Cops Come to Pot Grower's Rescue

It’s not often that a pot grower will say this:

Thank the heavens for cops.

But that’s what a grower in completely legit medical marijuana operation may have at least thought earlier this week as he watched on security video from his home as thieves tried to cart away the crop he had carefully cultivated – again, completely inside the law – to ease the pain of his patients.

The alarm at the dispensary at 3295 Haggerty Road in Commerce Township still sounding in the background, the grower dialed 911 with an urgent request for help about 11:30 p.m. Sunday, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

When deputies and a K-9 officer responded, they found a van with no license plate backed up to a garage door to the building where the man grows the marijuana for his patients. A hole had been cut in the garage door.

An employee the grower had called before calling 911 had blocked the vehicle in the spot where it was parked, and the thieves took off on foot.

Inside the abandoned van, authorities found a bag full of marijuana.

About 2:50 a.m. Monday, police in Keego Harbor and West Bloomfield Township took a suspect – a 33-year-old Sterling Heights man – into custody. He was taken to the Oakland County Jail pending arraignment.

Growing Problem at Growing Operations

West Bloomfield Chief Michael Patton said burglary attempts at legally operating medical cannabis operations is a growing problem.

“We know it’s a concern — that locations identified even as legitimate growing facilities can be targeted by the criminal element” for break-ins, robberies and potential violence, Patton told the Detroit Free Press.

Matt Abel, a lawyer who heads Michigan NORML, part of a national network of groups advocating marijuana legalization, told the newspaper it was “nice to see” police on the other side of a marijuana arrest.

In a special reporting project, The Oakland Press said medical cannabis has become a political football in Michigan and especially Oakland County, where the sheriff’s and prosecutor’s offices have targeted medical marijuana dispensaries, including in recent years raids in Waterford, Oak Park, Lake Orion, Holly, Keego Harbor, Walled Lake and Ferndale.

Related:

• Not Everybody Must Get Stoned (But Votes Mean More People Can)

But attitudes about marijuana, especially medical marijuana, are changing, both nationally and in Michigan, where the state Senate is expected to vote in the lame duck session to broaden access to pharmaceutical pot by allowing citizens to vote on whether to allow dispensaries in their communities.

Approval of that measure – along with a directive in the U.S. appropriations bill that defunds federal prosecution of Americans in compliance with their own state’s medical marijuana laws – “will be huge.” NORML’s Abel told the Free Press.

Currently, 34 states and the District of Columbia have legalized at least some use of medical cannabis.