One year ago yesterday a significant chunk of Humboldt County’s population was freaking the eff out while 450 federal agents stormed properties north and south for marijuana. KHUM dubbed the affair “Doobie Tuesday.” The feds called it “Southern Sweep.”
The feds put out press releases timed at 4:20 and seemed to enjoy — if sarcastically — the local culture. But (their) joking aside, they reportedly used unconstitutional measures to kick people off their land for several days while agents searched the properties. KMUD reported residents were denied the right to get a change of clothes or even retrieve the family dog. And for their extreme efforts the agents walked away with relatively little weed and money.
The main focus was on cut-over Barnum Timber land turned hippie corporation known as Buddhaville. The Feds eventually filed seizure notices for the property.
Minus the major raids, this year looks a lot like the last. KMUD reported Wednesday that Drug Enforcement Agents were conducting flight training in Mendocino County — just like June 2008 before the raids. But such training is an annual thing.
One new element this year is involvement of the Civil Air Patrol from Alabama which is the “civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force” according to their website. A CAP spokesperson told KMUD that DEA and Mendocino Sheriffs are their “customers” in this training mission.
Earlier Wednesday KMUD aired reports from the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project that low flying helicopters were scouting the houses in the Spyrock Road area in “reconnaissance mode.”
Ah, summer.
RSS - Posts
June 25, 2009 at 7:19 am
Man! Our Founding Fathers thought of everything. I totally missed that part in the Constitution.
June 25, 2009 at 7:20 am
The wildwood flower grew wild on the farm
And we never knowed what it was called
Some said it was a flower and some said it was weed
I didn’t gave it much thought…
One day I was out there talking to my brother
Reached down for a weed to chew on
Things got fuzzy and things got blurry
And then everything was gone
I Didn’t know what happened
But I knew it beat the hell out of sniffin’ burlap
I come to and my brother was there
And he said, ‘What’s wrong with your eyes?’
I said, ‘I don’t know, I was chewing on a weed’
He said, ‘Let me give it a try’
We spent the rest of that day and most of that night
Trying to find my brother, Bill
Caught up with him ’bout six o’clock the next mornin’
Naked, swinging on the windmill
He said he flew up there
I had to fly up and get him down
He was about half crazy
The very next day we picked a bunch of them weeds
And put ‘em in the sun to dry
Then we mashed ‘em up and we cleaned ‘em all
And put ‘em in the corncob pipe
Smokin’ them wildwood flowers got to be a habit
We didn’t see no harm
We thought it was kind of handy
Take a trip and never leave the farm
A big ol’ puff on the wildwood weed
Next thing you know
We’s just wandering behind the little animals
All good things gotta come to an end
And it’s the same with the wildwood weed
One day this feller from Washington come by
And he spied us and he turned white as a sheet
And he dug and he burned
And he burned and he dug
And he killed all our cute little weeds
Then he drove away
We just smiled and waved
Sittin’ there on that sack of seeds
Y’all come back now, ya hear
June 25, 2009 at 7:35 am
Jim Stafford sings it.
June 25, 2009 at 8:13 am
What a waste of taxpayer money!
When are they going to learn? The so-called war on drugs has been one long bust!
June 25, 2009 at 8:20 am
anniversary seems slightly too celebratory to me….
June 25, 2009 at 8:24 am
One year observance?
June 25, 2009 at 8:26 am
you don’t remember this one:
June 25, 2009 at 8:29 am
I do remember it. I blogged all about it. Is today an anniversary of a code enforcement raid?
June 25, 2009 at 8:34 am
Here’s an excerpt. Maybe this is why you bring it up.
June 25, 2009 at 8:42 am
no, but civil rights violations are awful, and it wasn’t the feds breaking up a multi-million dollar drug ring. it was poor people. you know they sued those people and then made them sign a confidentiality agreements as part of a settlement to drop the suit? the suit was a proactive move to head off civil rights suits against the county. whatever happened? nothing really, one guy retired or changed jobs. nobody in charge knew anything, code enforcement said the complaints came from planning, planning didn’t know anything, they didn’t need warrants, the committee in charge didn’t know anything and nobody was following their own rules.
June 25, 2009 at 8:48 am
and the reason i bring it up is because i dealt with code enforcement once and fortunately i had access to legal advice and enough knowledge to call them on their bs. i feel sorry for people who don’t. it is like a Kafka novel and i am not kidding. if they show up ask to see a warrant. that’s when the fun starts. they act like you are guilty because you want them to prove they have the right to be there. sorry for the diversion, but at least the feds get warrants.
June 25, 2009 at 9:13 am
So they did pot raids and code enforcement on the same day?
June 25, 2009 at 2:17 pm
denied the right to get a change of clothes or even retrieve the family dog.
Man! Our Founding Fathers thought of everything. I totally missed that part in the Constitution.
4th and 5th amendments regarding seizures without probable cause or due process.
June 26, 2009 at 8:11 am
House on Bayside road was raided yesterday by law enforcement. He was one of those on Kevin Hoovers ‘list’ from last year. The owner of the property is very much loved by many people in this community and we are all very concerned for him.
Yesterday I did not realize it was the anniversary of the Fed thing last year. I stopped by to check on our dear friend. The cops had gone and apparently he had been taken into custody.
But who do I see trespassing on our friends property? That son of a bitch Kevin Hoover piece of shit is sneaking around and entering his back yard!! Obviously he respects some laws more than others. Kevin, When families are getting separated from each other and good people are having their freedom taken from them; when are you going to learn that you are causing harm?
You are not welcome here in this community, I wish that you would just go away. Too bad it was MJ and not you yesterday.
June 26, 2009 at 1:02 pm
KMUD News spoke to law-enforcement in Mendocino County last week for one of its stories, and got a heads-up that the DEA was going to be here for “training exercises.” So everyone was warned, for whatever it’s worth!
One of the choppers flew right over our house the day before yesterday; it was the closest I’ve ever seen one. It dipped down to the creek, about a quarter of a mile away, and hovered over our neighbor’s property before taking off and coming back for a second pass.
Lots of chopper activity today, too, but I think that was for the Confusion Hill ribbon-cutting.
June 28, 2009 at 8:46 am
It’s amusing to read all the sniveling from pot growers and supporters of pot growers.
If you didn’t grow pot you wouldn’t have to worry about the feds, the cops, or if there happens to be a helicopter in the area.
June 28, 2009 at 11:41 am
Yeah, and if those pesky Spanish Jews would have just converted to Christianity like they were supposed to, they wouldn’t have had to worry about being tortured during the Spanish Inquistion, right?
June 28, 2009 at 11:42 am
To paraphrase a comment I made on a thread over at Eric’s:
Discussing these Pointless Paramilitary Pot Raids without noting that ending Cannabis Prohibition would solve the problem entirely is like discussing the elephant dung on the carpet as if the elephant in the room was an irrelevant detail, and removing the elephant from the room was not a solution worth considering.
June 28, 2009 at 12:22 pm
The following story kinda reminds me of California, where hundreds of millions are wasted on rural Pot Eradication (which has stopped no one from accessing pot if they want it), while at the same time the 24-hour Meth Extravaganza continues to claim victims every day:
===============================
Opium Eradication Ends As Pot Eradication Escalates
by SmileySam
Sat Jun 27, 2009 at 04:19:53 AM PDT
Finally our policy of slashing and burning the Opium crops the Afghani farmers grew to survive is coming to a end. At the same time the DEA, ATF, Sheriffs, and anyone else that can roundup a Helicopter is starting their yearly assault of American pot growers.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/27/747399/-Opium-Eradication-Ends-As-Pot-Eradication-Escalates
=============================
June 29, 2009 at 8:22 am
Thanks Skippy, Great Points You Make.
June 29, 2009 at 11:20 am
You mean in the snitch sheets? It’s the only free paper left that burns well. I guess it is not supposed to be free.
June 29, 2009 at 4:35 pm
I do find Hoover’s Police Log pretty amusing. Yes, sometimes it has kind of a sneering tone, but, well, nobody’s perfect. Often the ironic or surreal way that he describes some of the wacky encounters between police and some of our more colorful residents makes me laugh out loud. There aren’t to many written things that can do that. Anyway, you can read those Police Logs online if you don’t want to buy the Eye.
As far as Hoover’s anti-grow-house jihad, I think that some of his methods are really kind of over-the-top. I do think he means well (for example he is an advocate for full legalization) but publicly singling out certain houses alleged to be grow houses is going a bit too far. If he has real evidence of illegal and/or dangerous activity he could always go to the police with it, and as a reporter he could follow up to see if police checked out the situation, what happened, etc. That would be the responsible thing to do, if he is really concerned about the hazards of commercial growing in residential neighborhoods (and isn’t just into it for the sensationalism / ego trip).
But when Hoover points the finger at a certain address that is supposedly a “grow house” it may be that they are 215 patients and/or growing for the co-ops. Either way, the publicity certainly acts as an invitation to potential rip-off artists to go after that house, inviting exactly the kind of violence to the neighborhoods that Hoover purports to oppose. Sooner or later, he may find himself on the losing side of an expensive lawsuit when his unproven allegations and over-the-top invasions of privacy lead to the injury or death of an innocent bystander.
For example, I have a friend in Eureka who has VERY SERIOUS lifelong health problems, a Marinol prescription (which he can’t really afford to use and doesn’t work as well anyway), a 215 prescription, a state 215 I.D. card from Humboldt County Health Department, and a 96 square-foot grow space for his ganja, which is never fully utilized.
Well, his asshole neighbor took it upon himself to report a “suspicious chemical smell” to the cops two different times. Both times they came out (different officers) and my friend invited them in, led them through his house, showed him the plants, his paperwork, etc., and the cops left and told the neighbor that everything was legit, please stop calling us about this guy.
Well, not satisfied, the asshole neighbor took it upon himself to spray-paint “big drug dealer lives here” on my friend’s fence the very next day. This time the cops had to pay HIM a little visit and explain the laws about vandalism. They also pointed out that the asshole neighbor might have been LIABLE if his inaccurate potential invitation to rip-off artists had created property damage or, gods forbid, a violent home invasion leading to injury or death.
Well, after a quick coat of paint on the fence all has been quiet now for almost a year, but if the wrong punks had seen the “big drug dealer lives here” sign, things could have gone very wrong very fast. And of course my friend, who really does need this medicine to stay healthy and productive, deserved none of this harassment and worry.
This is what can happen when individual citizens take it upon themselves to play cop, minus the training, minus an understanding of the law, and without thinking through the consequences. It seems to me that Mr. Hoover is playing with fire, and may not realize the potential fallout from his actions, including the potential for injury of completely innocent parties.
My advice to Mr. Hoover would be to leave the cop work to the cops, the zoning work to the zoning officers, and concentrate on journalism rather than peering in windows and making “educated guesses” about whether a particular house has illegal “commercial” pot growing going on. It’s irresponsible and, in my opinion, counterproductive to the goal of preventing violence in the community.
June 30, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Kind of? Means well?
I’m glad he did it. He screwed himself with that. No amount of spouting liberal political views was ever going bring him shame in Arcata. Signing on the the “concerned neighbors” 215 bullshit fest did the trick.
Go get em Hoover, get those punk kids off our lawns dag nab it.