, would he have made me empty it onto the ground for the next passerby to hoover up? Or was it just a loophole for the evidenc to be destroyed and hence the offence having not occured?
I've just always been curious about this.