(Last Blog on Earth – San Diego City Beat) The San Diego Police Department and other county law-enforcement agencies are conducting a sweeping raid on marijuana dispensaries this afternoon. As of this writing, CityBeat has heard that Green Kross Collective, Total Care Collective, San Diego Discount Caregivers, Hillcrest Compassionate Care, Downtown Kush lounge, Top Quality Collective, Medical Cannabis Providers, and Nature’s Rx Collective have been shut down by the San Diego Police Department and their owners arrested if they were present. Sources tell CityBeat that the owners have been given 48 hours to provide proper paperwork for their shops, but everything is very tentative at the moment.
Amy Roderick, a spokesperson for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, says the DEA is involved in the raids currently being conducted by the San Diego Police Department and the San Diego Sheriff’s Department on medical marijuana dispensaries. She said DEA is involved “in a support role,” but she said she didn’t know if DEA agents were actually making arrests.
Randy Wall is a 52-year-old AIDS patient and volunteer at Hillcrest Compassionate Care, one of the medical marijuana dispensaries raided today by the San Diego Police Department. Wall said he has been a member and a greeter for the store for a year, about as long as the place has been in business. Wall said they were preparing to shoot a TV commercial at about 11:30 a.m. when police arrived. Wall had been cleaning a back office.
“When I walked out, we heard the cops were coming, but we said, ‘Be cool, be cool,’” he said. “We thought they were going to check our permits. But there was like 20 cops with guns drawn and battering rams. We told them we would unlock the door if they gave us a second.”
“We said, ‘Hold on! Hold on! We’ll let you in,’ but they busted the door open,” he said. “Then they busted down another door that was locked. There was nothing in there; it’s a bedroom where someone sleeps. We have one person stay there; we have to have a security guard in there 24-hours a day.”
“It seems to me that everybody that worked there got arrested today. They handcuffed everyone—everybody that worked there was in handcuffs that I saw,” Wall said.
We all know the San Diego DA and Sheriff’s Office have made overturning Prop 215 their reason for living, so police and sheriffs raiding dispensaries isn’t surprising. But the DEA was involved “in a support role”? Didn’t the president say that there were much more pressing issues for his Justice Department to deal with?
“What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on [medical marijuana]…” – Barack Obama, May 2008
And didn’t the Attorney General say that Mr. Obama’s campaign promise was now Justice Department policy?
“What the President said during the campaign [about ending raids] … is now American policy.”
The new Southern California NORML is following the raids. Contact Craig Beresh at craigberesh@normlsc.org if you have any news to report.
Topics: California, collectives, DEA Raids, dispensaries, San Diego, San Diego County
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[...] by Punk Rock Feedmeister on Sep.11, 2009, under Reviews http://stash.norml.org/multiple-raid…diego#comments [...]
Just received my medical card last month, My doctor suggested I use it for the nausea caused by the medication I have to take. Today I found my dispensaries closed, I’m so sad and sick, the nausea is so bad that I will probably not be able to go to work tomorrow. Many people voted for medical marijuana and now a few are working to destroy all the good being done for the sick. With out the medical marijuana I will not be able to finish my treatment and will die much sooner thanks DEA_th. DEA raided all the dispensaries in San Diego co. I’m so sick WOW just when you thought it was safe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am a medical patient, but find it funny that any of you ever believed Barak Obama, you should know by now he will tell you whatever you want to hear. TRUST YOUR SELVES and CREATE SMALL GROUPS OF PEOPLE YOU WORK WITH> STOP GOVERNMENT CONTROL… GROW YOUR OWN PRODUCE!
It’s the same ‘ol tune with these assholes- politicians and the feds- they’re all a bunch of L-I-A-R-S!
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[...] Multiple raids on collectives and dispensaries in San Diego [...]
What do you call law officers who are not following the laws created by the people?
Renegade cops?
Is CA any better off with a medical marijuana law in place, if your facing arrests and raids like that. What the hell is going on are they allowed to have these Despensaries? Did they not have the right paperwork done? Are these federal charges? Or state charges? Is this happening in every medical state, the state police raiding medical users and their supplyers? How is this better or progress? I just dont get it.