Nosing Around
In many weed cases, ‘probable cause’ doesn’t go much further than a sense of smell
(May 13, 2010) Jeremiah Benton slid from bed and looked out his window when Boss, his albino pit bull, started barking. Outside he saw about a dozen sheriff’s deputies in flak jackets, some with assault rifles. One carried a battering ram.
Benton, a 31-year-old Eureka resident, was part of a marijuana collective. About 200 plants grew inside his house and the sheriff’s deputies had a warrant to search it.
In only his boxers, Benton went to the door. When one deputy demanded that he open it, he asked if he could first put Boss and Kaya, a brown pit bull, in his backyard. The deputy told him that if he didn’t open the door, they would bust it down. When Benton opened it, they rushed in.
“My dick was hanging out for everyone to laugh at me,” says Benton. The deputies put him on his stomach, handcuffed him and pointed assault rifles in his face.
Others moved through his house and started cutting Benton’s marijuana plants, even though he had seven prescriptions posted in his garden.
“I’m a small-timer,” says Benton. “Why were they raiding me?”
That’s the question many local growers likely asked themselves last year. Although police say they are more concerned with hard drugs and violent crimes, more than 35 percent of the search warrants we reviewed related to marijuana and most were relatively small grows in the northern part of Humboldt County.
District Attorney Paul Gallegos says that marijuana grows have moved down from the hills and into residential neighborhoods because Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that legalized marijuana for medicinal use, made it easier for people to grow in their homes. But while marijuana makes up a sizeable percentage of search warrant cases, he says they are a small percent of all cases. “Most marijuana searches are for cultivation that usually happens in a residence, so a warrant is necessary,” he said. “The DA’s office charges 10,000 cases a year and marijuana isn’t a third of them.”
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Today
44th Annual Kinetic Grand Championship Race
STAFF PICK / events, art, outdoors, sports, for kids, free / 9 a.m.-6 p.m. A 3-day, 42-mile kinetic sculpture race over land, sand, mud and water! LeMans start at the Noon Whistle on the Arcata Plaza. Follow the race through Manila, Eureka and into Ferndale on Memorial Day for the Glorious Finish. kineticgrandchampionship.com. 889-3024.
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Lanphere Dunes Restoration
STAFF PICK / outdoors / 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Meet at Pacific Union School. Help remove non-native invasives at the Lanphere Dunes Unit of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Tools and gloves provided, wear work clothes and bring water. Carpool to the protected site. 444-1397.
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ONE Comments
Comment / By Bud Green / May 17, 10:22 a.m.
It’s easy to get cynical after 20 years in the news business, but every now and then something happens to remind you why you got into journalism in the first place. The HSU investigative reporting team undertook a large project, worked through some interesting challenges to get the information they needed and then helped readers make sense of what they found.
I read a lot of stories about pot, but I haven’t read anything like this before. Accordingly, I’ll be sure to use my reporter’s nose to look for more instances of “smelly” warrants in the future. Thanks are due the HSU investigative students, whose curiosity was anything but idle.