DEA agents raid Culver City medical marijuana dispensary
Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 8:31 am | By: Radical Russ
DEA agents raid Culver City medical marijuana dispensary – Los Angeles Times
Federal agents raided a Culver City medical marijuana dispensary where they spent more than four hours this afternoon, serving a search warrant that resulted in no arrests but left the shop in disarray.The federal operation came on the same day an appellate court in San Diego ruled that federal law does not preempt the state’s law allowing the use of medical marijuana — a ruling touted by supporters of California’s medical marijuana law as a significant win.
At the dispensary agents left behind trash, counters strewn with open and empty glass jars, piles of receipts thrown on the ground, upturned couch cushions, bits of marijuana on the edges of counters and an ATM with its doors torn open and emptied.
In the residents’ rooms a safe was cut open, dresser drawers pulled open, and rumpled clothes and knickknacks thrown on the ground. An outdoor vegetable garden had plants uprooted, along with marijuana plants removed by the agents.
Brian V. Birbiglia, 35, sat handcuffed next to DEA agents on a tattered couch outside the dispensary for more than four hours during the raid. Next to the couch sat a box marked “DEA evidence,” about a dozen black trash bags and two Trader Joe’s paper bags. Some agents wore protective chest gear, black sunglasses and guns in leg holsters.
After the raid was over and he was released, Birbiglia was visibly enraged. An employee and friend of the dispensary’s owner, Jeff Joseph, Birbiglia said he is a disabled former Marine who has a prescription to smoke marijuana for a foot injury.
“We follow the law,” he yelled, his face red and his eyes teary. “We might as well have just got robbed by a bunch of thugs downtown.”
Clyde Carey, 50, of Marina del Rey was at the store Friday visiting a friend when agents burst in through the locked front door, he said.
“We heard some noise outside, and then the door literally burst in, and the DEA came in in full combat gear, told everybody to get on the floor and put their hands behind their heads,” Carey said. “It was like, literally, an episode of “24,” when they bust in on a terrorist cell.”
Another smash-and-grab federal robbery. Another raid where there are no arrests. Another example of state-sponsored terrorism in action. No, the DEA doesn’t equal al Qaeda — they’re not killing anybody — but these raids do not stop dispensaries and they do not arrest so-called “criminals”, so their only purpose is to terrorize the proprietors and customers of the dispensaries.
Even if I take the prohibitionist’s view, however, I can’t see how this helps their cause. All you are doing is creating more dedicated activists and martyrs and making your side look arbitrary and capricious.
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The LA Times covered this story, with a photo of a Blackwater operative with a huge semi-automatic side-arm strapped to his thigh. Curiously, today, the photo disappeared. However, you can see it here:http://digg.com/politics/Photo_of_Blackwater_paramilitary_used_in_California_DEA_raid
Not sure which is the bigger story, that the DEA uses paramilitary, like war-crime-stained Blackwater against US citizens, or that the LA Times is trying to bury that information.