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I hope this lawsuit is successful and these power abusing cops get fired. But that will not happen and these raids will not stop until the cost of settlement comes out of LE pension funds. I would love to be on this jury.
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The operators of a communal property dedicated to food self-sufficiency—that is, an organic farm—are striking back via federal court against a city that sent a SWAT team to raid their property in a fruitless search for marijuana back in 2013, a local NBC station near Arlington, Texas reports:
The lawsuit claims that police were heavy handed, never had probable cause to raid the facility and based the search largely on an anonymous tip and a flyover, which spotted what looked like marijuana plants.
The plants turned out to be tomatoes.
Why were the cops so sure that the Garden of Eden was a front for drug trafficking? Because it was a bunch of ****ing hippies growing stuff, so of course they were growing marijuana. As detailed in a federal lawsuit filed last month by Eaker and four other victims of the SWAT raid, the justification for this armed invasion was not much stronger than that.
In her search warrant affidavit, which is Exhibit A in the lawsuit, Arlington Detective Magdalena Perez claimed Eaker possessed "a usable quantity of marijuana of two ounces or less" in Arlington "on or about July 30, 2013." Perez cited no basis for that assertion, and Eaker says he neither possessed marijuana nor interacted with police in any way that day. The Houston Chronicle reports that "a search of Arlington court records turned up no marijuana or other drug charges in Eaker's name."
Perez also cited the Garden of Eden's supposedly incriminating website:
The website for the Garden of Eden also advertises "Uber Dank High Vibe Cuisine." While the website indicates that Uber can mean "over the top," "extraordinary," or "super," and Dank can mean "high quality" (mostly for consumables) or "overflowing gratitude," your AFFIANT knows through her training and experience that "Uber Dank" is also slang for high quality marijuana. AFFIANT also knows that individuals who consume marijuana often refer to the sensation felt after consumption as a "high." The website mentions the word high multiple times while describing the food. In addition, AFFIANT knows that some people consume marijuana by baking it into their food.
The kind that grow tomatoes? The cops in the OP should be fired for being so stupid.
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