Pubdate: Fri, 01 Mar 2002 Source: Sacramento Bee (CA) Copyright: 2002 The Sacramento Bee Contact: http://www.sacbee.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376 Author: Wayne Wilson, Bee Staff Writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm (Drug Raids) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption) AGGRESSIVE PLACER ANTI-POT FORCE TARGETED 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. Among 36 raids tracked by The Bee, 26 resulted in no-contest or guilty pleas. One produced a state prison sentence. Penalties meted out in the other 25 cases ranged from diversion to probation and county jail time. But at least one of the raids turned up nothing, and the rest of the targets convinced prosecutors and jurors they were growing pot legally under provisions of state law. Proposition 215, the "Compassionate Use Act" passed by California voters in 1996, allows the medicinal use of marijuana by patients with a recommendation from a physician. But federal law criminalizes marijuana use of any kind, and the federal government does not recognize the validity of Proposition 215. Among those targeted by Placer's Marijuana Eradication Team were: * Robert DeArkland, a 72-year-old Fair Oaks resident who, according to court records, treats his prostate cancer and heart condition with cannabis with a recommendation from his physician. * Lyman H. Sanborn, a 78-year-old Roseville resident who, in sworn statements to the court, said he's never seen a marijuana plant. Nothing was found in Sanborn's house and he wasn't arrested, but detectives justified the raid by claiming fresh marijuana clippings had been found earlier in a search of his trash. * Chris J. Miller, a disabled 48-year-old Citrus Heights man whose severe physical ailments and a doctor's note recommendingmarijuana therapy were not enough to prevent his arrest. Charges were dismissed, and deputies later were ordered by the court to return the pot and cultivation tools seized from his home. * Dr. Michael Baldwin, a 35-year-old Granite Bay dentist who won a dismissal of all charges after a protracted legal battle over his physician-approved use of pot to control pain. All four, and a Rio Linda couple whose criminal case was picked up by federal authorities when they refused to plead guilty in state court, are among the plaintiffs suing Placer County in U.S. District Court. Their claims are similar: They contend Placer County and its investigators, with Tracy Grant at the helm, procured search warrants for their residences by making false statements to the magistrate. Although the precise techniques used to target individuals have never been revealed by detectives, it is clear that almost all the suspects had one thing in common: They shopped for equipment at Greenfire, an indoor gardening shop on Auburn Boulevard in Sacramento. Baldwin and other plaintiffs claim the police zeroed in on them after agents spotted them leaving the store with hydroponic gardening supplies, which are commonly required to grow pot indoors. Greenfire officials declined to comment on the matter. In affidavits supporting his application for search warrants, Grant didn't state the probable cause that prompted him to visit the various homes whose residents had been seen shopping at Greenfire. The affadavits indicate he just showed up at the residences, noted the license plates on vehicles parked in the driveway, and identified the cars' owners through Department of Motor Vehicles records. Grant said he also went through garbage looking for evidence. As sworn to on the affidavits, what he found in garbage at 22 Sacramento residences was: "Marijuana ... recently cut from a mature marijuana plant ... fresh green and still moist." The same words appeared on all 22 warrant requests, prompting attorney Bill Panzer, who is representing plaintiffs Robert F. and Shawna R. Whiteaker, to remark on "Grant's ... amazing run of luck in discovering virtually identical garbage all over Sacramento County." Placer County Counsel Huskey defends Grant's use of identical words and phrases, explaining it is common for affidavits to "look like boilerplate" when they are generated by police actions that are essentially similar. "It's a common practice," Huskey said. "Once the template works, (March 10, 3:50 a.m. PST) simply fill in the new information. It doesn't mean it's inaccurate. It doesn't mean it's wrong." Grant bolstered his allegations by stating that an examination of Sacramento Municipal Utility District records showed elevated power usage in each of the homes, a common indication of indoor growing. In many of the cases, Grant offered "comparables" showing that neighbors used much less power than those residents believed to be growing pot. Panzer, on behalf of the Whiteakers, challenged the validity of Grant's search warrant before Sacramento Superior Court Judge Tani Cantil-Sakauye. At that time, in late 2000, the criminal action against the Whiteakers was pending in state court. Before the judge could grant a hearing to suppress the evidence, however, she would have to make preliminary findings that "substantial evidence" of police wrongdoing existed. On Feb. 23, 2001, Cantil-Sakauye did just that. She announced that her review of the evidence suggested that "the whole truth" was not "presented to Judge (Gary) Ransom," the magistrate who signed the warrants. She found that in five cases, there were no SMUD subpoenas as claimed by Grant and, in five others, SMUD had responded after the search warrant was issued. In addition, the judge found that five of the power usage comparisons cited by Grant "were either selectively chosen" or were "not true comparables." "I am disturbed by the fact that when an officer of the court comes to a judge and swears under oath that he has these records, that they are not in his possession," she stated. Cantil-Sakauye also said that "discovery provided by the DA ... shows that Detective Grant didn't run those vehicles by their license plates, as he swore to Judge Ransom he did." And she expressed concern that "this evidence was gained by way of the federal grand jury subpoena. I am not clear that Detective Grant had the authority to, on his own as a detective, issue a federal grand jury subpoena to SMUD to obtain these records." Prosecutors said Grant had been cross-designated as a deputy U.S. marshal, and U.S. Marshal Jerry Enomoto confirmed last week that Grant was deputized in September 1999. But that was after the raids that are now the subject of the federal lawsuits. Attorneys representing plaintiffs in the civil rights cases point to Cantil-Sakauye's findings as demonstrations of lies Grant perpetrated on the court at the time he was obtaining warrant authorizations. But Huskey says it is unfair to make too much of Cantil-Sakauye's remarks. The judge simply made a preliminary judgment based on incomplete evidence that would be more fully explored, and perhaps explained, by testimony at the suppression hearing, Huskey said. When the Whiteakers' suppression motion was brought before Sacramento Superior Court Judge Gail D. Ohanesian, Grant invoked federal grand jury secrecy rules, claiming he could not respond to questions relating to the subpoenas. Representatives of the U.S. attorney's office backed him on that issue, and the hearing was interrupted. Ohanesian suggested that she might have to dismiss the case if Grant persisted in his refusal to answer the questions posed. Then, attorneys for the Whiteakers received an offer from Sacramento County Deputy District Attorney Joy Smiley, the prosecutor. In exchange for guilty pleas, it promised Robert Whiteaker a sentence of 16 months, as opposed to the possibility of more than five years if convicted, and Shawna Whiteaker would serve no more than a year in the county jail. The offer also contained a warning that if they refused, both would be prosecuted in federal court, an alternative promising much stiffer penalties if they were convicted. The Whiteakers declined and were indicted in federal court. Their civil suit against Grant and Placer County was put on hold pending resolution of the criminal case. Trial dates in all five civil cases are still months away, with Sanborn scheduled to kick things off Jan. 14, 2003. Grant still is working as a deputy in Placer County and has the backing of prosecutors in Sacramento, who argued before Cantil-Sakauye that, "What the defense did here is nitpick this investigation and found a few mistakes. ... To assume an officer can go through an investigation and not make one mistake is absurd." - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom