DEA RUNNING AMOK IN MENDOCINO COUNTY

            On  July 7, 2010 a Chicken Ridge medical marijuana grower was raided by DEA and COMMET.

            Joy Greenfield, 68, was an applicant for the sheriff's 9.31 coop permit program, had paid all her fees and had already been inspected and was awaiting approval. Sheriff Allman and Lt. Noe had told her “not to worry.” She would soon have her signed permit.

             All her 99 plants were together on one part of her 90-acre property. She had 25 with zip ties and a posted notice she was applying for a permit to grow the rest of them.

            She became concerned when a helicopter overflew the grow, perhaps during the Aerial Flight School before June 24.  In that annual exercise, the DEA hosts law enforcement agents throughout the west to fly in a dozen or so helicopters out of Ukiah airport to spot marijuana from the air. Locations are recorded by GPS and targeted for later eradication. Several large grows totaling hundreds of thousands of plants so identified have already been eradicated.

            The board of supervisors approved the fee schedule for the 9.31 program on June 22. The next day Allman posted the application forms online.

`            Supervisors set the one time nonrefundable application fee at $1,050 and required each plant have a $25 zip tie.

            Joy may have been targeted because she owns a medical marijuana dispensary in Miramar, a neighborhood of San Diego. Light the Way, a cooperative corporation registered with the secretary of state serves 1,000 patients. It was in the process of applying for a San Diego city business license. Its state filing includes Joy’s Covelo address on Eel River Ranch Road. 

            Joy claims both the dispensary and the farm were in full compliance with state and local laws, and she was paying sales and land taxes

            During the raid, sheriff deputies pointed out to the DEA agents that the garden was amply posted with notices the grower was applying for the 9.31 permit and was medical. Regardless, the federal agents ordered all plants be eradicated. In addition, computers and cash were seized.  A warrant signed by a federal judge in San Francisco described only her property.

            Joy was not present at the time, and conversed by telephone with a DEA representative who asserted he did not need permission to enter the property because he was a federal agent, and stated, “We don't care about Allman's 99 plant exemption.”

            The purpose of his call was to see if Joy would reveal information about other grows in the area. She has not been charged.

            This raid is problematic in two ways. One is it casts a cloud of suspicion on the sheriff’s 9.31 program just as it is getting started. Secondly, the raid seems to violate the recommendation in the Obama administration policy as described by U.S.A.G. Holder in March of last year and set forth in the Ogden  memo of October, 2009.  In it the attorney general's office advises US attorneys that enforcing the Controlled Substances Act in states that recognize medical marijuana should not be a priority if all other laws are being observed. The guideline is to inform all federal agencies, including the DEA, the FBI, etc.
    In  subsequent cases where the DEA has raided medical marijuana, violations of state sales tax code have been claimed.

 
Other DEA Raids:
           That may be the case in another federal action on June 23 as Jake Anderson of Willits was raided by over 100 agents including the DEA, postal service police and the IRS. His was one of 16 federal search warrants served in  southern California, the Bay Area and Mendocino County. He was not arrested but was told a federal indictment would be mailed.

            The DEA’s threshold of interest has traditionally been understood to be from 800 plants. However, the Greenfield case is an indication that the feds no longer consider themselves limited to large grows here, nor by the Ogden memo. Last October, the DEA busted medical marijuana activist Jim Hill for 25 plants in his outdoor greenhouse. They also seized several tractors, a utility wagon and $11,000 in cash. Hill recently agreed to forfeit the cash and the trailer in return for the tractors.
    On June 17, the DEA led Major Crimes Task Force special agents and COMMET deputies in a takedown of the Mendocino Pride coopeative grow off Spy Rock Road. The agents entered through a locked gate in the early hours of dawn and remained hidden in the grass near a couple of greenhouses. When attorney Mark Wuerful approached around mid-day, he was detained in handcuffs on the ground while the agents attempted by telephone for several hours to obtain a search warrant. When they were told they would not get one, they eradicated anyway, and then took Mark and several employees to the main house where Mark has his law office. They ordered him to open his safe, and then arrested him. At that time they took all the contents of the safe, which include his defense files in an earlier bust.

            I want to point out that it's definitely not in the sheriff's interest financially or politically to share information about 9.31 program applicants with DEA. The feds don't need his permission to be here but they do depend on his cooperation in a general way and they are messing up his playpen by enforcing against medical growers when he is trying to provide a quasi-legal framework for them to operate within the guidelines, if not the law.

            As long as the DEA is in our county, any pronouncements by the sheriff about his 9.31 permits or medical marijuana guidelines cannot be relied on. I have asked Mendocino County supervisors to request congressman Thompson enquire into the purpose and duration of current Drug Enforcement Agency activities in Mendocino County.