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Update -- Friday, 1:40 p.m.: Mike Ajami, whose Sunoco station in Detroit was shut Wednesday by police for selling drug paraphernalia, reopened Friday after signing an agreement not to carry those items, The Detroit News reports.
Mike Ajami, a Sunoco station owner on Eight Mile, strikes a pose of surprised innocence when Detroit's top cop delivers a freshly signed business closure order.
He goes with a tactic familiar to kids stuck in suspicious circumstances.
"What did I do?" the gas dealer asks Wednesday as news media shutters click and video cameras whir, recounts Candice WIlliams of The Detroit News. “We’re not dealing drugs. Is that drugs, sir?”
Ajami is correct about that last point. The "ready kit" brown bags he hands over to walk-in customers hold a lighter, glass pipe and Chore Boy scrubber sponge -- but not crack rocks or other narcotics destined to be used with them. (Hat tip to reader Kathy Toth, who steers us to this Urban Dictionary explanation of why Chore Boyis included.)
Mike Ajami, right, tells Police Chief James Craig: "If people want it, I have to sell it." (Detroit Police Department photo)
That's a critical distinction to the owner of John R Gas & Mart, open since 1993 at Eight Mile and John R, where he displays a "We Card" sign and the cutoff birth years for alcohol and tobacco sales. Williams writes:
Ajami said he wasn’t trying to say selling the brown bags was OK, but no one gave him a warning.
“If people want it, I have to sell it,” Ajami said. “. . . How do I know what they are using it for?”
Got that now? How is a 65-year-old Dearborn resident doing business along the Detroit-Ferndale border supposed to know his scruffy regulars aren't using a Bic, a cheap glass pipe and a Core Boy for . . . well, anything but what common sense indicates, really?
His Detroit lawyer denies something not claimed by police, according to a statement attorney Troy Otto gives The News:
“There is zero evidence of any illegal drugs being sold or used at the station.”
Chief Craig has a “completely outrageous and arbitrary” view of Detroit's business licensing code, the legal counselor claims.
"Under his interpretation, every Home Depot, every department store, or any store that sells a paper bag and a lighter and a tire gauge can be shut down as an immediate threat to public safety. . . .
"All appropriate legal actions will be taken . . . to remedy the wrongful actions of the DPD.”
Actually, the man with the badge and the one with the 2004 Wayne State law degree see one item the same way. Otto calls the raid "an obvious publicity stunt.” Williams paraphrases Craig as saying he wants to send a message to other businesses.
Fox 2 Detroit reporter Erika Erickson posts a 20-second snippet from Wednesday's confrontation:
WATCH #Detroit police shut down gas station selling drug paraphernalia. Owner: "this isn't fair!" More @FOX2News 10pm pic.twitter.com/2MepwuVk57
— Erika Erickson (@FOX2Erika) July 22, 2015
Detroit Police Chief James Craig signs an order suspending the business license of John R Gas & Mart for allegedly being a public safety and health nuisance. (Twitter photo by WJR Radio)
