LAURA VOZZELLA
Copyright 2005 The Baltimore Sun Company
If Santa doesn’t make his rounds this year, it could mean he’s still handcuffed in Baltimore.Two of Charm City’s biggest claims to fame - drugs and over-the-top Christmas decorations - have made an un-merry convergence in a Hampden rowhouse. There, a 3-foot-tall St. Nick mannequin stands Flex-Cuffed by the family tree.
City police slapped the nylon restraints on Santa as a joke during a drug raid at the home Friday night, according to Frank Clowers Sr.
Clowers, 47, was the one police were really after. He was charged with possession of 6 ounces of marijuana with intent to distribute. The asphalt foreman makes no excuses for himself, but he says that police went too far when they cuffed Santa in front of his 15- and 10-year-old sons and 4-year-old grandson.
“No matter what I may have done, they had no business doing what they did to those kids’ minds,” says Clowers. “Now I can’t get my grandson to believe in Santa. `Santa Claus was locked up. He’s a bad Santa Claus. I don’t want no Christmas toys.’ Santa Claus was not bad at all. It was just a bad police officer.”
A police spokeswoman was skeptical, raising the possibility that Clowers cuffed Santa himself, and dismissing claims of holiday pain and suffering in any case.
“Why were we there? He’s selling marijuana in front of his kids?” Officer Nicole Monroe asked. “Six ounces of marijuana - I’d be trying to take the focus off myself, too.”
It would take a lot to douse the Christmas spirit at the Roland Avenue house, in the heart of Baltimore’s famously over-decorated neighborhood. In addition to Santa (who dances and sings five songs, “Jailhouse Rock” not among them), Clowers has decked his rowhouse with reindeer, balloons, candy canes and Winnie the Pooh.
Clowers could snip the cuffs off Santa himself, but so far he has left them in place - proof, he says, in case he sues. His lawyer in the criminal matter, Arthur Frank, who is running for a Baltimore County Circuit Court judgeship, has urged his client to let Santa go.
“Better take the cuffs off before Saturday,” he says, “so Santa can do his work.”