“I love acid,” says man arrested by Westfield police for drug trafficking

WESTFIELD – After a supermarket employee called Westfield police early Thursday morning to report that a couple who had just left the store were acting “strange” and may have been under the influence of drugs, an officer stopped the couple’s vehicle and arrested the driver, initially for driving without a license.

When officers searched the vehicle before it was towed, they discovered 515 pills (suspected MDMA or ecstasy), 145 LSD tablets, and two vials of suspected LSD liquid.

The driver, Dickson Brenton, 56, of Grove Street in Kennebunk, Maine, was charged with trafficking in more than 100 grams of a Class B drug, an additional offense in addition to driving without a license.

Shortly after 1 a.m., the employee at the Southampton Road supermarket called to report that a man and woman were in the store shouting about the CIA and poisoned food, taking photos inside the store and acting “very strange,” police said.

Because the employee assumed that the two were under the influence of drugs, he called the police and gave a description of the vehicle and its license plate number. The dispatchers then asked all police officers to be on the lookout for them.

Westfield Patrol Officer Zachary Demers checked the license plate the store clerk gave him and found it was registered to a woman in Maine who was a known acquaintance of a Westfield woman who had had multiple encounters with police. Police were aware that Brenton was her boyfriend and was often in town, police said.

The officer then checked the Westfield woman’s address. He found no one there, but soon after spotted the suspect vehicle and stopped it, police said.

Brenton told the officer he couldn’t find his wallet, and while the officer was talking to the man, the Westfield woman began interrupting, police said.

The officer then asked the woman her name and she responded by asking if he was a “real police officer.”

“The Attorney General told me he had ordered the mayor to issue a cease and desist order against the police for harassing me,” the woman told the officer, he reported.

After he told the woman that he was a real police officer, she gave him her driver’s license.

After learning that Brenton’s license had been suspended for being a repeat traffic offender and that the woman’s license had also been suspended, the officer ordered both of them out of the vehicle. The vehicle was then searched and towed, police said.

When both had got out of the vehicle, another officer took a look inside and discovered a transparent bag. According to the police, it apparently contained LSD blotting paper.

According to police, the officer arrested Brenton at that point.

Brenton told the police officer that the LSD was not his and that he “had not taken LSD in several years.”

As the officer spoke to Brenton, the Westfield woman began talking about the CIA, how the officers weren’t real, and how it seemed like she was talking to someone who wasn’t there, police said.

An ambulance was sent to take the woman to hospital for examination, police said.

According to the officer, while Brenton was being taken to the police station for booking, he spontaneously said, “Man, I have to be honest with you. This is acid,” giggled, and then said, “I love acid.”

When Brenton was being searched at the station during booking, 14 pills fell out of his front pants pocket, police said.

“These are the ones I was going to take when I got home,” the officer reported Brenton saying when he saw the pills.

Captain Steve Dickinson said the suspected drugs would be sent to the State Police Crime Lab for positive identification.

Brenton was arraigned in Westfield District Court on Thursday morning. His bail status was unknown at press time.