Ex-Sprinter Carlos Is Seized for Having Cocaine

John Carlos, the former world class sprinter who raised a clenched fist of protest on the victory stand after winning a bronze medal in the 200-meter race at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, was arrested in Altadena for cocaine possession, sheriff’s deputies said Wednesday.

Sheriff’s spokesman Carl Deeley said that Carlos, 41, was driving a friend’s 1966 Mercedes-Benz when he was stopped at 9:30 p.m. Tuesday for allegedly failing to observe a stop sign at Santa Anita Avenue and Calaveras Street and for driving a vehicle with expired registration tags.

As Carlos got out of the car, deputies said, a “bindle,” a small package usually used to wrap cocaine, was visible on the floor near the driver’s seat, Deeley said.

“After waiving his rights,” Deeley said, “he admitted to deputies that it was cocaine and that it was given to him by a friend.”

Carlos was booked for investigation of cocaine possession and for failure to appear on an outstanding warrant for a $171 traffic ticket. He was released on $2,500 bail early Wednesday morning at the Altadena sheriff’s station, Deeley said.

Reached at his Altadena home, Carlos said he was innocent.

“The car was parked in front of my house for two weeks with the windows down,” he said. “Somebody must have just dropped something in there. I’m innocent and I’m going to fight them.”

He denied that he admitted to the deputies that he had been given the undisclosed amount of cocaine by a friend.

“That’s not true,” he said.

Carlos and fellow sprinter Tommie Smith were dismissed from the U.S. Olympic squad after the two athletes raised their black-gloved fists in a “black power salute” during the playing of the U.S. national anthem at the 200-meter awards ceremony in Mexico City.

Smith and Carlos finished first and third, respectively, in the 200-meter final.

Although he was No. 1 in the world at 100 and 200 meters in 1969 and 1970, the incident and the subsequent criticism has dogged Carlos through the years.

He was unable to find steady employment. He failed to catch on with two pro football teams. His first wife committed suicide, and Carlos said afterward that the principal cause for it was the problems stemming from the Mexico City incident.

He worked for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee during the 1984 Summer Games but has been unemployed since then.

Carlos, in an interview several years ago, said he did not regret what he and Smith did on the victory stand in Mexico City. He told a Times reporter:

“They said I was a Black Panther, a terrorist, a this or a that. I was nothing but a young American who believes in the ideals of America, freedom and justice for all, the land of the free.

“I don’t regret what we did. Not in the least. But it’s too bad that I’m still stuck with that label.”

The Tuesday night incident was Carlos’ second run-in with Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. In 1983, he was arrested after he allegedly threatened to fight two deputies who were on patrol in the Windsor Hills area of Los Angeles.