9th Circuit Court rules cops can’t use dispensaries as ATMs

(Law.com) If police departments want to line their budgets with drug money, they’d better do it right, according to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a ruling Tuesday, Judge Richard Clifton ordered the feds to return nearly $200,000 to a Los Angeles medical cannabis collective. Local police raided the place in 2005, and the seized funds became subject to asset forfeiture proceedings. Clifton found that under the Fourth Amendment, a faulty warrant means the police can’t keep the money.

What happened on Wilshire Boulevard in Tuesday’s case wasn’t by plan. A Los Angeles cop responded to complaints of pot smoking on the street and quickly traced it to the United Medical Caregivers Clinic, according to the opinion. Even though the dispensary operators brandished paperwork authorizing them to operate under state medical marijuana laws, the police secured a search warrant and busted the place.

The money was turned over to the feds for a forfeiture action, with the city in line to receive 80 percent of the loot, according to the opinion. However, the state judge who signed the search warrant hadn’t been told the club operated as a medical dispensary. Given that, Clifton applied a relatively straightforward analysis to conclude that declarations submitted by one club operator in the state proceeding could not then be used in the federal forefeiture action, thus dooming the seizure.

“We are particularly concerned by the possibility that the LAPD might stand to profit from unlawful activity,” Clifton wrote.

Some things in America should not be for-profit enterprises, like policing and prisons.  In so many of these dispensary raids there are no charges filed against the operators, but the property is all destroyed and the cops seize and keep the cash.  Learn more about the unfair and unjust nature of civil forfeiture by visiting Forfeiture Endangers American Rights at fear.org.