Last week I reported on a Daily Journal article about the DEA in Mendocino County. Turns out they’re here for pot spotting training.
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July 6, 2010 at 10:03 am
ED Denson
If anything shows the futility of the whole enforcement effort it is this statement by Mendo Sheriff’s Lt Noe, quoted in that linked article:
Last year the Sheriff’s Office and CAMP seized 541,000 plants, and this year seized almost 100,000 plants in just the first week of raids, according to Noe.
“It’s increasing every year,” he said.
And yet if they just quit seizing plants he’d soon be reporting
“Since the price collapsed it’s decreasing every year.”
July 6, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Jendocino
Such a waste of resources. Sigh. Thanks for sharing.
July 6, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Eric Kirk
Ed – but can they successfully lower the supply enough to up the price? It’s all about economic localism.
July 9, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Ed Denson
The DEA just raided the first collective to apply for a 99 plant permit under the new Mendocino county ordinance. I suppose the FEDs wanted to send a messge, and that message is if you try to go legal, we will get you. It seems clear that the Feds want no legal grows in Mendocino county. Who in their right mind would apply for a Mendocino permit now? It’s hard to believe that the sheriff cooperated with the DEA in setting up the bust, but it’s not hard to believe that he cooperated with the DEA in doing their training program. Some thanks he got.
If local authorities want any credibilty they are going to have to have a firm policy of no cooperation at any level with Federal law enforcement. And, I think, that will include refusing CAMP grants since they are largely Federally funded. Medical marijuana is legal under California law. California law enforcement must decide where their loyalties lay – with the people they are hired to protect, or with the Feds. If it’s the Feds they should quit State law enforcement work and go to work for the Feds. If they are hired to support the Constitution of the State of California and its laws then they should quit cooperating with the Feds until the Feds recognise California’s medical marijuana laws, and, dare I say it, states rights.
Obama’s government instituted a policy to prevent these “friendly fire” arrests. Now lets see if they can control their own people, and make this right for the victim.
July 10, 2010 at 9:56 am
Eric Kirk
Can local authorities refuse to cooperate Ed?
And I wonder if an executive order is enforceable in court, or does Obama have to enforce it himself?
July 10, 2010 at 2:26 pm
ED Denson
The order is explicitly not enforceable in court, and is quite wishy-washy in its terms anyway. It amounts to little more than “I’d rather you spend your resources on something other than state-legal marijuana.”
Yes, local authorities can refuse to cooperate. They are American citizens aren’t they? No one can be compelled to cooperate with law enforcement. And as a step which is not even non-cooperation, they could not apply for the CAMP grant. They could also publicly invite the DEA to do its training in some other county.
Just a thought, but if someone in California law enforcement assisted the DEA in locating or raiding the collective they, or their California agency employer, might be liable for damages. Lets just imagine that the sheriff gave the DEA a list of applicants for the collective permits….. I don.t think he did, but I would not put it past some of his subordinates who have been running wild unchecked for years. Mendocino, I’m sorry to say, may also actually harbor corruption in its law enforcement – something I’ve not encountered often elsewhere.
July 10, 2010 at 3:41 pm
sageplant
just a link to DEA’s views
http://www.justice.gov/dea/marijuana_position.html
July 11, 2010 at 12:18 am
Anonymous
Yes, local authorities can refuse to cooperate. They are American citizens aren’t they? No one can be compelled to cooperate with law enforcement.
A law enforcement officer can be compelled to uphold the law.
July 11, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Ed Denson
Yes, anon, perhaps he can be compelled to uphold the law he has sworn to uphold. But a California officer’s job is to uphold California’s law, not Federal law. If state law enforcement would uphold Federal law there would be no need for federal law enforcement officers – and no need for sovereign state governments. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Federal government controls everything – that is not the system of government we have.
July 11, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Eric Kirk
But I do believe the poster may be correct in that law enforcement officers do take an oath to uphold the laws of the country as well as state. If I remember correctly, we as lawyers pledge to uphold the national constitution.
July 11, 2010 at 8:17 pm
ED Denson
Ah, the Constitution, that’s one thing. The laws, that’s another. There is no intrinsic reason California law enforcement should pledge to uphold anything Federal but the US Constitution, and they can do that quite nicely by boycotting Federal law enforcement’s wrongful actions.
There is a perfectly good state challenge to the Fed’s regarding medical marijuana just sitting in SB 420, waiting for someone to find it and use it, by the way, if I merge two similar topics into one posting.
July 11, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Eric Kirk
Well, Woods posted this statement on his list.
In the Covelo bust on Wednesday, the DEA agents reportedly told the owner concerning her claim the Mendocino sheriff had already inspected and approved her grow, “We don’t care what your sheriff says. This is a violation of federal law.” Yet sheriff’s deputies accompanied the raid.
If this is what happened, we may finally have our 10th Amendment test case, if the feds actually press charges.
July 12, 2010 at 8:45 pm
the reasonable anonymous
I’m not a lawyer and have no idea whether the 10th Amendment angle would work or not. But I just want to comment that I find it disturbing that many “progressives” have now turned “tenth” into a dirty word, simply because some Tea Party types have tried to misuse it. The terms “tenther” and “tentherism” (sound a bit like “birtherism” and that seems to be the point) are thrown around on sites like TPM and Kos, as if the 10th Amendment were some ugly stepchild that we should all shun or be embarrased of, or at least that it was a throwaway amendment that doesn’t really mean anything important in today’s world. It’s like saying that there shouldn’t be any such thing as “states rights” because unfortunately that concept was used and misused and abused by segregationists.
The fact is that the 10th Amendment is an important statement of the Founders’ intent to limit the reach of the Federal government to those functions enumerated in the Constitution. Given that the Feds have already stretched their authority way beyond what seems right within a layperson’s reading of the Constitution — for example using the Commerce Clause to extend their control to even non-commercial personal cannabis use and cultivation, with the excuse that personal cultivation and use supposedly inevitably affects interstate commerce in cannabis — it is natural that people should be looking to the 10th Amendment and asking “hey, doesn’t this one say these sorts of non-enumerated powers are left to the states and the people?” If that makes me a “tenther” I guess I am one, and I guess I can live with that.
July 12, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Eric Kirk
Well, in the past it’s been used as a shield against desegregation, voting rights, worker safety, child labor laws, environmental regulations, species protection, consumer protection, and other progressive causes. It’s why the liberals voted to uphold federal supremacy (through an expansive interpretation of the commerce clause) the last time marijuana reached them, and four of the conservatives voted against it – the tie breaker coming from Scalia who ditched conservative principles for a cop desired result.
Arguably, the federalism of 200 years ago had more application to an agrarian society with considerable isolation from the rest of the world.
Still, it is the law.
July 12, 2010 at 9:26 pm
the reasonable anonymous
“Still, it is the law”
Yes, though to this non-lawyer it often seems as if some judges, and especially members of the Supreme Court, simply ignore parts of the constitution when they are inconvenient, and stretch other parts, such as the Commerce Clause, beyond recognition in order to achieve the results they want.
At any rate, if we’re going to do away with an “outdated” Federal system, we ought to at least have a vote on a new Constitution, dontcha think? The creep, creep, creep of federal authority is just that…creepy.
July 12, 2010 at 9:41 pm
the reasonable anonymous
Anyway, to me the difference between using the 10th as a shield against federal intrusion in the form of cannabis prohibition, and the state’s rights arguments against segregation, is that the latter seems like a case where the Southern states were trying to do things that were clearly in conflict with rights granted to all Americans in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (equal protection, etc.).
Whereas in the case of cannabis, I just don’t see where telling the Feds to take a hike on 10th amendment grounds would also be infringing on anyone else’s rights under the Constitution. I think that’s a useful distinction, though I have no idea whether this distinction would amount to anything in court.
I think there’s a real danger on the part of mainstream “progressives” of overly-embracing statism in general and federal supremecy over the states in particular, due to the fact that *sometimes* federal approaches have resulted in better outcomes.
Meanwhile, so-called “conservatives” have their own hypocrisy issues with regards to federalism, where they are all for the feds taking supremacy over the states if it means outlawing abortion or gay marriage, but recoil at the idea of a national health care plan, no matter how private-profit-based. Tempting to just say “a pox on both their houses” but I guess the only real option is just keep trying to talk sense to both sides, even when it seems almost impossible to get anywhere.
July 13, 2010 at 8:12 am
surprised
surprised nobody’s mentioned that the overwhelming majority of plants they’re seizing are on public and park property, or by trespassers on private property, as well as larger grows run by bona-fide violent criminals.