I see it as bad in that I know MJ is a harmless, beneficial herb and the laws against are draconian and actually cruel to the medical community. But it's good, in a way, trying to fight organized crime, misguided as it is, if in fact that IS the motive behind this. JUST DON'T STEAL. THE GOV'T DOESN'T LIKE THE COMPETITION.
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Over 300 Federal Agents Raid Humboldt! a City! WTF?
- Thread starter SCF
- Start date
WoW maannnn
Member
^ ron paul?
An unfortunate set of circumstances perhaps leading to
complacency in peoples day to day habits. Ordering grow
goods through the mail (as stated), driving your car to the
hydro shop (like a kid in a candy store), networking/sharing
of grow info locally (talking), using that 25 plant statute in
Humboldt to supply medical cannabis dispensaries elsewhere.......
NONE of those things are wrong IMO, but if you're guilty of
just a couple of those oversights above you begin to open
yourself up to scrutiny by local LEO 1st, then feds of course.
Please try to remember that there's a few brown nosed little
piggies out there looking to climb that ladder quicker than a
cop who writes extra tickets. This is the lil piggy that'll sit in
his car across the street from the hydro shop in his own car,
on his own time to gather evidence to bring to the brass. We
still have conspiracy laws & other loopholes for local & fed leo
to be able to pounce on. DON'T let your guards down.
Hey, let's be careful out there.......
Sgt. Esterhaus ~ Hill St. Blues
complacency in peoples day to day habits. Ordering grow
goods through the mail (as stated), driving your car to the
hydro shop (like a kid in a candy store), networking/sharing
of grow info locally (talking), using that 25 plant statute in
Humboldt to supply medical cannabis dispensaries elsewhere.......
NONE of those things are wrong IMO, but if you're guilty of
just a couple of those oversights above you begin to open
yourself up to scrutiny by local LEO 1st, then feds of course.
Please try to remember that there's a few brown nosed little
piggies out there looking to climb that ladder quicker than a
cop who writes extra tickets. This is the lil piggy that'll sit in
his car across the street from the hydro shop in his own car,
on his own time to gather evidence to bring to the brass. We
still have conspiracy laws & other loopholes for local & fed leo
to be able to pounce on. DON'T let your guards down.
Hey, let's be careful out there.......
Sgt. Esterhaus ~ Hill St. Blues
J
James-Bong
SCF said:
My guess is because of funding. FBI has a huge amount of funds available to them for fighting Terrorism. Remember, against ALL Enemys, Foriegn and "Domestic". DEA prolly scratches the FBI's back once and awhile, and now they are getting it scratched back.
Also they are prolly trying to get a few licks in, before obama is elected and ends the raids.
Last edited:
P
pSi007
evlme2 said:
The GOV wants people to not think at all and to be binded in chains.
Are you fucking kidding me?cain23456 said:
you can't blame the agents?
of course you can blame the agents. those agents take that job knowing good and well what they will be doing. no one forced them to do that job they WANTED to do it. so fuck those agents. they can go to hell for all i care.
RudolfTheRed said:
Yeah they took the job knowing what they will be doing. Im sure they didn't take it to just bust people for weed, that's what the DEA is for. Unlike you I do believe that we do need the Police,FBI,and CIA. I don't like the police but we do need them. The police main job isn't bust everyone for weed. There are alot of serious crimes and people need to go to jail, but let's do it your way and get rid of all of them shall we. Buddy let's get real here for a second. If you got robbed or something serious happened who you gonna call, ya buddy who has some nice clones or someone on this site?...lol. Why don't we just get rid of the military while we at it. The people that make the laws are voted in by the people, that's why I said we get what we vote for.
Im all for growing but not if it means no police to protect us. sorry you disagree. The FBI does do some good things. What is sad is that you got me defending them. I think the man power should be used else where but we do need them.
D
Don Cotyle
What the hell happened to "The Life,Liberty and The Pursuit of Happyness??? What really pisses me off is that the Feds are useing our own tax money to combat our Pursuit of Happiness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My guess is they'll fine a few firearms so they'll be bringin in the Bureau of Alcohol-Tobbaco and Firearms...so who's bring the chips???
My guess is they'll fine a few firearms so they'll be bringin in the Bureau of Alcohol-Tobbaco and Firearms...so who's bring the chips???
Last edited:
G
Guest 18340
I (respectfully) disagree with your statement.devilgoob said:
Throughout history it has been "mans" willingness to stand up for what is arbitrarily "the right thing" that has brought about the most profound change.
a great example is Rosa parks not willing to give up her seat in the front of a bus.
Does the term "unitied we stand" mean anything to you?
You're probably too young to remember the prohibition days (me to) but that era is a direct reflection what is (still) going on today when it comes to MJ.
Choose the the words you speak today wisely, BOY, 'cause you may have to eat them tomorrow.
0
Last edited:
BonsaiBud
Member
devilgood: One guy on here has a prescription for Marinal; to take 3 a day. The cost to fill that script is $1400/month. The effects are delayed. You don't get any benefit from a complimentary mix of canabinoids because they just synthesized the THC. In the future, you will need an additional prescription for each canabanoid you need along with the THC.
I want to thank everyone on the ground for keeping us updated. In california news this may be covered, but this has not received any national coverage. So many other people in the US have no Idea what is going on. I love how almost every cannabis site that I go to have links to threads concerning this raid from other sites. We will preserve our way of life. Our culture will prevail. Stay strong one day we will look back on this time as we do Rum runners, moonshiners and speak easys.
peace
peace
VanillaGueriila
Member
Sadly true H4G, if it werent for icmag I prolly would not know about the raids currently going on, I think the national media knows this would be frowned upon, so they are tryin to keep it under wraps.
D
dongle69
It wasn't a raid on Humboldt's growers.
The rumors were not true.
It was a single organization getting greedy with their automatic weapons.
A group of people formed a corporation to buy land and they were not very smart.
Someone snitched a couple years back and it got the ball rolling.
This is the 3rd bust of this type in recent years.
These people give the actual sick 215 patients a bad name.
No dispensaries raided, no clinics raided, no (legitimate) medicinal grows raided.
Hopefully the rumor mill will shut down for a while....
We are doing fine here in Humboldt.
The rumors were not true.
It was a single organization getting greedy with their automatic weapons.
A group of people formed a corporation to buy land and they were not very smart.
Someone snitched a couple years back and it got the ball rolling.
This is the 3rd bust of this type in recent years.
These people give the actual sick 215 patients a bad name.
No dispensaries raided, no clinics raided, no (legitimate) medicinal grows raided.
Hopefully the rumor mill will shut down for a while....
We are doing fine here in Humboldt.
Last edited:
Northern_Greens
Member
any more info on this ":group"???? If medicinal peeps are o.k. then who's getting the heat, and for what??
N_G
N_G
S
ScrogHog
Northern_Greens said:
They had I.C.E so i think theres some illegal immigrants involved. I dont think the FBI gonna be raiding med patients but maybe they would i know for sure the dea would.
Last edited:
D
dongle69
ScrogHog said:
According to the DOJ "joint" press release at 4:20pm (no joke), ICE was not involved at all. No illegals.
Just about everyone else was involved, though.
Not sure where that rumor came from.
A Federal Case
A Federal Case
A Federal Case
By Hank Sims
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/issues/2008/06/26/federal-case/
By the time you read this, it’ll probably be either the second or third day of the big Federal Bureau of Investigation dope raids that were launched Tuesday morning. What a Tuesday we had! If you didn’t follow the action blow-by-blow on that day, go back and check the North Coast Journal Blogthing – ncjournal.wordpress.com. We followed along with events as they developed as best we could, and the traffic to the site on that day exceeded our previous best day ever by a factor of 12.
We even got a little preview of the action. The feds chose to stage at the River Lodge in Fortuna, which happens to have a live web cam. D’oh! That, plus a couple of scattered bits of information, allowed us to make the call on Monday night — something big was going down. And so it did.
To recap: About 500 personnel from federal and state law enforcement agencies made large-scale marijuana busts in Southern Humboldt, and at one house in Arcata. An FBI spokesperson announced that several more days of busts were on the way. It was, according to the spokesperson, a culmination of a two-year investigation instigated by the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. What was not said, but what was certainly clear, is that the case they were seeking to make appears to go way beyond marijuana. There were agents from the IRS and the Postal Service present. The FBI was the lead agency. The Drug Enforcement Agency was nowhere to be found.
Both the Sheriff’s Office and the FBI said they had no interest in raiding medical marijuana dispensaries or medical marijuana patients. The operation, they said, was targeting large-scale commercial growers. In total, the agents came packing 29 warrants — 27 from a federal court, it was said, and two from a state court.
What are they after? He didn’t quite out and say it, but in an interview with radio station KSLG’s John Matthews, the FBI spokesperson on the scene — Joe Schadler — dropped hints that they were after a particular organization. Singular. To speculate wildly, this might tend to suggest that law enforcement is looking at the case through the other end of the telescope. Unless you’re talking about organized crime from Mexico, which local law enforcement has presumed to operate here in the last few years, there is no “cartel” of SoHum dope growers. And the raids targeted private homesteads, not public or timber land. What is the “organization”? Perhaps its only an organization in that the people busted may have been selling to the same person, or group of people.
We’ll know soon whether the operation has any connection to actual, bad crimes — violent crimes. Perhaps it does; more likely it does not. In which case, what will it accomplish? Well, the price of dope has fallen steadily over the last few years, and the regular Mom ‘n’ Pop marijuana farmers populating the hills around Humboldt County have had to plant more and more to keep their income up. The reason? Oversupply. Everyone and their uncle is a dope grower, at least in Arcata. As always, the net effect of prohibition-style federal operations will be to reestablish a decent, inflated price for the product. Growers who don’t end up in jail might end up sitting pretty this time next year.
In the nextcouple of weeks, the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District will contrive to sell one of its principal assets — the Redwood Dock in Samoa, which it acquired a couple of years ago — to private investors. Actually, “sell” is probably overstating the case. In all likelihood, the district will more or less give it away, as the North Coast Railroad Authority gave a 99-year concession to a private operator (NWP Inc.) free of charge. The logic being that private capital will accomplish what the Bay District and the Railroad Authority — public agencies, both — cannot. The logic is that private capital will build the grand international shipping terminal envisioned for Humboldt Bay, at the same time resuscitating the 300 miles of moribund railroad track between Samoa and the Bay Area.
The obstacles to this vision have been chronicled in these pages ad infinitum (“Town Dandy,” passim). They have never been addressed. They cannot be addressed, at least by public agencies, because both the railroad and the harbor district must be all things to all people. They must project massive amounts of freight to be considered financially viable; they must project very little freight to be palatable to environmentalists and Marin County residents whose neighborhoods the trains will pass through. So, in the end, they must have no projections at all.
Offload the public assets to a private firm, though, and you’ve solved most of your political problems (if none of your financial, geotechnical or environmental ones). That’s why the upcoming deal with Goldman Sachs — which is offering to peddle the port and rail assets in exchange for a slice of the action — is, sorry to say, a stone-cold certainty. Elected representatives from both public agencies can remove themselves, and hence the public, from the equation. And they have the votes to do it.
But if you’d like to pop some popcorn and watch it go down, you can head to the Wharfinger Building in Eureka Thursday evening at 7, where the Bay District will be meeting to discuss the deal. No action will be taken then, but the district will talk about its brand-new business plan, which coincidentally (?) includes talk of just the sort of deal that Goldman Sachs allegedly sprung on the district’s board out of the blue. The deal itself will be cut a couple of months down the line. In the meantime, the Humboldt Bay Stewards, a nonprofit group, is planning a big symposium on the deal to take place sometime in early August.
Meanwhile, the North Coast Railroad Authority recently lost an appellate court case seeking to quash the lawsuit brought against it by the city of Novato, Marin County and a slew of environmental organizations. The suit will proceed. It alleges that the railroad violated the California Environmental Quality Act in preparing for the reopening of the southern end of the line; plaintiffs demand that the agency’s CEQA documentation take into consideration the “entire project” — including the mass cargo the Authority and the Bay District say they’ll soon be shipping through Humboldt Bay.
How does the NCRA respond to this loss? According to a Willits News article, they respond by saying that they’ll take the case to federal court. Why? Because suddenly the railroad authority, a state agency, wants to make the case that it is not bound by California environmental law at all!
Federal court, eh? Maybe they’ll see some people they know in the hallways.
A Federal Case
A Federal Case
By Hank Sims
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/issues/2008/06/26/federal-case/
By the time you read this, it’ll probably be either the second or third day of the big Federal Bureau of Investigation dope raids that were launched Tuesday morning. What a Tuesday we had! If you didn’t follow the action blow-by-blow on that day, go back and check the North Coast Journal Blogthing – ncjournal.wordpress.com. We followed along with events as they developed as best we could, and the traffic to the site on that day exceeded our previous best day ever by a factor of 12.
We even got a little preview of the action. The feds chose to stage at the River Lodge in Fortuna, which happens to have a live web cam. D’oh! That, plus a couple of scattered bits of information, allowed us to make the call on Monday night — something big was going down. And so it did.
To recap: About 500 personnel from federal and state law enforcement agencies made large-scale marijuana busts in Southern Humboldt, and at one house in Arcata. An FBI spokesperson announced that several more days of busts were on the way. It was, according to the spokesperson, a culmination of a two-year investigation instigated by the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. What was not said, but what was certainly clear, is that the case they were seeking to make appears to go way beyond marijuana. There were agents from the IRS and the Postal Service present. The FBI was the lead agency. The Drug Enforcement Agency was nowhere to be found.
Both the Sheriff’s Office and the FBI said they had no interest in raiding medical marijuana dispensaries or medical marijuana patients. The operation, they said, was targeting large-scale commercial growers. In total, the agents came packing 29 warrants — 27 from a federal court, it was said, and two from a state court.
What are they after? He didn’t quite out and say it, but in an interview with radio station KSLG’s John Matthews, the FBI spokesperson on the scene — Joe Schadler — dropped hints that they were after a particular organization. Singular. To speculate wildly, this might tend to suggest that law enforcement is looking at the case through the other end of the telescope. Unless you’re talking about organized crime from Mexico, which local law enforcement has presumed to operate here in the last few years, there is no “cartel” of SoHum dope growers. And the raids targeted private homesteads, not public or timber land. What is the “organization”? Perhaps its only an organization in that the people busted may have been selling to the same person, or group of people.
We’ll know soon whether the operation has any connection to actual, bad crimes — violent crimes. Perhaps it does; more likely it does not. In which case, what will it accomplish? Well, the price of dope has fallen steadily over the last few years, and the regular Mom ‘n’ Pop marijuana farmers populating the hills around Humboldt County have had to plant more and more to keep their income up. The reason? Oversupply. Everyone and their uncle is a dope grower, at least in Arcata. As always, the net effect of prohibition-style federal operations will be to reestablish a decent, inflated price for the product. Growers who don’t end up in jail might end up sitting pretty this time next year.
In the nextcouple of weeks, the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District will contrive to sell one of its principal assets — the Redwood Dock in Samoa, which it acquired a couple of years ago — to private investors. Actually, “sell” is probably overstating the case. In all likelihood, the district will more or less give it away, as the North Coast Railroad Authority gave a 99-year concession to a private operator (NWP Inc.) free of charge. The logic being that private capital will accomplish what the Bay District and the Railroad Authority — public agencies, both — cannot. The logic is that private capital will build the grand international shipping terminal envisioned for Humboldt Bay, at the same time resuscitating the 300 miles of moribund railroad track between Samoa and the Bay Area.
The obstacles to this vision have been chronicled in these pages ad infinitum (“Town Dandy,” passim). They have never been addressed. They cannot be addressed, at least by public agencies, because both the railroad and the harbor district must be all things to all people. They must project massive amounts of freight to be considered financially viable; they must project very little freight to be palatable to environmentalists and Marin County residents whose neighborhoods the trains will pass through. So, in the end, they must have no projections at all.
Offload the public assets to a private firm, though, and you’ve solved most of your political problems (if none of your financial, geotechnical or environmental ones). That’s why the upcoming deal with Goldman Sachs — which is offering to peddle the port and rail assets in exchange for a slice of the action — is, sorry to say, a stone-cold certainty. Elected representatives from both public agencies can remove themselves, and hence the public, from the equation. And they have the votes to do it.
But if you’d like to pop some popcorn and watch it go down, you can head to the Wharfinger Building in Eureka Thursday evening at 7, where the Bay District will be meeting to discuss the deal. No action will be taken then, but the district will talk about its brand-new business plan, which coincidentally (?) includes talk of just the sort of deal that Goldman Sachs allegedly sprung on the district’s board out of the blue. The deal itself will be cut a couple of months down the line. In the meantime, the Humboldt Bay Stewards, a nonprofit group, is planning a big symposium on the deal to take place sometime in early August.
Meanwhile, the North Coast Railroad Authority recently lost an appellate court case seeking to quash the lawsuit brought against it by the city of Novato, Marin County and a slew of environmental organizations. The suit will proceed. It alleges that the railroad violated the California Environmental Quality Act in preparing for the reopening of the southern end of the line; plaintiffs demand that the agency’s CEQA documentation take into consideration the “entire project” — including the mass cargo the Authority and the Bay District say they’ll soon be shipping through Humboldt Bay.
How does the NCRA respond to this loss? According to a Willits News article, they respond by saying that they’ll take the case to federal court. Why? Because suddenly the railroad authority, a state agency, wants to make the case that it is not bound by California environmental law at all!
Federal court, eh? Maybe they’ll see some people they know in the hallways.
News bits for the day
News bits for the day
ABC
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=6228294
leave a comment please
Local NewsOfficers raid marijuana grow housesWednesday, June 25, 2008 | 6:16 PM Local, state and federal law enforcement officers joined forces early Tuesday morning in the culmination of a two year investigation into a large-scale marijuana cultivation organization.
Officers executed 29 search warrants in Humboldt and Mendocino Counties and raided grow houses in Shelter Cove, Whitethorn, Redway, Ettersburg, Garberville, Miranda, Phillipsville, Arcata and McKinleyville.
Operation "Southern Sweep" targeted a large commercial cultivation and distribution organization.
Story continues belowAdvertisement
"Californians voted for reasonable personal use of medicinal marijuana for qualified patients - not massive whole sale growing operations," Special Agent in Charge Sara Marie Simpson of the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement said.
As a result of the raids, the officers located about 10,000 marijuana plants and seized 30 firearms. The marijuana plants had an estimated street value of between $25 and $60 million.
"It's a large-scale, for-profit, commercial business," FBI Special Agent in Charge Charlene Thornton said. "The targets of our investigation are reaping huge profits while contributing to the crime and violence oppressingcommunities around the state."
While one arrest was made during Tuesday's raids, no charges have been filed and none of the targets of the investigation have been arrested.
The Arcata Eye News
http://www.arcataeye.com/index.php?module=Pagesetter&tid=2&topic=3&func=viewpub&pid=972&format=full
MMJ clinic halt renewed as DEA rumor clears grows – June 24, 2008
Kevin L. Hoover
Eye Editor
CITY HALL – The City Council last week renewed a moratorium on new medical cannabis dispensary approvals, extending it for 10 months and 15 days as citizens continued to press for fresh regulation of Arcata’s burgeoning marijuana industry.
Meanwhile, the cannabis community was abuzz with rumors that the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was poised to swoop down on Humboldt and Arcata with a small army of agents, ostensibly to clear out dispensaries and grow houses in massive raids. [Note: Operation Southern Sweep, which commenced Tuesday, June 24, was led by the FBI and focused on what a spokesman said was a single criminal enterprise. No medical marijuana facilities were raided. – Ed.]
Dispensary suspension
The City Council hearing on the dispensary moratorium extension attracted diverse comment from community members, including dispensary operators and skeptical citizens.
Arcata iCenter manager Tim Littlefield noted the recent state Supreme Court decision which found SB420-defined limits on amounts of cannabis possessed by patients unconstitutional. He said any attempts to regulate patients’ personal grows “in any form” illegally amend Prop 215 without state voter approval.
The Planning Commission is considering reducing 215 grow sizes to 50 square feet from the current 99 because that amount of space is considered sufficient for an individual to cultivate sufficient medicine. Cannabis which exceeds personal needs is often sold to dispensaries such as the iCenter and The Humboldt Cooperative (THC), which have admitted making purchases from residential grows.
Littlefield sought to protect his business’s supply source, calling for the council and Planco to “table all discussion in regards to personal medical cannabis.” He mentioned “several relevant cases that are citable that would cause lawsuits and cause the City to pay heavy reparations to patients that have been harassed,” including “triple damages.”
Another dispensary operator, Humboldt Medical Supply Director Eric Heimstadt, contradicted Littlefield. He said the court decision is irrelevant to Arcata’s approach, which is based on public safety, specifically fire prevention.
Heimstadt cited minutes of previous meetings in which the City Council asked the Planco to allow dispensaries to grow on site, which he said the commission “totally ignored.” He also said the Planco had ignored information HMS had provided that delineate mitigations for on-site cultivation.
LindaAnne Cummings of Americans for Safe Access said the Planco’s discussions were “polarized, off balance and completely disconnected” and incomprehensible to citizens. She excoriated the commission for ignoring council direction, saying that it had “publicly disrespected” the council and medical cannabis community. HMS reps have previously called for the dismissal of planning commissioners who have countered council directives.
Cummings said the grow house problem is being leveraged to put cannabis dispensaries out of business. She said some restrictions featured in the “Nip It In The Bud” petition are “not legal or ethical.”
HMS attorney Greg Allen cited “complete and pitiful failures of the Planning Commission,” foremost of which was ignoring what he called HMS’s “vested permit” to grow marijuana at its Eight Street facility. He said cannabis dispensaries can’t be considered medical offices, and that HMS’s on-site growing isn’t agriculture and shouldn’t be banned downtown.
Allen said HMS would “with great regret” file a petition for a writ of Mandamus and damage claim against the City this week. “We have to file, we just don’t have another option,” Allen said.
Grow house neighbor Wade DeLashmutt urged extension of the moratorium and a cap on dispensaries. Grow house neighbor Robin Hashem also wanted the moratorium renewed and said the “Nip It” petition now has 381 signatories. She said the SB420 decision would likely be appealed, but that it doesn’t rule out zoning-oriented limits on grows.
Following public testimony, the council unanimously approved the extension of Interim Ordinance No. 1378 for 10 months and 15 days. The ordinance halts approvals of new cannabis dispensaries for that period, but will lapse when new standards for medical marijuana are adopted by the City – with one exception.
It will remain in effect in areas of the City which lie within the Coastal Zone, since the Coastal Commission, which has jurisdiction in those areas, must review the standards and sign off on them before they may be implemented.
As it happens, the single dispensary application now pending with the Community development department happens to lie within the Coastal Zone. The applicant is Patricia A. Sarlas of McKinleyville, who wishes to open “the Health Center” at 389 H St., a residential home located at Samoa Boulevard and H Street.
Converting the home to a business would require a building permit to enable a change of occupancy from residential to commercial use, plus certain structural modifications.
The bust that wasn’t
Rumors have been rife since early June that the DEA is hovering in the area, ready to raid local dispensaries and/or grow houses. On June 6, out of an abundance of caution, the booming, 6,000-patient The Humboldt Cooperative dispensary closed its front office for the day.
The rumors hit some a of crescendo last week with anonymous and unverified online reports that up to 50 federal vehicles were parked at the Red Lion Inn in Eureka. “The rumors are true,” reported the widely-read Humboldt Herald blog, under a headline declaring, “Massive DEA raids planned for Humboldt.”
Some blog commenters attributed the impending enforcement action to recent publicity about Arcata’s cannabis issues in national newspapers and cable TV news.
“It’s absolutely not true,” said Casey McEnry, DEA spokesperson. She said the agency was aware that there was “some kind of pandemonium, if you will, of a ‘surge’ of DEA agents.”
The agency routinely operates in the region, including Humboldt, McEnry said. “We’re there all the time,” she said. “You just don’t always know where.”
Right now, according to McEnry, the DEA has personnel working with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office on aerial observation training. “But not by the hundreds,” she said. The raid rumors, she suggested, may have been fueled by the DEA presence in the area for that operation.
Grows, interrupted
Against the backdrop of looming City regulation, neighbor militancy, media fanfare and DEA-tinged paranoia, distinct changes in behavior were observed at suspected residential grow houses around town.
Sunny Brae residents reported an increase in vehicular comings-and-goings, especially late at night. On one street, the night moves were accompanied by sounds of labored activity, as though a large volume of items were being loaded and moved.
In the Bloomfield neighborhood, some suspected grow houses got an appearance upgrade, including newly mowed lawns.
A resident reported that one house, which is usually inert during the day but often has signs of activity in the early morning hours, was noisy with “the sound of glass jars and plastic tubs being moved around the garage” for about six hours.
The resident reported an unusual increase in stray dogs and pedestrians wearing backpacks. A large pickup truck reportedly made repeated trips to the neighborhood, with numerous plastic bags in its bed.
In the nearby Greenview neighborhood, a resident reported some four suspected grow houses “emptied out” and sporting a whole new look, with doors open and previously closed curtains thrown wide.
“Everything’s opened up. They’re acting like they live there,” a resident said.
On Jackson Ranch Road, a popular dumping site, marijuana trim and used soil were left strewn about the roadside. Arcata Bottom protector Ted Halstead said the dope dumpage has become quite common of late.
Back to the Planco
Following consideration of the proposed Trillium Creek subdivision’s Planned Development Permit, the Planning Commission will re-approach medical marijuana land use standards.
Among the regulations in play are a possible cap on dispensaries in Arcata, limits on dispensary grow area to 250 square feet, residency requirements for patients, signage standards, limits on hours of operation, reduction in 215 patient residential grows to 50 square feet, a ban on “cooperative” or clustered patient grows and more.
Subscribe to the Arcata Eye for the full story
News bits for the day
ABC
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=6228294
leave a comment please
Local NewsOfficers raid marijuana grow housesWednesday, June 25, 2008 | 6:16 PM Local, state and federal law enforcement officers joined forces early Tuesday morning in the culmination of a two year investigation into a large-scale marijuana cultivation organization.
Officers executed 29 search warrants in Humboldt and Mendocino Counties and raided grow houses in Shelter Cove, Whitethorn, Redway, Ettersburg, Garberville, Miranda, Phillipsville, Arcata and McKinleyville.
Operation "Southern Sweep" targeted a large commercial cultivation and distribution organization.
Story continues belowAdvertisement
"Californians voted for reasonable personal use of medicinal marijuana for qualified patients - not massive whole sale growing operations," Special Agent in Charge Sara Marie Simpson of the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement said.
As a result of the raids, the officers located about 10,000 marijuana plants and seized 30 firearms. The marijuana plants had an estimated street value of between $25 and $60 million.
"It's a large-scale, for-profit, commercial business," FBI Special Agent in Charge Charlene Thornton said. "The targets of our investigation are reaping huge profits while contributing to the crime and violence oppressingcommunities around the state."
While one arrest was made during Tuesday's raids, no charges have been filed and none of the targets of the investigation have been arrested.
The Arcata Eye News
http://www.arcataeye.com/index.php?module=Pagesetter&tid=2&topic=3&func=viewpub&pid=972&format=full
MMJ clinic halt renewed as DEA rumor clears grows – June 24, 2008
Kevin L. Hoover
Eye Editor
CITY HALL – The City Council last week renewed a moratorium on new medical cannabis dispensary approvals, extending it for 10 months and 15 days as citizens continued to press for fresh regulation of Arcata’s burgeoning marijuana industry.
Meanwhile, the cannabis community was abuzz with rumors that the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was poised to swoop down on Humboldt and Arcata with a small army of agents, ostensibly to clear out dispensaries and grow houses in massive raids. [Note: Operation Southern Sweep, which commenced Tuesday, June 24, was led by the FBI and focused on what a spokesman said was a single criminal enterprise. No medical marijuana facilities were raided. – Ed.]
Dispensary suspension
The City Council hearing on the dispensary moratorium extension attracted diverse comment from community members, including dispensary operators and skeptical citizens.
Arcata iCenter manager Tim Littlefield noted the recent state Supreme Court decision which found SB420-defined limits on amounts of cannabis possessed by patients unconstitutional. He said any attempts to regulate patients’ personal grows “in any form” illegally amend Prop 215 without state voter approval.
The Planning Commission is considering reducing 215 grow sizes to 50 square feet from the current 99 because that amount of space is considered sufficient for an individual to cultivate sufficient medicine. Cannabis which exceeds personal needs is often sold to dispensaries such as the iCenter and The Humboldt Cooperative (THC), which have admitted making purchases from residential grows.
Littlefield sought to protect his business’s supply source, calling for the council and Planco to “table all discussion in regards to personal medical cannabis.” He mentioned “several relevant cases that are citable that would cause lawsuits and cause the City to pay heavy reparations to patients that have been harassed,” including “triple damages.”
Another dispensary operator, Humboldt Medical Supply Director Eric Heimstadt, contradicted Littlefield. He said the court decision is irrelevant to Arcata’s approach, which is based on public safety, specifically fire prevention.
Heimstadt cited minutes of previous meetings in which the City Council asked the Planco to allow dispensaries to grow on site, which he said the commission “totally ignored.” He also said the Planco had ignored information HMS had provided that delineate mitigations for on-site cultivation.
LindaAnne Cummings of Americans for Safe Access said the Planco’s discussions were “polarized, off balance and completely disconnected” and incomprehensible to citizens. She excoriated the commission for ignoring council direction, saying that it had “publicly disrespected” the council and medical cannabis community. HMS reps have previously called for the dismissal of planning commissioners who have countered council directives.
Cummings said the grow house problem is being leveraged to put cannabis dispensaries out of business. She said some restrictions featured in the “Nip It In The Bud” petition are “not legal or ethical.”
HMS attorney Greg Allen cited “complete and pitiful failures of the Planning Commission,” foremost of which was ignoring what he called HMS’s “vested permit” to grow marijuana at its Eight Street facility. He said cannabis dispensaries can’t be considered medical offices, and that HMS’s on-site growing isn’t agriculture and shouldn’t be banned downtown.
Allen said HMS would “with great regret” file a petition for a writ of Mandamus and damage claim against the City this week. “We have to file, we just don’t have another option,” Allen said.
Grow house neighbor Wade DeLashmutt urged extension of the moratorium and a cap on dispensaries. Grow house neighbor Robin Hashem also wanted the moratorium renewed and said the “Nip It” petition now has 381 signatories. She said the SB420 decision would likely be appealed, but that it doesn’t rule out zoning-oriented limits on grows.
Following public testimony, the council unanimously approved the extension of Interim Ordinance No. 1378 for 10 months and 15 days. The ordinance halts approvals of new cannabis dispensaries for that period, but will lapse when new standards for medical marijuana are adopted by the City – with one exception.
It will remain in effect in areas of the City which lie within the Coastal Zone, since the Coastal Commission, which has jurisdiction in those areas, must review the standards and sign off on them before they may be implemented.
As it happens, the single dispensary application now pending with the Community development department happens to lie within the Coastal Zone. The applicant is Patricia A. Sarlas of McKinleyville, who wishes to open “the Health Center” at 389 H St., a residential home located at Samoa Boulevard and H Street.
Converting the home to a business would require a building permit to enable a change of occupancy from residential to commercial use, plus certain structural modifications.
The bust that wasn’t
Rumors have been rife since early June that the DEA is hovering in the area, ready to raid local dispensaries and/or grow houses. On June 6, out of an abundance of caution, the booming, 6,000-patient The Humboldt Cooperative dispensary closed its front office for the day.
The rumors hit some a of crescendo last week with anonymous and unverified online reports that up to 50 federal vehicles were parked at the Red Lion Inn in Eureka. “The rumors are true,” reported the widely-read Humboldt Herald blog, under a headline declaring, “Massive DEA raids planned for Humboldt.”
Some blog commenters attributed the impending enforcement action to recent publicity about Arcata’s cannabis issues in national newspapers and cable TV news.
“It’s absolutely not true,” said Casey McEnry, DEA spokesperson. She said the agency was aware that there was “some kind of pandemonium, if you will, of a ‘surge’ of DEA agents.”
The agency routinely operates in the region, including Humboldt, McEnry said. “We’re there all the time,” she said. “You just don’t always know where.”
Right now, according to McEnry, the DEA has personnel working with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office on aerial observation training. “But not by the hundreds,” she said. The raid rumors, she suggested, may have been fueled by the DEA presence in the area for that operation.
Grows, interrupted
Against the backdrop of looming City regulation, neighbor militancy, media fanfare and DEA-tinged paranoia, distinct changes in behavior were observed at suspected residential grow houses around town.
Sunny Brae residents reported an increase in vehicular comings-and-goings, especially late at night. On one street, the night moves were accompanied by sounds of labored activity, as though a large volume of items were being loaded and moved.
In the Bloomfield neighborhood, some suspected grow houses got an appearance upgrade, including newly mowed lawns.
A resident reported that one house, which is usually inert during the day but often has signs of activity in the early morning hours, was noisy with “the sound of glass jars and plastic tubs being moved around the garage” for about six hours.
The resident reported an unusual increase in stray dogs and pedestrians wearing backpacks. A large pickup truck reportedly made repeated trips to the neighborhood, with numerous plastic bags in its bed.
In the nearby Greenview neighborhood, a resident reported some four suspected grow houses “emptied out” and sporting a whole new look, with doors open and previously closed curtains thrown wide.
“Everything’s opened up. They’re acting like they live there,” a resident said.
On Jackson Ranch Road, a popular dumping site, marijuana trim and used soil were left strewn about the roadside. Arcata Bottom protector Ted Halstead said the dope dumpage has become quite common of late.
Back to the Planco
Following consideration of the proposed Trillium Creek subdivision’s Planned Development Permit, the Planning Commission will re-approach medical marijuana land use standards.
Among the regulations in play are a possible cap on dispensaries in Arcata, limits on dispensary grow area to 250 square feet, residency requirements for patients, signage standards, limits on hours of operation, reduction in 215 patient residential grows to 50 square feet, a ban on “cooperative” or clustered patient grows and more.
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