He's right, although I think he's a right wing Libertarian. But of course,
black people face the same thing every day with no excuse of the police
looking for drugs being grown in the back yard.
Miriam
Tomato Gardeners: The Latest Victim in the Government's War on Drugs
Merely growing a vegetable garden on your own property, or in a greenhouse
on your property, or shopping at a gardening store for gardening
supplies-incredibly enough-could set you up for a drug raid sanctioned by
the courts.
by John Whitehead
August 25th, 2020
By John Whitehead
Ajournal entry from a California resident describes the government's aerial
searches for marijuana plants:
They came again this morning at about 8:00 o'clock. A large cargo-type
helicopter flew low over the cabin, shaking it on its very foundations. It
shook all of us inside, too. I feel frightened . I see how helpless and
tormented I am becoming with disgust and disillusionment with the government
which has turned this beautiful country into a police state . I feel like I
am in the middle of a war zone."
Backyard gardeners, beware: tomato plants have become collateral damage in
the government's war on drugs, especially marijuana.
In fact, merely growing a vegetable garden on your own property, or in a
greenhouse on your property, or shopping at a gardening store for gardening
supplies-incredibly enough-could set you up for a drug raid sanctioned by
the courts.
It's happened before
After shopping for hydroponic tomatoes at their local gardening store, a
Kansas family found themselves subjected to a SWAT team raid as part of a
multi-state, annual campaign dubbed "Operation Constant Gardener," in which
police collected the license plates of hundreds of customers at the
gardening store and then investigated them for possible marijuana
possession.
By "investigated," I mean that police searched through the family's trash.
(You can thank the Supreme Court and their 1978 ruling in California v.
Greenwood for allowing police to invade your trash can.) Finding "wet glob
vegetation" in the garbage, the cops somehow managed to convince
themselves-and a judge-that it was marijuana.
In fact, it was loose-leaf tea, but those pesky details don't usually bother
the cops when they're conducting field tests.
Seeking an Excuse to Crackdown, Police are Pitting Protesters Against Each
Other
Police are allowing protesters and counterprotesters to clash, giving them
the pretext to declare an unlawful assembly and end the protests.
MintPress News | John Whitehead | Aug 12
Indeed, field tests routinely read positive for illegal drugs even when no
drugs are present. According to investigative journalist Radley Balko, "it's
almost as if these tests come up positive whenever the police need them to.
A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs
would include sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, soap,
tortilla dough, deodorant, billiard's chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus,
breath mints, Jolly Ranchers and vitamins."
There's a long list of innocent ingredients that could be mistaken for drugs
and get you subjected to a raid, because that's all it takes-just the barest
whiff of a suspicion by police that you might be engaged in criminal
activity-to start the ball rolling.
From there, these so-called "investigations" follow the usual script: judge
issues a warrant for a SWAT raid based on botched data, cops raid the home
and terrorize the family at gunpoint, cops find no drugs, family sues over a
violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, and then the courts protect the
cops and their botched raid on the basis of qualified immunity.
It happens all the time
As Balko reports, "Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and
held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought
were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes,
or elderberry bushes. (It's happened with all five.)"
Surely, you might think, the government has enough on its hands right
now-policing a novel coronavirus pandemic, instituting nationwide lockdowns,
quelling civil unrests over police brutality-that it doesn't need to waste
time and resources ferreting out pot farmers.
You'd be wrong.
This is a government that excels at make-work projects in which it assigns
at-times unnecessary jobs to government agents to keep them busy or
employed.
In this case, however, the make-work principle (translation: making work to
keep the police state busy at taxpayer expense) is being used to justify
sending police and expensive military helicopters likely equipped with
sophisticated surveillance and thermal imaging devices on exploratory
sorties every summer-again at taxpayer expense-in order to uncover illegal
marijuana growing operations.
Often, however, what these air and ground searches end up targeting are
backyard gardeners growing tomato plants.
Just recently, in fact, eyewitnesses in Virginia reported low-flying black
helicopters buzzing over rural and suburban neighborhoods as part of a
multi-agency operation to search for marijuana growers. Oftentimes these
joint operations involve local police, state police and the Army National
Guard.
One woman reported having her "tomato plants complimented by the 7 cops that
pulled up in my yard in unmarked SUVs, after a helicopter hovered over our
house for 20 minutes this morning." Another man reported a similar
experience from a few years ago when police "showed up in unmarked SUV's
with guns pulled. Then the cops on the ground argued with the helicopter
because the heat signature in the 'copter didn't match what was growing."
Qualified Immunity Is How the Police State Stays in Power
Lawyers offer complicated takes on qualified immunity, meant to insulate
police from frivolous lawsuits, but its real purpose more nefarious.
MintPress News | John Whitehead | Jun 17
Back in 2013, an aerial surveillance mission spotted what police thought
might be marijuana plants. Two days later, dozens of city officials, SWAT
team, police officers and code compliance employees, and numerous official
vehicles including dozens of police cars and several specialized vehicular
equipment, including helicopters and unmanned flying drones, descended on
The Garden of Eden, a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington, Texas, for a 10-hour raid
in search of marijuana that turned up nothing more than tomato, blackberry
and okra plants.
These aerial and ground sweeps have become regular occurrences across the
country, part of the government's multi-million dollar Domestic Cannabis
Eradication Program. Local cops refer to the annual military maneuvers as
"Eradication Day."
Started in 1979 as a way to fund local efforts to crack down on marijuana
growers in California and Hawaii, the Eradication Program went national in
1985, right around the time the Reagan Administration enabled the armed
forces to get more involved in the domestic "war on drugs."
Writing for The Washington Post, Radley Balko describes how these raids
started off, with the National Guard, spy planes and helicopters:
The project was called the Campaign Against Marijuana Production, or CAMP.
In all, thirteen California counties were invaded by choppers, some of them
blaring Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" as they dropped Guardsmen and law
enforcement officers armed with automatic weapons, sandviks, and machetes
into the fields of California . In CAMP's first year, the program conducted
524 raids, arrested 128 people, and seized about 65,000 marijuana plants.
Operating costs ran at a little over $1.5 million. The next year, 24 more
sheriffs signed up for the program, for a total of 37. CAMP conducted 398
raids, seized nearly 160,000 plants, and made 218 arrests at a cost to
taxpayers of $2.3 million.
The area's larger growers had been put out of business (or, probably more
accurately, had set up shop somewhere else), so by the start of the second
campaign in 1984, CAMP officials were already targeting increasingly smaller
growers. By the end of that 1984 campaign, the helicopters had to fly at
lower and lower altitudes to spot smaller batches of plants. The noise,
wind, and vibration from the choppers could knock out windows, kick up dust
clouds, and scare livestock. The officials running the operation made no
bones about the paramilitary tactics they were using. They considered the
areas they were raiding to be war zones. In the interest of "officer
safety," they gave themselves permission to search any structures relatively
close to a marijuana supply, without a warrant. Anyone coming anywhere near
a raid operation was subject to detainment, usually at gunpoint.
Right around the same time, in the mid-1980s, the federal government started
handing out grants to local police departments to assist with their local
boots-on-the-ground "war on drugs." These grants (through the Byrne Grant
program and COPS program, both of which started to be phased out under
George W. Bush, only to be re-upped by Barack Obama) could be used to pay
for additional police personnel, equipment, training, technical assistance
and information systems. However, studies show that while these federal
grants did not improve police effectiveness or drug deterrence, they did
incentivize SWAT team raids.
From a "war on drugs" to SWAT raids on vegetable gardens
Connect the dots, starting with the government's war on marijuana, the
emergence of SWAT teams, the militarization of local police forces through
the federal 1033 Program, which allows the Pentagon to transfer "vast
amounts of military equipment-machine guns and ammunition, helicopters,
night-vision gear, armored cars-to local police departments," and the
transformation of American communities into battlefields: as always, it
comes back to the make work principle, which starts with local police
finding ways to justify the use of military equipment and federal funding.
Each year, the government spends between $14 and $18 million funding
helicopter sweeps and police overtime to help the states track down illegal
marijuana plants. These sweeps are even being carried out in states where
it's now legal to grow marijuana.
The sweeps work like this: Local police, working with multiple state
agencies including the National Guard, carry out ground and air searches of
different sectors. Air spotters flying overhead in helicopters relay their
findings to police on the ground, who then carry out a search-and-destroy
mission.
Mark my words: the use of police drones will make these kinds of aerial
missions even more common.
For the most part, aerial surveillance is legal. As Arthur Holland Michel
writes for The Atlantic: "When it comes to law enforcement, police are
likewise free to use aerial surveillance without a warrant or special
permission. Under current privacy law, these operations are just as legal as
policing practices whereby an officer spots unlawful activity while walking
or driving through a neighborhood."
There have been a few notable exceptions.
In 2015, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that surveillance from a
low-flying helicopter conducting an aerial search for marijuana by state
police and the national guard was illegal under the U.S. Constitution. The
court reasoned that "when low-flying aerial activity leads to more than just
observation and actually causes an unreasonable intrusion on the ground-most
commonly from an unreasonable amount of wind, dust, broken objects, noise,
and sheer panic-then at some point courts are c and require a warrant before
law enforcement engages in such activity. The Fourth Amendment and its
prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures demands no less."
In Philip Cobbs' case, helicopter spotters claimed to have seen two lone
marijuana plants growing in the wreckage of a fallen oak tree on the
Virginia native's 39-acre family farm.
Cobbs noticed the black helicopter circling overhead while spraying the
blueberry bushes near his house. After watching the helicopter for several
moments, Cobbs went inside to check on his blind, deaf 90-year-old mother.
By the time he returned outside, several unmarked police SUVs had driven
onto his property, and police (ten in all) in flak jackets, carrying
semi-automatic weapons and shouting unintelligibly, had exited the vehicles
and were moving toward him.
Of course, it was never about the two pot plants.
What the cops were really after was an excuse to search Cobbs' little
greenhouse, which he had used that spring to start tomato plants,
cantaloupes, and watermelons, as well as asters and hollyhocks, which he
planned to sell at a roadside stand near his home. The search of the
greenhouse turned up nothing more than used tomato seedling containers.
Nevertheless, police charged Cobbs with misdemeanor possession of marijuana
for the two plants they claimed to have found. Eventually, the charges were
dismissed but not before The Rutherford Institute took up Cobbs' case, which
revealed that police hadn't even bothered to secure a warrant before
embarking on their raid of Cobbs' property-a raid that had to cost taxpayers
upwards of $25,000, at the very least-part of their routine sweep of the
countryside in search of pot-growing operations.
Two plants or two hundred or no plants at all: it doesn't matter.
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A SWAT team targeted one South Carolina man for selling $50 worth of pot on
two different occasions. The Washington Post reports: The SWAT team "broke
down Betton's door with a battering ram, then fired at least 57 bullets at
him, hitting him nine times. He lost portions of his gallbladder, colon,
bowel and rectum, and is paralyzed from the waist down. He also suffered
damage to his liver, lung, small intestine and pancreas. Two of his
vertebrae were damaged, and another was partially destroyed. Another bullet
shattered his leg." After security footage showed that most of what police
said about the raid was a lie, the cops settled the case for $2.75 million.
Monetary awards like that are the exception, however.
Most of the time, the cops get away with murder and mayhem. Literally.
Bottom line: no amount of marijuana is too insignificant if it allows police
to qualify for federal grants and equipment and lay claim to seized assets
(there's the profit motive) under the guise of fighting the War on Drugs.
SWAT teams carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids every year. The vast
majority of these raids are to serve routine drug warrants, many times for
crimes no more serious than possession of marijuana.
Although growing numbers of states continue to decriminalize marijuana use
and 9 out of 10 Americans favor the legalization of either medical or
recreational/adult-use marijuana, the government's profit-driven "War on
Drugs"-waged with state and local police officers dressed in SWAT gear,
armed to the hilt, and trained to act like soldiers on a battlefield, all
thanks to funding provided by the U.S. government, particularly the Pentagon
and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-has not abated.
Since the formation of the DHS post-9/11, hundreds of billions of dollars in
grants have flowed to local police departments for SWAT teams, giving rise
to a "police industrial complex" that routinely devastates communities,
terrorizes families, and destroys innocent lives.
No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now
increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters, with some
SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day. Nationwide, SWAT
teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of
criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic
disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor
marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.
Unfortunately, general incompetence, collateral damage (fatalities, property
damage, etc.) and botched raids tend to go hand in hand with an overuse of
paramilitary forces.
In some cases, officers misread the address on the warrant. In others, they
simply barge into the wrong house or even the wrong building. In another
subset of cases, police conduct a search of a building where the suspect no
longer resides.
SWAT teams have even on occasion conducted multiple, sequential raids on
wrong addresses or executed search warrants despite the fact that the
suspect is already in police custody. Police have also raided homes on the
basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for drugs.
Incredibly, these substances have included tomatoes, sunflowers, fish,
elderberry bushes, kenaf plants, hibiscus, and ragweed.
All too often, the shock-and-awe tactics utilized by many SWAT teams only
increases the likelihood that someone will get hurt with little consequences
for law enforcement, even when the raids are botched.
Botched SWAT team raids have resulted in the loss of countless lives,
including children and the elderly. Usually, however, the first to be shot
are the family dogs.
SWAT raids are usually carried out late at night or shortly before dawn.
Unfortunately, to the unsuspecting homeowner-especially in cases involving
mistaken identities or wrong addresses-a raid can appear to be nothing less
than a violent home invasion, with armed intruders crashing through their
door.
That's exactly what happened to Jose Guerena, the young ex-Marine who was
killed after a SWAT team kicked open the door of his Arizona home during a
drug raid and opened fire. According to news reports, Guerena, 26 years old
and the father of two young children, grabbed a gun in response to the
forced invasion but never fired. In fact, the safety was still on his gun
when he was killed. Police officers were not as restrained. The young Iraqi
war veteran was allegedly fired upon 71 times. Guerena had no prior criminal
record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.
The problems inherent in these situations are further compounded by the fact
that SWAT teams are granted "no-knock" warrants at high rates such that the
warrants themselves are rendered practically meaningless.
This sorry state of affairs is made even worse by U.S. Supreme Court rulings
that have essentially done away with the need for a "no-knock" warrant
altogether, giving the police authority to disregard the protections
afforded American citizens by the Fourth Amendment.
Clearly, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the
American People, something must be done.
When the war on drugs-a.k.a. the war on the American people-becomes little
more than a thinly veiled attempt to keep SWAT teams employed and special
interests appeased, it's time to revisit our drug policies and laws.
"You take the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, all the rights you expect to
have-when they come in like that, the only right you have is not to get shot
if you cooperate. They open that door, your life is on the line," concluded
Bob Harte, whose home was raided by a SWAT team simply because the family
was seen shopping at a garden store, cops found loose tea in the family's
trash and mistook it for marijuana.
"Our family will never be the same," said Addie Harte, recalling the
two-hour raid that had police invading their suburban home with a battering
ram and AR-15 rifles. As The Washington Post reports:
Bob found himself flat on floor, hands behind his head, his eyes locked on
the boots of the officer standing over him with an AR-15 assault rifle. "Are
there kids?" the officers were yelling. "Where are the kids?" "And I'm
laying there staring at this guy's boots fearing for my kids' lives, trying
to tell them where my children are," Harte recalled later in a deposition on
July 9, 2015. "They are sending these guys with their guns drawn running
upstairs to bust into my children's house, bedroom, wake them out of bed."
It didn't matter that no drugs were found-nothing but a hydroponic tomato
garden and loose tea leaves. The search and SWAT raid were reasonable,
according to the courts.
There's a lesson here for the rest of us. As Bob Harte concluded: "If this
can happen to us, everybody in the country needs to be afraid."