Violent, Disrespectful, Corrupt Cops Sue To Block Investigation of Their Terror Raid On Potshop (Video)

These cops decided to crack down on pot dispensaries operating without permits. Instead of simply padlocking the business the cops decided to deliberately terrorize the shop owners and their customers with a commando raid. Then they ate the pot.

Knucklehead Cops: They were video taped breaking surveillance cameras — They missed one.

By Conor Friedersdorf
Unions that represent American police officers are often complicit in keeping bad cops on the street. This is a story about one of those unions flagrantly allying itself with misbehaving cops who are trying to suppress hard evidence of indefensible behavior.

Even the backstory is jaw-dropping.

Earlier this year, Santa Ana, California, decided that it had too many pot dispensaries operating in the city without a permit. Officials decided to crack down. Police could have quietly served a search warrant or padlocked a front door.

Instead, they opted for a raid during business hours with guns drawn.

As a result, customers at Sky High Holistic marijuana dispensary had a terrifying experience: While browsing the pot shop’s products, they suddenly heard someone busting in the door. Seconds later, men were rushing into the room with guns drawn. Some wore masks. Frightened patrons quickly lay face down on the ground.

All by itself, this potentially dangerous, totally unnecessary show of force was troubling. The pot business was accused of a mere misdemeanor. There was no need to surprise patrons—some of whom were ill—with guns in their faces. But needlessly endangering the public was just the beginning of the dubious conduct. A surveillance camera recorded officers disconnecting the shop’s surveillance cameras. Under the impression that they’d got them all and were only accountable to fellow police officers, the cops discredited themselves in footage destined for YouTube:

On-duty police officers appear to be eating edible pot products—OC Weekly transcribes words they spoke while egging one another on. (“Those candy bars are pretty good,” one said. “I kinda feel light-headed though.”) Other dialogue offers a number of insights into the subculture of this narcotics unit. Take the woman with an amputated leg that police encountered on entering the dispensary. “Did you punch that one-legged old benita?” one police officer asks another. The other cop laughingly replied, “I was about to kick her in her fucking nub.” These are people Santa Ana taxpayers empower to use lethal force at their discretion.

[...]

What’s new is the way that the cops caught misbehaving on camera and the police union that represents them have responded to an internal police investigation—not with embarrassment, contrition, and public apologies, as would befit trustworthy people of good character, but with shameless, discrediting chutzpah: They’ve sued to keep now public video of their indefensible behavior from their overseers!

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Marijuana Dispensary Suing Mayor After Cops Raid Shop and Eat Edibles

Edible marijuana products in shop window, Amsterdam (Photo by nickolette)

By Don Shay
A raid on a California medical marijuana dispensary at the end of May revealed questionable police practices by the officers involved. Now, Sky High Holistic is suing Santa Ana mayor Miguel Pulido, claiming he ordered police to shut down the dispensary because they did not pay a $25,000 bribe that would guarantee their place in a lottery system for a license.

According to NBC LA,

“Santa Ana mayor Miguel Pulido was named in the suit along with city employee Yvette Aguilar and the city itself. It alleges the city solicited $25,000 payments and gifts from marijuana dispensaries which would guarantee businesses would be granted a license in a lottery system. It also claims police were used to shut down operations that did not pay up.”

“It’s deplorable that city officials and people seeking financial gain would use the police to accomplish their self-serving goals,” said attorney Matthew Pappas, who is representing the raided shop.

Last week, the nonprofit group Voice for OC released video footage of cops raiding Sky High Holistic on May 27th. Authorities alleged the dispensary lacked the proper permit to operate. The video footage depicts armed officers with ski masks barging into the sales room with their guns drawn. Those inside were all ordered to the ground. Officers kicked everyone out and attempted to break all of the visible cameras. Unbeknownst to them, there were also hidden cameras that caught the aftermath. The footage showed the cops nonchalantly consuming the edible marijuana treats. One cop was heard laughing and making a comment referring to one of the disabled customers in the shop. “Did you punch that one-legged old bonita?” asks ones. A female cop responds, “I was about to kick her in her f—ing knob”. The police claimed they were conducting an investigation.

The officers knew they were going to act questionably, evident in that they attempted to tear down visible cameras. This behavior is very similar to what armed thugs do. How long will cannabis vendors that pose no harm be targeted by law enforcement? Santa Ana is a city that runs rampant with gang violence and hard drug abuse, so why is the mayor is targeting pot shops? When will the police actually focus their attention on critical issues instead of on harassing non-violent pot smokers?

Reprinted with permission from Anti-Media

Jamaica's Marijuana Decriminalization: Will the Rest of the Caribbean Follow Suit?

“Ganja”, photo by Justin Schuck, used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.

By Janine Mendes-Franco
Jamaica has long been the Caribbean island that the developed world most associates with liberal marijuana use.

This perception might stem from the fact that the island's biggest global icon, the late reggae musician Bob Marley, was a committed Rastafarian, who routinely smoked herb as path to deeper spiritual awareness. In this sense, weed might seem as synonymous with Jamaica as reggae music, but despite tourists flocking from the Global North with dreams of spliffing up on a beach and feeling irie, cannabis use was illegal on the island until recently.

That all changed last month — quite fittingly the month of Marley's birth — when the Jamaican House of Representatives passed a law decriminalising possession of up to two ounces of marijuana. The new legislation also allows people to grow up to five plants for personal use, and guidelines are currently being established for the cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana and use of the herb for religious application.

The law has made Jamaica the first Caribbean nation to make the bold move of attempting to regulate cannabis use in a region where, in most cases, its illegality has not quelled consumption. Across the Caribbean, national justice systems are backlogged with minor possession offences that accomplish nothing more than sullying a young person's police record.

Jamaica joins a number of other countries who are pioneering this approach to dealing with marijuana use. In August last year, Global Voices published a story which suggested that decriminalisation could eventually happen across the Caribbean. Jamaica remains the single largest exporter of marijuana in the region.

Reaction to the news on Twitter was swift. There were several congratulatory tweets about the legislation, acknowledging the significance of the measure:

Some users of the microblogging service wondered what the benefits would be:

This Twitter user thought the move was long overdue…

…while others underscored the developed world's perceptions of the island:

In the Caribbean itself, however, some bloggers were surprised by the decision.
Rishona Campbell wrote in a post titled ‘Can Jamaica Profit from Marijuana Legalisation?':

This is a really surprising, but timely move by the Jamaican government. In spite of marijuana being so intrinsically tied into Jamaican culture, thanks to the Rastafarians, the laws of the country have prohibited its possession and use since 1913. [...]

It seems that Jamaica has grown hip to the changing climate globally in regards to marijuana decriminalization. In all honesty, I thought that this would have happened much sooner in Jamaica, especially when the success of weed tourism in the Netherlands proved that you could tolerate marijuana use, and not have society implode itself.

Interestingly enough, the Netherlands actually allots for a lesser amount, 5 grams, for personal use. However the Netherlands allows public use, and it is fully legal. Whereas in Jamaica (similar to the states of California and New York in the United States), it is simply decriminalized.

Her post went on to describe some of the ways in which she thought the island could reap huge profits from the harvest and sale of the drug, explaining that both medical marijuana and weed tourism could generate significant economic yields. She also added that Jamaica was in a unique position to capitalise on the “almost mythical marketing pull of all things marijuana-related”.

A pro-weed region?

On Facebook, many netizens echoed the opinion of Trinidad and Tobago-based Shaz Hudson, whose reaction to news of the legislation was:

we need to move with the times

And indeed, other jurisdictions are definitely taking notice. Trinidad and Tobago News Blog reported:

With Caribbean neighbour Jamaica making moves to decriminalise marijuana, University of the West Indies (UWI) Professor Emeritus Kenneth Ramchand is renewing his calls for marijuana to be decriminalised in Trinidad and Tobago for medicinal purposes [...] and pointed to a good argument for decriminalising for personal use in limited quantities.

Rhisona Cambell, continuing her post, noted:

St. Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago and Antigua all have leaders who have addressed the topic. They acknowledged at CARICOM meetings that Jamaica is a leader in this area and are watching to see how they can make similar legislative moves in their own respective countries. Perhaps this is the type of peer pressure that Jamaica needs in order to make the right moves to turn marijuana from a proverbial villain, to an economic friend.

Rising to new heights

Time will tell whether or not Jamaica has started the ball rolling in terms of the legalisation of marijuana in the Caribbean, but satirical blog The Late O'Clock News, which positions itself as ‘the only legitimate news source in the Caribbean' thought it would help the process along:

Trinidad and Tobago will become the second, but more important country in the Caribbean to legalize the growth, sale and lighting up of marijuana. The ‘Just Gimme D Light and Pass the Dro’ Bill of 2015 is hoped to be passed unanimously in the House of Representatives [in] April this year [...]

In between puffs the Minister stated ‘Of course we weren’t going to let Jamaica show us up like that. T&T has always been a leader in the Caribbean, and anything Jamaica can do we can do better!’

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Biessessar took full credit for the landmark legislation. During a press conference at the Diplomatic Centre the PM proudly proclaimed ‘I have always promised that your government would take our country to new heights but few predicted how high we aspire to be!’

The blog also humorously anticipated a ‘munchies'-related economic boom:

Many local businessmen in the food service industry (chiefly doubles and corn soup vendors) are looking forward to a sudden and rapid increase in revenue after the bill passes in Parliament. As one vendor in Arima said: ‘To put it bluntly, we go have reelll [real] people to feed cuz men will be coming out like mad to satisfy some food cravings. Trust I.’

Currently, the new law is generating a lot of ideas, from groups proposing a ‘Ganja Cooperative’ of Jamaican weed farmers, to marijuana aficionados imagining the future of pot tourism in the region.

Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.

Teeth Snatched Out of "Stop and Frisk" in New York City: Cops Can No Longer Arrest People Found With Up To 25 Grams (Almost an Ounce) of Pot

New York City cops were using "Stop and Frisk" to target minority youth, to saddle minority youth with arrest records, to get an easy afternoon at the station house (processing the arrest), and for some easy overtime pay.—Ronald David Jackson

Photo by r0bz.

By Tina Moore , Rocco Parascandola , Corky Siemaszko
Don’t fear the reefer.

In a historic change, the NYPD on Nov. 19 will stop arresting people on low-level marijuana charges and issue tickets instead, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Monday.

People caught smoking on the street would still wind up in the pokey, but someone caught with a little less than an ounce of marijuana (25 grams) would be slapped with a summons.

“As for those who want to avoid summonses, don’t do it, it’s that simple,” Bratton said, holding up a baggie of oregano as a visual aid. “It’s still against the law. I’m not giving out get-out-of-jail for free cards.”

If found guilty, a violator will face a $100 fine for the first offense and $200 for a second, the top cop said.

Mayor de Blasio, who campaigned on curtailing stop-and-frisk, said “too many New Yorkers without any prior convictions have been arrested for low-level marijuana possession.”

“Blacks and Latino communities have been disproportionately affected,” he said.

A marijuana arrest means a police record, and that “hurts their chances to to get a good job, it hurts their chances to get housing, it hurts their chances to qualify get a student loan,” de Blasio said. “It can literally follow them the rest of their lives.”

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Criminalizing A Generation: Anti-Marijuana Movement is Funded by Private Prisons, Law Enforcement, Big Pharma and Alcoholic Beverage Companies

Photo by Hammerin Man.

By Noel Brinkerhof
Legalized marijuana may have taken root in Colorado and Washington, but that doesn’t mean it has to spread to other parts of the country, as far as a bevy of special interests are concerned.

Some of the most lucrative and powerful industries in America oppose marijuana decriminalization because it threatens their financial bottom-line or jobs for their workers. Five different interest groups form the backbone of the anti-pot campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org, which tracks political spending.

First, there’s the spirits, wine and beer companies. Legalized marijuana represents a direct threat to this industry’s business model. The more people can legally smoke a bud, the less need they’ll have to buy a Bud. Four years ago, the California Beer and Beverage Distributors contributed $10,000 to help defeat California’s Proposition 19, which sought to legalize recreational marijuana in the state.

Law enforcement groups also want to maintain criminal penalties for pot possession. If the country stops waging its war on drugs, including marijuana, fewer government dollars will flow to police efforts to address this public policy issue. Municipalities will also receive less money from property seized in drug raids.

Others in the criminal justice world that want to keep the status quo of locking up marijuana offenders are private prison operators and prison guard unions. States that legalize marijuana use are likely to experience a decline in prison populations—and that will reduce the need for government to hire private prison companies and correctional officers.

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Teens Who Smoke Marijuana Do Better in School Than Cigarette Smokers, Study Shows

Photo by Torben Hansen

By Travis Gettys
Students who smoke marijuana do better in school than their cigarette-smoking classmates, according to a new study.

Canadian researchers surveyed nearly 39,000 Ontario students in grades 7, 9, and 11 between 1981 and 2011 on their marijuana and tobacco use and their academic performance.

The study found that students who only smoked marijuana performed better in school than students who smoked only cigarettes or those who smoked both cigarettes and marijuana.

However, the researchers said their findings reflected the fact that fewer teens smoke today compared to 30 years ago.

Those students who do currently smoke make up a very “marginalized, vulnerable” population, said the study’s lead author, Michael Chaiton, assistant professor in epidemiology and public health policy at the University of Toronto.

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