Border police welcome Get Physical

Border police welcome Get Physical

8 May, 2008 | 4.16AM

• Section: Music News Topics: Get Physical Tour
• Written by: Industry Boy

“Sir, would you mind stepping inside here, please?” asked a uniformed and holstered police officer at the Canadian and United States border just now.

The room was a concrete box about 7ft by 10ft, with a wooden desk in the middle, bright fluorescent lights and a wooden bench at one end.

Audiofly, M.A.N.D.Y. and Heidi all squeezed onto the bench and the sight of five disheveled DJs in their pajamas having been dragged out of their bunk beds would have been hilarious, were it not for the four police officers standing in front of them with their hands on their hips. 

“See these swabs here,” said one of the border cops, tossing a half dozen white bits of cloth onto the desk.

“When tour buses come through here, we swipe these over everything, including iPhones, laptops and all surfaces for traces of narcotics.”

“Cocaine, heroin, marijuana, we’ve got a machine that can detect it all.

“Well, we’ve just found traces of cocaine over everything,” he said, staring around the room sternly.

“I think this is probably from personal use, so if you guys come clean and hand over everything you’ve got now, you’ll pay a fine and then we’ll let you go.

“Or if you don’t hand over anything and we have to go through the bus ripping apart everything and we do find something, well then you’re all in trouble.

“So, has anyone got anything to hand over?” he asked, once again looking around the room at each person individually.

Everybody nodded a resolute ‘no’.

It was like a scene from a movie, the good cop / bad cop scene where one officer asks nicely before another cop comes in and smashes your head into the wall.

“Have any of you taken cocaine whilst on this tour?” he asked, before hastily adding, “You won’t be in trouble, but we’d like to know.”

Again everybody nodded a ‘no’.

Patrick from M.A.N.D.Y. then said: “Listen sir, we are in the nightclub business.

“We are DJs and play at parties all the time, so we’re surrounded by things we cannot control.

“We don’t know what other people do around us, but we made it clear to everyone on the tour that no drugs were to be taken.

“We knew we were coming across the border and so nobody would do anything like this.”

The border patrolman nodded, and then said, “OK, fine. Well before I let you go, I’d like to search each of you individually.

“One at a time, please empty out your pockets onto the table.”

Patrick from M.A.N.D.Y. was the first to go, tossing a mobile phone onto the table.

He turned his pockets inside out, and then the policeman asked him to lift up his shirt so he could check his waistband.

Patrick did as requested, and then turned around as if he was about to pull down his pants voluntarily.

“We don’t need to check your ass,” said the cop with a smile, before indicating that he could leave.

We were all searched, and then we were told we could leave.

Once back on the road and safely into Canada, we all discussed if what the policeman had said had been true.

Because if they had found traces of cocaine over everything, why then would they let us go?

Maybe they were just probing to see if anyone would buckle under the pressure and confess that they were in fact a raging coke addict before handing over their hidden stash.

Somebody pointed out the fact that every single dollar bill in circulation has traces of cocaine on it, and that no matter who they search they always find traces.

In the end though, it was a pretty stressful experience to go through, especially in your pajamas.

PS: We couldn’t take any photos during the police search for obvious reasons but straight after we crossed the border we saw a sign for Niagara Falls which we followed so we could check out the famous landmark.

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