Honesty Gets Nailed at NIN Concert

By RL McCullough
Santa Barbara, Ca. — Leila Dorsey of Santa Monica had a big night planned at the Santa Barbara Bowl Concert featuring Nine Inch Nails.  She paid good money for her ticket and strolled through the gates and turnstiles of Santa Barbara’s premier outdoor entertainment facility, apparently oblivious to the ubiquity of security searches, which have been de rigeur at all such venues for the past few decades. 

When Santa Barbara Bowl Security Staff asked Dorsey if they could look inside her handbag, she graciously complied.  The Security Staff personnel noted a small black velvet bag in the bottom of her purse.  When Dorsey declined to have any knowledge of the velvet bag’s contents, Security glanced up to summon the uniformed Santa Barbara Police Department Officer standing mere feet away.  In his usual festive concert-crowd mood, the officer inquired as to the contents of her small velvet bag, to which Dorsey shrugged and answered “Syringes”.

The conversation took an even more revelatory turn when the officer inquired as to the purpose for the syringes.   Dorsey smiled coquettishly and replied, “They’re for my heroin.”  At that point, the officer gingerly pulled the silk sash on the small velvet bag to reveal four hypodermic syringes loaded with brown fluid.  “See?” said Dorsey, proving that her honesty was certainly not the issue.

Her admirable candor notwithstanding, the brown fluid was indeed consistent with and later tested positive for heroin, and Dorsey was summarily arrested for possession of a controlled substance under California Health & Safety Code 11350.

There was at least one empty seat at that night’s Nine Inch Nails concert, but it was the empty seat of a truly honest fan.