Three roommates who grew medical marijuana are suing two law enforcement agencies after their rural Conifer home was raided “military-style” with armored vehicles, machine guns and flash grenades.

A year after the raid, none of the three has been charged with a crime, and they have received minimal response from Denver police and Jefferson County sheriff’s officials about why they confiscated $70,000, 28 firearms and a pickup, their attorney said.

“We have heard pretty much silence from the authorities on our requests for further information,” said Rob Corry, an attorney with The Cannabis Law Firm. “Our clients are innocent of any criminal wrongdoing whatsoever. This is a significant amount of property and they’d like to get it back.”

Denver police spokeswoman Christine Downs said the criminal investigation is ongoing and that she could not comment on the lawsuit. Jefferson County sheriff’s officials did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Heavily armed SWAT officers knocked in doors and threw flash grenades during the Jan. 23, 2015, raid, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday. Officers “assaulted” dogs at the “peaceful mountain home” and destroyed more than 350 marijuana plants.

Derek Smith and Shannon Riley, who are engaged, and their roommate Eric Hepper grew medical marijuana and sold it to Vietnam War veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as well as cancer patients, their lawsuit says.

The Colorado constitution allows residents to grow medical marijuana for more than five patients when there is not a dispensary within a reasonable distance from their homes, according to the lawsuit. It also allows residents to grow as many plants as their patients’ doctors recommend.

In a search warrant affidavit, Denver police said they were working with a confidential informant before the raid.

“This is rural Colorado,” Corry said. “There is no law against cash and there is definitely no law against guns.”

Matt Agorist writes on Alternet:

Orlando, FL — Ryan Richard Diaz and two of his friends were huddling under the corner of a parking garage last July, trying to get out of the rain, when they were approached by officer Michael Napolitano.

According to a lawsuit filed this week, when Napolitano arrived he became very aggressive which compelled Diaz’s friend, Mario Manzi, to begin film.

Napolitano became irate after seeing these teens practicing their 1st amendment right to film the police; so, he proceeded to violate their rights by stopping them.

As Napolitano attempted to grab the phone, the teens began passing the phone off to each other. This behavior infuriated the already raging Napolitano, so he then resorted to his only available tactic — violence.

Because the teens didn’t immediate prostrate themselves before his divine authority, Napolitano struck Diaz in the stomach with his knee multiple times and threw him to the ground. While on the ground, the video shows Napolitano continue to dole out blows to Diaz’s legs and head.

During the melee, you can hear Napolitano attempt to take the phone several times.

When told by one of the teens that he cannot take their phone, Napolitano answers, “You don’t understand how this works. When you are detained, you do not run the show.”

“You cannot grab my camera,” one of them then says.

Napolitano’s answer, “Yes, I can.”

The other two teens involved were then molested by Napolitano as he searched them for the non-existent plant.

The entirely unscathed Napolitano then accused Diaz of battery on a law enforcement officer and arrested him. Prosecutors dropped the battery charges but, unfortunately, they held a lesser charge of resisting arrest without violence in October.

Diaz and his friends had committed no crime, they had harmed no one, yet they were subject to state-sponsored violence and harassment because a cop claimed to have “smelled marijuana.”

“This kid is 5-6, 130 pounds, and his only crime is being at the wrong place at the wrong time and trying to video-record a police officer,” said his attorney, J. Marc Jones.

Unsurprisingly, officer Napolitano faced no punishment and, in fact, received support from his superiors for his actions.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, police Cpl. Joseph Catanzaro reviewed video of what happened, talked to Diaz and his friends and concluded that Napolitano’s use of force was justified.

The video below shows a symptom of much larger sickness in America today. The state is addicted to controlling what individuals can and can’t put into their own bodies. In an ostensible attempt to protect individuals from themselves, the state will kidnap, cage, and kill you — for your own good.

If you are truly concerned about reducing the level of brutality among American cops, you cannot be taken seriously unless you address the war on drugs.

With Halloween just around the corner, it’s time for scary news reports that begin, “With Halloween just around the corner…” This genre of yellow journalism often features warnings about tainted trick-or-treat candy, a mythical menace that in recent years has gained credibility thanks to the popularity of  marijuana edibles in states where such products are legal.

Last year police in Denver, where state-licensed marijuana merchants had recently begun serving recreational consumers, told parents to be on the lookout for THC-tainted treats in their children’s candy bags. As usual, no actual cases of such surreptitious dosing were identified.

From Denver PD

But fear of strangers with candy springs eternal. The fact that this threat so far has proven imaginary is not deterring reporters and law enforcement officials around the country from warning parents that harmless-looking treats might contain a mind-altering substance other than sugar—if not marijuana, then MDMA.

Often the pretext for such reports is a drug seizure that occurs within a month or so of Halloween, even if there’s no evidence of a connection to the holiday. Last month KTRK, the ABC station in Houston, reported that “a recent pot bust has authorities issuing a warning for parents, as Halloween approaches,” because local drug agents had “learned that marijuana made into candy was being shipped across state lines.” A few days later, after Orangeburg County, South Carolina, deputies found “several bags of marijuana-infused candy” in a local motel room, Sheriff Leroy Ravenell said “we need to pay close attention to the candy our children are in contact with and are consuming.” Summarizing that report (which appeared on WLTX, the CBS station in Columbia), USA Today added the lead, “Just in time for Halloween…”

Atlantic Beach Police DepartmentSimilarly, The Florida Times Union warned on October 14 that “Atlantic Beach parents may have another thing to worry about as Halloween trick-or-treating looms—candy infused with marijuana, as discovered following the recent arrest of a 33-year-old man with bags of it.” Last week, after students at Miller High School in Miller, Missouri, were caught with THC-treated Skittles, Superintendent Dustin Storm also thought of Halloween, telling parents, “With Halloween coming up, it’s very important to be observant.”

In other cases, warnings about marijuana-infused Halloween candy are not tied to any particular event; they are just part of the standard advice issued to parents in October.  On October 15, citing the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, the Arizona Daily Star said parents of treat-or-treaters should “be on the lookout for any edible marijuana treats.” Last week several Nebraska newspapers regurgitated a warning from the Nebraska Poison Control Center saying marijuana edibles that “resemble traditional candies” are “another good reason to check all your children’s candy when they get home.” Similarly, WITN, the NBC station in Greenville, North Carolina, warned viewers that “tricky packaging could land marijuana edibles in the hands of trick-or-treaters this Halloween.” KTHV, the ABC station in Little Rock, Arkansas, reported that “police want parents to pay extra attention to the Halloween candy their kids collect this year, now that marijuana edibles are in circulation.”

Reporters in Colorado have been a bit more cautious, presumably because they remember last year’s false alarm about edibles sold by marijuana merchants in that state. Last Friday The Denver Post noted that “the initial concern last year over marijuana edibles ending up in Halloween candy never came to pass.” KOAA, the NBC station in Colorado Springs, likewise conceded that authorities “have not seen a spike of accidental [marijuana] ingestion at Halloween.” Still, you never know. “One of the big things with cannabis-containing candies, it does have a distinct smell,” a local doctor told the station, saying parents should be “making sure you’re looking at everything and making sure the packaging looks legitimate.”

Almost all of these stories make a leap from the observation that cannabis candy exists to the completely unsubstantiated fear that someone might slip it into your kid’s trick-or-treat bag. That scenario is highly implausible, since it is hard to see what the payoff would be for replacing cheap Halloween treats with expensive marijuana edibles. Given the delay between eating cannabis candy and feeling its effects, the hypothetical prankster could not even hope to witness the consequences of his trick. Furthermore, it seems that nothing like this has ever happened—or if it did, it somehow escaped the attention of the yellow journalists who keep warning us about the possibility. The story is kept alive by the gullibility of the same parents who anxiously examine their kid’s Halloween candy for needles and shards of glass.

Jackson Metro Police Department

Jackson Metro Police DepartmentThis year saw the birth of a new variation on this theme: Instead of cannabis in your kids’ candy, maybe there’s MDMA. Snopes.com, the online catalog of urban legends, traces the scare to a September 25 post by a Facebook user named Thomas Chizzo Bagwell featuring a photo of colorful Molly tablets. “If your kids get these for halloween,” Bagwell wrote, “it’s not candy.” Last week the Jackson, Mississippi, police department posted the same photo, accompanied by this warning:

If your kids get these for Halloween candy, they ARE NOT CANDY!!! They are the new shapes of “Ecstasy” and can kill kids through overdoses!!! So, check your kid’s candy and “When in doubt, Throw it out!!!” Be safe and always keep the shiny side up!!!

That burst of fact-free fear, which was later removed from the police department’s Facebook page, transformed idle speculation into “an alert” issued by “police nationwide,” as WILX, the NBC station in Lansing, Michigan, put it. WOIO, the CBS station in Cleveland, claimed “Ecstasy masked to look like candy” is “popping up all over the country, and police want to warn you.” If a child were to eat one of those tablets, according to Westlake, Ohio, Police Capt. Guy Turner, “they would be in the emergency room without a doubt.”

Why does Turner think that scenario is plausible? “Look at the colors,” he told WOIO. “They’re very similar to, like, Sweet Tarts or Sprees or Smarties. These people, they just piggyback off legitimate stuff.”

Snopes.com writer Kim LaCapria notes that candy-colored MDMA tablets have been around for years. “As is often the case with such rumors,” she writes, “the public seemed to conflate the existence of a drug that looked child-friendly…with deliberate manufacture of those substances with an intent to attract children. Prior to its September 2015 circulation on social media as a cautionary tale, the photograph of Ecstasy used here appeared primarily on blogs discussing (presumably adult) recreational drug use.”

One widely carried TV report, credited to NBC, said “just one of those candy pills would cost about $10,” which suggests “it’s rare that it would pop up in your child’s trick-or-treat bag.” Still, “police do want you to be aware.” In other words, there is no evidence that anyone has ever contemplated giving trick-or-treaters MDMA tablets, let alone actually done it, but you should worry about it anyway.

Child poisoners disguised as friendly neighbors seem to be the adult equivalent of witches, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and zombies. As one randomly selected mother told WOIO, “It’s really scary that there are people out there who want to hurt kids on Halloween.” And who doesn’t love a good scare this time of year?

From Reason.com

The Business of Marijuana

A sweet new bill with bipartisan support is seeking to cut off all funding for the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) generated through asset seizures.

According to Forbes, The “Stop Civil Asset Forfeiture Funding for Marijuana Suppression Act” was introduced mid-September by (D) California Representative Ted Lieu, and (R) Michigan Representative Justin Amash. The DEA’s new legislative nemesis would work like this; the bill would preclude the DEA from utilizing any and all federal forfeiture resources to further its domestic campaign of terror, a.k.a. the Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program.

In 1979, Hawaii and California were the first states to feel the sting of the feds new tool used in the War on Drugs. Shortly thereafter, the Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Act had spread like a disease throughout all 50 states in the US. Since it’s unfortunate introduction, the program has been responsible for widespread misery from coast-to-coast; in 2014 alone there were 6,310 arrests, $27.3 million seized, and more than 4.3 million plants destroyed. Currently, the asset-freezing program collects approximately $18 million annually in federal funding, largely from accused marijuana cultivators and their distributors.

What has people concerned over this money-grab of a program is the bulk of its asset seizures are anything but criminal. Rather most of these transgressions are civil in nature. In the real world, an individual must be convicted of a crime for criminal forfeiture to occur. Unfortunately, civil forfeiture lacks the requirement of any conviction or criminal charge for the federal government to grab your personal assets, cash, or other items of monetary value.

The ugliest and most simplistic explanation of civil forfeiture is this, the police aren’t required to demonstrate you’re guilty of anything to seize your property … However, you will need to prove your lack of guilt to get it back.

This newest bill is similar to another defensive piece of legislation passed last year, an amendment authored by (D) California Rep. Sam Farr and (R) California Rep. Dana Rohrbacher. Their anti-seizure legislation was added to the 2014 and 2015 Omnibus Appropriations Spending Bill. Working towards the same goal, their amendment banned the use of any federally seized assets from being utilized for raids in states that have reformed their marijuana laws.

The most notable change in the newly offered Bill, is the new program would provide a permanent fix to problem of overzealous federal government illegally grabbing cash from those legally operating a marijuana business in states that are sanctioned their operations. Rather than having to renew each year by vote the Omnibus Appropriations Spending Bill.

*Not one to miss an opportunity to shine the light of irony of our legal system, John Oliver rips into the unjust nature of civil forfeiture in the below video.

Legendary hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg

According to a report from Agence France-Presse, famous hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg was detained by police in Sweden on Saturday night after they suspected him of using illegal drugs.

“Police carrying out roadside controls noticed that Snoop Dogg (whose car was pulled over) seemed to be under the influence of narcotics. He was arrested and taken to the police station to take a urine test,” said Daniel Nilsson, a police spokesman for the central Uppsala region.

“The incident lasted several minutes. Once the test was carried out he left,” Nilsson added.

Swedish police did not give details on how they knew the rapper was under the influence of drugs, given that the vehicle he was in was not in operation when they approached him.

According to the report, Snoop Dogg was arrested after performing at a concert Saturday evening. The encounter does not appear to have occurred violently.

Results of the drug test were not available at the time of writing.

UPDATE @ 7/10/2015 1:50 AM: According to a report from the OC Register, police conducted a second, separate raid of the dispensary after police were caught on video attempting to disable security, stealing and eating marijuana edibles, and mocking the dispensary’s disabled manager.

The OC Register reports:

“Several employees at a Santa Ana medical marijuana clinic were briefly detained Wednesday after police converged on the collective for the second time in less than two months and shut it down.

“The closure followed the execution of a search warrant at the Sky High Holistic dispensary for violating a city ordinance prohibiting dispensaries, Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.”

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Santa Ana police are under fire and facing possible litigation for their behavior while storming a medical marijuana dispensary, after a recording was released that shows two officers making racist comments and berating an amputee, as well as stealing cannabis edibles and attempting to disable surveillance cameras.

Hidden surveillance cameras recorded the event at the Sky High medical marijuana dispensary. The cameras were installed by the owners, who expected to be raided after their dispensary failed to win the ‘lottery’ that grants 20 dispensaries a license to operate in the city.

David Pappas, the attorney hired by the dispensary, instructed his clients to remain calm and cooperate with the police. After the raid, Pappas released video of the incident that shows officers attempting to disable the surveillance cameras and stealing pot-infused cookies. It also captured the following dialogue:

“Did you punch that one-legged old benita?”

“I was about to kick her in her fucking nub!”

A video of police making the comments is available below:

Santa Ana Police Chief Carlos Rojas said his own department will be investigating the incident, but proposed the unlikely excuse that an officer may have brought a cookie with him to eat, rather than stealing a marijuana edible from the dispensary.

“I don’t know if that’s [a marijuana] edible. Where did [the officer] get it?”

Santa Ana Police Chief Carlos Rojas

More video of the officers, which includes them playing darts and joking about the raid, is available below:

Our friends from Reason Magazine report that armed cops in Santa Ana, California, donned ski masks to break and enter into a local medical marijuana dispensary, raiding it with guns drawn in a May 27 police action. They then proceeded to remove surveillance cameras and recording equipment, but they didn’t remove it all. Video from a camera they didn’t disable also caught the officers eating what appear to be marijuana edibles, then acting in a way to suggest they had become intoxicated, with one officer even joking that she’d love to kick a marijuana activist present at the raid, Marla James, an amputee, in the “nub.”

Watch one of the videos, via Orange County Weekly, below:

As OC Weekly reports, the dispensary that was raided, the Sky High Collective, was one of several in Santa Ana that was not selected in a lottery process in February that permitted a limited number of dispensaries to operate. Via the OC Weekly blog:

James and her husband David told the Weekly that they were present at Sky High because their attorney Matt Pappas, had learned the collective would be raided from Santa Ana’s city attorney, Sonia Carvalho.”

“When they came back into the back room when David and I were, they asked us why we were there, and I told them we were there to observe them, the police,” James recalled. “And they were really surprised about that.” When James told the officers that “Sonia” had told her attorney about the raid, the officers didn’t recognize the name. “They had no idea and it made them seem kind of stupid and maybe that’s why they got mad.”

James struggled to understand why the female officer in the video would make fun of her disability.

“You know what, I was really nice to that woman,” James said. “I even complimented her on her hair. I treated that woman with respect and I have no idea why she wanted to kick my stump.”

The police department insists the video that was made public was edited and not in chronological order, and have started an internal investigation, saying they hope unedited video will give them a “clearer picture” of what happened.

As other states move to legalize marijuana more forcefully and clearly than California has over the last twenty years, the problem of licensing shouldn’t be ignored. Where the government legalizes marijuana by creating a legalized monopoly or cartel, they are keeping significant numbers of non-violent people out of the legal framework and in the crosshairs of authorities.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Governor Larry Hogan (R-MD) vetoed three bills on Friday that contained major criminal justice reforms, including one which reduced penalties related to cannabis use.

SB 517 contained legislation to reduce marijuana paraphernalia penalties to a civil offense. The governor also vetoed two other bills: SB 528, which would have limited asset forfeiture seized by police, and HB 980, which would have restored the right to vote to felons who have been released from prison.

Hogan explained in a letter to legislators that his decision to veto the bills was based on requests from Maryland police unions, including the Maryland Sheriffs’ Association and the Maryland Chiefs of Police Association. Both organizations have campaigned against legislative reforms to asset forfeiture and cannabis possession penalties.

The actual explanation given by Hogan for his veto of the cannabis reform bill bafflingly referenced heroin addiction as factor in the governor’s reasoning.

“Maryland is currently facing a heroin epidemic. The individuals involved in the manufacture and sale of drugs are profiting from the deaths and ruined lives they are creating. The asset forfeiture law helps to ensure that these criminals do not reap any economic benefits from their crimes.”

— Maryland Governor Larry Hogan

Hogan made no comment about the benefits and funding the state of Maryland receives as a result of drug criminalization.

A study by the ACLU on marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010 concluded that the state of Maryland had one of the highest arrest rates for marijuana possession. Baltimore in particular was found to have an arrest rate of approximately 11.4 arrests per 1,000 people, among the highest in the US.

This afternoon the hypocrite governor of New Hampshire spoke at Keene State College’s 2015 graduation ceremony.  Maggie Hassan, the boss of the state’s executive branch, is likely to veto the cannabis decrim bill if it makes it through the NH senate.  It already passed the NH house with a supermajority of votes.  It’s clear that decriminalization is what the people of New Hampshire want (it’s also the humane choice), but Hassan throws her loyalty into the camp of the police and cares not one bit about the lives that continue to be ruined because of her inhumane war on pot.

Oh, and to make her position even more outrageous, it turns out she herself has used cannabis in her college days.  That raging hypocrisy didn’t stop her from showing up at Keene State College and acting like she actually gives a damn about the very same students that her police regularly threaten and harass over victimless crimes like cannabis and alcohol possession.  Rich Paul and I went down to KSC today to confront her on these things and were accompanied by local education activist Ed Bryans who was upset with Hassan’s veto of the anti-common core bill. We found her at the end of the commencement and had plenty of time to give her a hard time while she was unable to leave, much to the dismay of a few of her sycophants. Here’s the video:

It’s not too late for cannabis decrim to pass, but Hassan and the NH senators need to hear from you. Please reach out to your senator here and ask them to support HB618, the cannabis decriminalization bill. Then please call Hassan’s office and encourage her to do the right thing and let decrim pass.

Authored by Ian Freeman for http://freekeene.com