Law enforcement – MJ Shareholders

North Louisiana Forensic Science Center to host Cannabix Marijuana Breathalyzer Technology

MJ Shareholders — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 15:18:07 +0000

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Cannabix Technologies Participates in New Study with Marijuana Breathalyzer technology – Southern United States

MJ Shareholders — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 14:05:17 +0000

Editorial: Striking a proper balance on local cannabis rules

MJ Shareholders — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 02:45:36 +0000

If legalizing cannabis was a simple matter, Proposition 64 could have been written in a lot less than 62 pages of small type.

But personal possession and use of marijuana have been effectively decriminalized in California for many years, and the primary purpose of the 2016 initiative was to turn a black-market enterprise into a commercial business.

Even at 30,415 words, Proposition 64 left some tough choices to local governments, including whether to authorize commercial marijuana farming in Sonoma County’s unincorporated neighborhoods.

We chose the word “authorize” because cannabis gardens of varying size already exist in many rural residential areas, often without proper permits. Some neighbors object to the skunky odor and, having witnessed violent home invasions, fear for their safety.

Finding common ground won’t be easy, but revisions to Sonoma County’s cannabis ordinance slated for consideration today by the Board of Supervisors would be a good first step.

Under the revised rules, growers would be required to:

— Obtain a use permit for cultivation on properties smaller than 10 acres in nonindustrial zones. The process includes notifying neighbors, environmental review and public hearings.

— Obtain a zoning permit for larger properties. These permits are easier to obtain, but approvals could be appealed to the county Board of Zoning Adjustments.

— Live on-site during cultivation in residential areas.

Neighborhoods could seek a special zoning designation prohibiting cannabis farming, an approach the board took with vacation rentals.

The proposal also offers added flexibility for growers, including:

— Authorizing cultivation permits for 651 parcels zoned rural residential or agricultural residential where cannabis farming isn’t presently allowed.

— Extending the life of cannabis use permits from one year to five and the life of cannabis zoning permits from one year to two.

— Allowing permits to be transferred to a new owner.

Neither side is entirely satisfied with this proposal, but both sides stand to gain. And the county plans to continue its review of cannabis regulations, so further adjustment are possible.

From our perspective, the top priority is public safety.

A thriving black market remains almost two years after voters approved Proposition 64, as evidenced by a series of violent home invasions in Sonoma County earlier this year and the recent kidnapping and killing of a Cloverdale man, which investigators attribute to marijuana dealing.

Rogue cannabis farms also pose a threat to water supplies and wildlife habitat.

Growers who come out of the shadows should be less likely to cause environmental damage, and they may be more likely to take advantage of offers from the Sheriff’s Office to consult on safety and security measures. The permitting process, in turn, would give residents assurance that growers are operating with county oversight.

By some estimates, there are 5,000 marijuana growers in Sonoma County, but fewer than 180 had applied for permits through mid-July. That’s a lot of room for improvement.

We opposed Proposition 64, but voters approved it by a substantial margin, so there’s little to be gained from continuing to debate the wisdom of legalizing marijuana. It makes more sense to focus on eradicating the black market. Striking a balance between the commercial interests of legal growers and the property rights of their neighbors is a good place to start.

Crash that killed pregnant teacher shows potentially deadly consequences of driving while high

MJ Shareholders — Sun, 18 Nov 2018 20:45:52 +0000

While alcohol-related DUIs remain far more common, last week a case involving a motorist prosecutors say was solely under the influence of marijuana provided a stark example of the danger of driving while stoned.

Prosecutors say John Sebastian Hernandez, 23, smoked pot before getting behind the wheel in June of last year. He veered into the opposite lane on Santa Fe Way and struck a vehicle head-on driven by 40-year-old Gabriela Soto, who was pregnant.

Both Soto and her 28-week-old fetus died. Hernandez, who had no prior record, was convicted of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and sentenced to two years in prison.

The case is just the second marijuana-only fatal wreck prosecuted in the county, Deputy District Attorney Kim Richardson said. But with the legalization of marijuana in California this year, law enforcement may be handling more such cases.

And, with the way society currently views marijuana, the cases are difficult to prosecute, Richardson said.

“Society looks at drugs like methamphetamine and PCP as the ‘bad’ drugs,” she said. “But now you have this more widely accepted view of marijuana as being less dangerous. The perception is different.”

Hernandez admitted to being addicted to smoking marijuana, but claimed he hadn’t smoked that day.

Nevertheless, an analysis of blood drawn from Hernandez after the crash turned up a high amount of THC — the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana — enough that Richardson says it’s impossible that he didn’t smoke that day because marijuana is quickly metabolized by the body.

Hernandez had 14 nanograms of active THC per milliliter of blood. In Colorado and Washington state, it is illegal to drive under the influence of marijuana if you have more than 5 nanograms of active THC per milliliter of blood.

But in California, a measurement alone isn’t enough to guarantee a DUI conviction because the state, unlike Washington, Colorado and some others, has no “per se” legal limit in which a driver is presumed to be impaired.

Instead, as with alcohol-related arrests, officers conduct field sobriety tests such as walking in a straight line or standing on one leg for a certain amount of time to determine if someone is impaired. Without an impairment standard, the officer must find other evidence — such as failing those tests or driving behavior — to determine the person is impaired.

Officer Robert Rodriguez, spokesman of the Bakersfield office of the California Highway Patrol, said anything that impairs a person’s ability to safely drive a motor vehicle, whether it’s pot, prescription drugs or illegal drugs, poses dangers to both the motorist and others on the roadway. Despite pot’s legality in California, getting behind the wheel after smoking can result in a DUI conviction or, as in Hernandez’s case, something worse.

And those who combine alcohol and marijuana, or other drugs, are at risk for even more severe impairment, he said. Those combinations can “exaggerate the high or the effects of the alcohol produced.”

In 2015, Bakersfield CHP officers arrested 28 drivers under the influence of both alcohol and drugs, and in 2016 made 26 arrests.

The first pot-only fatal DUI conviction occurred in June 2016 when Rodolfo Contreras was convicted of second-degree murder and gross vehicular manslaughter while impaired by marijuana in a crash at Gosford Road and Stockdale Highway.

He ran a red light, lost control of his Honda, crossed the center divider and struck a Ford Explorer, killing its driver.

Contreras had smoked marijuana the morning of the crash and had 16 nanograms of THC in his blood. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

Court: CA law-enforcement officers must return seized legal marijuana to arrestee

MJ Shareholders — Tue, 16 Oct 2018 20:30:17 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A Northern California court ordered police to return a small amount of marijuana seized from a suspect’s backpack during an arrest for disturbing the peace.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday that a San Francisco trial judge refused to order the 21 grams of marijuana returned for fear of violating federal law. Possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is legal in California. Marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

A San Francisco superior court appellate panel says judges are protected from prosecution while handling illegal drugs while enforcing the law.

Police seized the marijuana while arresting Robert Smith in January. Charges were ultimately dismissed.

Smith’s attorney, University of San Francisco law professor Lara Bazelon, says the decision was an “important ruling in a seemingly small case.”

Following California, cannabis advocates across the U.S. aim to throw out old convictions

MJ Shareholders — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 20:45:59 +0000

Rob Jenkins tried for four years to find a job, scouring the internet for anything that seemed at all appealing — a maintenance position at a Chevron refinery, a counselor for foster kids, a clerk at Hertz.

Some employers seemed interested, until they found out about his 2008 misdemeanor conviction for growing marijuana.

“I was stuck,” recalled the 37-year-old college graduate. “No job opportunities were coming in.”

Hundreds of people wait in line during a workshop aimed at helping people convicted of marijuana and other crimes work through the process of having their records cleared on March 17, 2018 in Los Angeles.
(Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

He found himself in the same situation as hundreds of thousands of others across the country whose prospects for the future were diminished by criminal records for marijuana cultivation or possession.

Now a new movement accompanying the widespread push for pot legalization may give them a second chance and help black and Latino neighborhoods that have been the focus of drug law enforcement. The aim is to wipe records clean and help people put their formerly illicit skills to use in the booming industry of legal cannabis.

It started in California in 2016 when voters approved Proposition 64, which not only legalized recreational marijuana, but also made it easier for people with pot convictions to expunge their records. Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco have started giving people with prior convictions — or those from neighborhoods that were once heavily targeted for marijuana-related arrests — priority for licenses to start new pot businesses.

New Jersey, North Dakota and Michigan may soon follow suit, with advocates for pot-legalization measures under consideration this fall making social and economic justice the centerpiece of their campaigns.

It’s a decisive shift from the traditional rationales for legalization — evolving public attitudes about the drug and the opportunity to tax it.

“In New Jersey, black residents are three times more likely than white residents to be arrested for marijuana offenses,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said in an email explaining his support for a marijuana-legalization bill that lawmakers are expected to pass this month.

The law would “help break the cycle of nonviolent, low-level drug offenses that prevent people, especially people of color, from succeeding,” he said.

Research shows that whites, blacks and Latinos use and sell marijuana at similar rates, but that blacks by far are the most likely to be arrested in connection with the drug. One California study found that African Americans make up 6% of the state’s population, but are nearly a quarter of those serving time in jail exclusively for marijuana offenses.

In Oakland, where Jenkins grew up, blacks and whites each make up about 30% of the population. But 77% of the people arrested in connection with marijuana in 2015 were black, while just 4% were white, according to a recent report by the city. The analysis looked back to 1995 and found a similar pattern each year.

Jenkins, who is black, remembers watching marijuana sales as a child. Cars would come and go making purchases from pastel-colored duplexes that lined the hilly streets of East Oakland.

“It’s a part of life,” he said. “A lot of the weed being sold in Oakland was to wealthy whites in Berkeley and elsewhere in the Bay Area.”

“But we were getting arrested,” he said.

Donald Bailey tries to get legal help clearing a marijuana-related conviction from his record so he can bid on government contracts for his photography business. He joined hundreds of people at a workshop March 17, 2018 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

A lot of the weed being sold in Oakland was to wealthy whites in Berkeley and elsewhere in the Bay Area. But [black people] were getting arrested.

Rob Jenkins, whose 2008 conviction for growing marijuana has been expunged

Jenkins never set out to be a drug dealer. After graduating from San Jose State University in 2003 with a degree in sociology, he found work selling cars and internet plans and eventually got a job at Comcast answering complaints from customers for $15 an hour.

Even with his girlfriend’s income from a sales job at a department store, they struggled to pay the rent and care for their sons in rapidly gentrifying Oakland.

Jenkins started growing and selling marijuana in 2007 as an extra source of income, bringing in about $500 a week.

Then one night in November 2008, there were two knocks at his apartment door before police threatened to barge through it. When Jenkins let them in, several officers headed to a back room where sodium-pressure lights hovered above two dozen marijuana plants growing knee-high from buckets.

Jenkins never learned how police discovered his operation. He was one of 914 African Americans arrested on marijuana charges that year in Oakland.

He spent 24 hours behind bars before his mother, who worked at an electronics sales company, bailed him out. Jenkins was originally charged with a felony — he had a firearm in his home — but it was changed to a misdemeanor after prosecutors discovered the firearm was legally registered to him.

He started applying for jobs while he was still serving two years of probation and piled up more rejections than he can remember.

In 2011, he went back to illegally growing and selling marijuana. He said he stopped two years later after finally finding a legal job: growing pot for medical use for a dispensary in San Francisco.

But it was only part time, and Jenkins realized that his future was stalled unless he could clear his name. The next year, he spent $4,000 — a big chunk of his savings — to hire an attorney to successfully guide him through a little-known and highly uncertain legal process that allows some low-level marijuana offenders to petition the courts to expunge their convictions.

California’s new law seeks to popularize and streamline that process.

In January, San Francisco Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced that his office would begin to dismiss 3,000 marijuana misdemeanors dating back to 1975 and seal the records of those people sentenced before Proposition 64 passed. Nearly 5,000 felony convictions would also be reviewed for possible dismissal or resentencing. The process could take more than a year to complete.

In Alameda County, where Oakland is located, prosecutors have identified nearly 6,000 cases eligible for dismissal — an opportunity to alleviate past discrimination, said Dist. Atty. Nancy E. O’Malley. Of those, more than 600 people have filed petitions and had them granted.

“California is offering a second chance to people convicted of cannabis crimes,” O’Malley said.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey has said her office will not automatically dismiss or reduce marijuana convictions and that people seeking to clear their records should do so using the courts.

But a bill passed in August and set to go into effect next year requires the California Department of Justice to prepare a list of people eligible to have their convictions dismissed and places the onus on county prosecutors to do so in all cases except those in which they determine there is “an unreasonable risk to public safety.”

Still, in some places, expunging those records is only a first step in righting the wrongs of the past.

Last year, Oakland officials created the nation’s first so-called social equity program, reserving at least half of all new cannabis dispensary licenses for residents targeted by discriminatory drug and sentencing laws.

The program is open to any resident with a cannabis conviction after 1996 — the year medical marijuana was passed — and no other criminal history. Also eligible are people who earn less than 80% of the city’s median income of $56,000 or who have lived for at least 10 years in a neighborhood deemed to have high numbers of pot-related arrests.

It also offers the chance to be paired with an investor — known as an incubator — who shares the license and funds the business for at least three years. Six of the eight permits granted by the city this year went to equity applicants.

“The creation of these equity programs is the beginning of acknowledging the greater issue of the criminalization of brown and black people,” said Nina Parks, an activist who worked with local officials to create the Oakland program as well as the one in San Francisco. “These policies are not reparations, but moves toward restoring justice.”

She and other supporters of the programs say it will take time and more publicity to see results. Many people are unaware of the equity programs or opportunities to expunge their records.

The efforts are not without controversy.

Some opponents argue that the law was the law and anybody who broke it should have to deal with the consequences.

Others such as Kevin A. Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which has spent thousands of dollars in recent years to oppose legalization of recreational pot, dismiss the notion that equity programs can really lift up poor neighborhoods.

“This is putting lipstick on a pig, and it’s an insult to vulnerable communities,” Sabet said in an email. “Unless the state gives away millions of dollars of free start-up money, do we think a kid from Compton is going to be able to compete against a Beverly Hills heir, let alone the Big Tobacco, alcohol, and pharma interests that are now swarming around the pot industry? It is the saddest attempt at social justice I have ever seen.”

Indeed, even some pot activists are worried that participants in equity programs could be manipulated by their investors and booted from the businesses after the three-year commitment ends.

“Of course there are going to be bad actors,” Parks said. “This is all so new that we’re going to need even more reforms and safeguards as this moves forward.”

Still, momentum is building across the country for similar programs.

Criminal justice reform will be a key consideration when voters or legislators in three states decide this fall whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use, as is already the case in California and eight other states.

North Dakota’s ballot proposal this November calls for the automatic expungement of some marijuana-related convictions. The Michigan measure, also being put before voters, would lower some criminal marijuana-related violations to civil infractions.

The New Jersey bill, which lawmakers plan to introduce as soon as this week, would make it easier for people with low-level convictions — possessing small amounts of pot — to clear their records.

It would also mandate that 25% of dispensary licenses must be issued to individuals who live in so-called social impact zones — areas with high poverty and disproportionate marijuana arrest rates.

“This kind of reform is long overdue,” Jenkins said.

Even so, his future is far from assured in a new and unstable industry.

Last year, Jenkins got a part-time job at a local cannabis nursery, planting and tending to various strains, which he also smokes on a regular basis. But he was laid off last month with 30 other employees because the company was having financial problems.

His best hope now is Oakland’s equity program, which accepted him earlier this year.

The city helped connect him with a team that plans to open a dispensary in November. Jenkins will be the grow manager. The investors have also committed to helping him open a pot nursery that would eventually belong entirely to him.

“I’ve had ups and downs, but others have had it way worse,” Jenkins said. “I’ve seen brothers locked up for years over some marijuana. Just marijuana. It’s not right.”

“We have to change this cycle,” he said.

—

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Does legal marijuana make police more effective?

MJ Shareholders — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 15:30:47 +0000

Marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington state has “produced some demonstrable and persistent benefit” to police departments’ ability to solve other types of crime, according to researchers at Washington State University.

“Our models show no negative effects of legalization and, instead, indicate that crime clearance rates for at least some types of crime are increasing faster in states that legalized than in those that did not,” the authors write in a study published in the journal Police Quarterly.

A crime is typically considered “cleared” if authorities have identified and arrested a suspect and referred him to the judicial system for prosecution. The Washington State study examined clearance rates for crimes in Colorado and Washington from 2010 through 2015, using monthly FBI data.

To isolate the effects of legalization, the researchers looked at how the trends in clearance changed after the implementation of marijuana legalization in November 2012 in Colorado and December 2012 for Washington. While recreational markets in these states didn’t open until 2014, provisions allowing for personal possession and use took effect shortly after the votes were certified.

Clearance rates were falling in both states before legalization. Afterward the decline stabilized in Colorado and began to reverse itself in Washington. The authors note that no similar shift happened in the country as a whole.

The researchers stress, however, that the data can’t prove conclusively that legalization directly caused the changes in clearance rates. There could have been other changes to policing in those states during that time period, such as increased use of overtime hours, the implementation of new policing strategies or a more aggressive focus on certain types of crime.

They note, however, that no other major changes to public policy happened in those states that would affect clearance rates in the way they observed. “We think the argument that legalization did in fact produce a measurable impact on clearance rates is plausible,” they conclude.

Property crime clearance rates show a dramatic reversal in Colorado, with a brief boost in Washington followed by a continuation of the prior trend.

The authors also looked at trends for some specific types of crime, most notably burglary and motor vehicle theft. “The clearance rate for these two offenses increased dramatically postlegalization,” the authors found. “In contrast, national trends remained essentially flat.”

Going beyond simple visual comparisons, the authors ran a number of statistical tests that largely confirm the findings hinted at in the charts: “While there were both immediate and longer term differences between states which legalized and the rest of the country in terms of crime clearance rates, the long-term differences are much more pronounced, especially in Colorado.”

Advocates for legalization have frequently argued that freeing police from the burden of low-level marijuana enforcement would allow them to devote resources to more serious crimes. The Washington State researchers say their findings support this idea: “Our results suggest that, just as marijuana legalization proponents argued, the legalization of marijuana influenced police outcomes, which in the context of this article is modeled as improvements in clearance rates.”

They note, furthermore, that “there were no crime types in either state for which legalization appeared to have a negative impact on clearance rates.”

Conservative states balk at voter-approved medical marijuana

MJ Shareholders — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 14:30:11 +0000

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Pot advocates celebrated the culmination of a yearslong effort to ease restrictions on the use of cannabis last month when nearly 60 percent of Oklahoma voters approved medical marijuana.

Oklahoma’s proponents had even included a two-month deadline for the implementation in their measure so as to avoid the years of delays they had seen elsewhere.

But that has not stopped state health officials and the Republican governor from making drastic changes . Within weeks of the election, they signed off on tough new restrictions, including a ban on the sale of smokable pot. The change was supported by groups representing doctors, hospitals and pharmacists who opposed medical marijuana, but infuriated supporters of the state question and has already led to lawsuits.

In this Tuesday, July 10, 2018 photo, Tom Bates, interim commissioner of the Oklahoma Board of Health, listens during a meeting in Oklahoma City. When nearly 60 percent of voters in Oklahoma approved medical marijuana last month, pot advocates celebrated a hard-fought victory that was the culmination of a years-long effort to ease restrictions on the use of cannabis. But within just a few weeks, state health officials and the Republican governor signed off on tough new restrictions. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

“It’s like they snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory,” said Chip Paul, who helped write Oklahoma’s medical marijuana state question and push for its approval. “You try to do something the proper way. You follow the rules. And then you win and you get screwed.”

Even in conservative states such as Oklahoma, which became the 30th in the U.S. to legalize medical marijuana, attitudes are shifting in favor of easing restrictions on pot. But there remains resistance from policymakers, especially in Republican-controlled areas, where the rollout of medical marijuana has frequently been restricted by lawmakers or bogged down in court battles.

After more than 70 percent of Florida voters approved medical marijuana in 2016, the Republican-controlled Legislature there imposed a similar ban on smokable pot. A judge last month ruled that such a ban was unconstitutional.

In Arkansas, 53 percent of voters approved medical marijuana in 2016, but a legal challenge has delayed the program. Michigan voters approved medical marijuana in 2008, only to be followed by years of court fights.

In Texas, the GOP-led Legislature approved a restrictive medical marijuana law in 2015, then proceeded to institute strict regulations. It allowed only three dispensaries in a state of 27 million people and imposed the highest licensing fees in the country.

Marijuana advocates say the restrictions on how medical marijuana can be used or the additional burdens placed on doctors may wind up undermining the initiatives and laws.

“The extent of limitations really serves to deprive people of the key goal, which is letting people use medical marijuana without being punished,” said Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project.

Efforts to heavily restrict medical marijuana in Arkansas — including an outright ban on smoking it and an attempt to delay the program’s launch until marijuana was legalized nationwide — failed in the majority-Republican Legislature last year. But the program’s launch has stalled and medical marijuana likely won’t be available until sometime next year.

The problem stems from legal challenges over the state’s licensing process for medical marijuana. The state Supreme Court last month cleared the way for the program to begin, reversing a lower judge’s ruling that the licensing process was flawed and violated the constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana. An unsuccessful applicant had sued over the process.

In this Tuesday, July 10, 2018 photo, Chip Paul, who helped write the medical marijuana state question and push for its passage, answers a question for a reporter before a meeting of the Oklahoma Board of Health in Oklahoma City. When nearly 60 percent of voters in Oklahoma approved medical marijuana last month, pot advocates celebrated a hard-fought victory that was the culmination of a years-long effort to ease restrictions on the use of cannabis. But within just a few weeks, state health officials and the Republican governor signed off on tough new restrictions. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

More than 5,500 patients have been approved to use medical marijuana in the state, and Arkansas will issue them registry cards about a month before the drug is expected to be legally available.

“If I was a patient, I would be coming unglued. I think they are coming unglued,” said attorney David Couch, who authored Arkansas’ medical marijuana amendment.

Oklahoma’s State Question 788 , the result of an activist-led signature drive, passed overwhelmingly despite fierce opposition and more than $1 million in spending by chambers of commerce, clergy, doctors, hospitals, law enforcement and pharmacists.

Term-limited Republican Gov. Mary Fallin, who typically doesn’t comment on state questions, said days before the measure passed that it was too loosely written and would essentially allow recreational use.

After it passed, the same medical groups that opposed it recommended the ban on “smokables” and the pharmacist requirement. On Friday, separate lawsuits were filed in two Oklahoma counties accusing state health officials of improperly imposing the strict rules.

“Smoking of any kind is unhealthy,” said Oklahoma State Medical Association President Jean Hausheer, an ophthalmologist from Lawton. “This issue is not an option and really is more of an absolute demand.”

DeMillo reported from Little Rock, Arkansas. Associated Press writer Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

‘It’s not a free-for-all’: High Desert marijuana raids continue to net high targets

MJ Shareholders — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 00:00:15 +0000

PHELAN — It was already in the mid-80s early Thursday morning when detectives arrived to the first illegal marijuana grow raid of the day, and the heat only grew more searing by the hour.

Yet none of this seemed to deter the six-man San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) from their work. They steadily moved through stuffy, pungent grow houses and sheds, cutting down thousands of plants, seemingly immune to it all.

“My daughter already knows what marijuana smells like. I asked her, ‘Baby, how do you know that?’” MET Sgt. Eric Deverec said with a chuckle. “She said, ‘Because that’s what you smell like, Daddy, all the time.’”

The team was hard at work raiding an illegal grow operation at a home in the 13900 block of Pacific Road on Thursday morning — the first of five such illegal operations in the Phelan and Pinon Hills area. The first location yielded over 2,800 plants, Deverec said. The others each had several hundred plants and pounds of processed marijuana.

“Since marijuana was legalized, we’ve seen a lot of misconceptions about it. People think it’s just a free-for-all, but it’s not,” Deverec said, looking over rows of growing pot plants. “There are still laws and rules about it. This is nowhere near legal.”

Deverec became the team’s sergeant about two months ago, according to Sheriff’s spokeswoman Jodi Miller, but he served on the team for several years as a detective previously. As such, he’s seen more than his share of illegal grows all through the county, including Thursday’s, in which the Daily Press was invited to come along.

Three men were found and detained at the first home, and the team detained two others at the second location, a home on the 13600 block of Wilson Ranch Road. Deverec said the men would all be transported to the High Desert Detention Center and booked on suspicion of illegal cultivation of marijuana.

Yet he also acknowledged the seeming futility of arresting the men in the first place. Many detained at MET raids often elude criminal charges, the Daily Press has found while checking through court records.

“We can only do our part of it,” Deverec said. “As long as there is an illegal operation — and under the current law, anything over six plants is illegal — we will continue to conduct these raids, detain these people, and send these charges to the DA’s office. But what happens in the courtroom is not up to us.”

The majority of the people detained — Deverec put the number at somewhere close to 98 percent — have been from Asian countries such as China, Laos, and Cambodia, and it can often be difficult to determine how deeply they’re tied to the operations.

“We are still investigating why they’re here,” Deverec said. “There is a theory these people might be indentured servants, but we’re not sure yet. And there’s often not a whole lot of cooperation. Some of it is the language barrier at times.”

He acknowledged the apparent links between the raids here to the large-scale raids in Northern California, found to have ties to a Chinese crime syndicate, according to the Associated Press. Deverec mentioned coming across workers at illegal grows on San Bernardino National Forest land who were promised money for successful harvests.

“It’s possible we could be seeing something similar here,” Deverec said.

The first location off Pacific Road had been raided for an illegal pot grow the year before, Deverec said. The home was red-tagged by county Code Enforcement. Officials said they may still pursue criminal charges against the property owner once the investigation is through.

Tips from the public often lead the team to illegal grows, Deverec said.

“We often get calls from residents reporting they can smell something, or that their neighbors are never home yet the lights are always on,” Deverec said.

The team was joined by several National Guard members — part of the state’s California Counter-Drug Task Force, Deverec said. The men helped clear the plants, secure the properties, and detain any persons found there.

Many of them, along with the MET members, spoke candidly of their experiences going on these raids. They mentioned the environmental damage forest grows can wreak on nature, and the toxins and black mold found in indoor grows. They spoke of house fires that spread to other homes, sparked by faulty electrical wiring used to power large-scale grows.

When asked what he would say to those who think going after marijuana grows, especially after the drug’s legalization for recreational use in 2016, was pointless, Deverec noted many of the above instances.

“People think this is a waste of time until it affects them,” Deverec said. “I liken it to driving — driving is legal, but there’s still a whole lot of things you can’t do while driving. It’s the same with marijuana.”

All five grow operations remain under investigation. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Sheriff’s Gangs/Narcotics Division at 909-387-8400 or NARC-MET@sbcsd.org. Persons wishing to remain anonymous can contact the We-Tip Hotline at 1-800-782-7463 or online at ?www.wetip.com?.