By Wayne Wilson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 5:30 a.m. PST Sunday, March 10, 2002

Press releases heralding the exploits of Placer County's wide-ranging Marijuana Eradication Team kept the media's fax machines purring in 1998 and 1999.

Not many days went by without a new announcement by sheriff's representatives that a search warrant had been served, suspects had been arrested and indoor pot gardens had been seized, most of them in neighboring Sacramento County.

Today, the raids have stopped.

And the focus has shifted from reports of ambitious police actions to charges of misconduct.

More than a dozen individuals targeted by the Placer County narcotics unit in 1998 and 1999 now claim, in five federal lawsuits, that their civil rights were violated by "lying," "malicious," "unprofessional," "storm-trooper-style" officers.

One judge agrees there were defects in the warrants and went so far as to accuse a detective of lying to the magistrate who issued those warrants about license plates he said he checked and subpoenas he said he served.

In papers filed with the court, a Sacramento deputy district attorney prosecuting the drug cases steadfastly defended the detective's actions as "mistakes," saying, "If you flyspeck a man's career and look at 40 warrants ... you are going to find some mistakes."

No one in the Placer County Sheriff's Department is permitted to comment on the lawsuits or the campaign that came to be known as "Operation Greenfire."

"We've been told not to discuss it at all," said Capt. Rick Armstrong, the sheriff's spokesman.

That includes Sheriff Ed Bonner, Special Operations Unit Sgt. Ron Ashford and all the deputies involved, Armstrong said.

The veil of silence was drawn by Placer County attorney David K. Huskey, whose job, over the next several years, will be to defend against the lawsuits.

Huskey said he feels the allegations against the county and its narcotics officers are groundless and wants the matter litigated in a courtroom, not the media.

In the eye of the legal storm is Tracy Grant, a 27-year career detective in Placer County.

Grant's name is all over the warrants that permitted him and a team of officers to enter the homes of residents in Sacramento, Carmichael, Citrus Heights, Fair Oaks, Antelope, Rio Linda and Roseville. Officers said at the time they were going into Sacramento because that's where their leads took them. Placer County had blanket approval from the Sacramento County sheriff to conduct the raids.

The team was looking for indoor marijuana growing, and in most of the residences entered, found what it was looking for.

Snipped

I get the impression that people like Joyce fit into the former category; as I've mentioned before, she might someday become one of our strongest allies. As long as she fights for truth instead of the lies she used to believe and promote, I can envision her testifying to Congress about how she used to fight against hemp foods, but that facts and science showed her the truth of the matter - that cannabis seeds contain the highest palatable amounts of EFA's, can be converted economically to a clean buring diesel, etc.

(Ford just announced support for diesel as an environmentally safer fuel, still artificial price supports in the form of tax breaks are weighed heavily in favor of fossil fuels...)

New and safer medications, even drug replacement therapies will be technological advances encouraged by legalized hemp production of all forms. Bill Clinton used to speak of new jobs for technologies that had not even been invented yet. I think he was right to push for a robust economy that benefits all, no matter what he did in his private personal life.

<http://alberta.indymedia.org:8081/local/webcast/uploads/metafiles/2221-smoke_pa\ ck.jpg

Cannabis is often compared to tobacco, with the damage caused by smoking tobacco given as a reason to prohibit use of cannabis. Yet most of the harms caused by tobacco use are due not to tar, but to the use of radioactive fertilizers. Surprisingly, radiation seems to be the most dangerous and important factor behind tobacco lung damage.

http://www.drcnet.org/wol/227.html#marijuanafoes

The article makes legitimate questions as to the efficacy of the movement; all well and good. Whether the organizations mentioned had developed enough political clout to have such an effect is arguable.

But what cannot be denied is that those who ran roughshod over the rights of Californian voters...are now out on their arse in the cold. Because individual voters threw them out. Individual voters...like you and me.

It's even more "thrilling" when they put you in jail.

No, what the government SHOULD do is stop trying to make nature illegal. Why should the sick be entitled to nature and the healthy should be....imprisoned for it?

It's bullshit.