Pubdate: Thu, 02 Jul 2015
Source: Sacramento News & Review (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://newsreview.com/sacto/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/540
Author: Cosmo Garvin

WTF, DFW?

Our Writer Encounters Mavmit, the Department of Fish and Wildlife's 
Mysterious Anti-Marijuana Task Force

After a strange encounter with an agent from the Mountain and Valley 
Marijuana Investigation Team, our writer asks: If the Department of 
Fish and Wildlife is trying to catch drug dealers, do they know what 
they're doing?

The next time you're running errands around town, beware: You might 
wind up in the Department of Fish and Wildlife's marijuana dragnet.

I know, that sounds ridiculous. But, seriously, watch out.

Not long ago, I had to return something to Amazon. Not drugs. It was 
an iPod I had bought for my son. The wrong one, so I drove to the UPS 
Store on Freeport Boulevard to ship it back. There were folks ahead 
of me in line, it was lunchtime, I was hungry and I didn't want to wait.

So, I went to the UPS Store on S Street in Midtown. No line, the lady 
at the counter was supernice and helpful. Alas, the ramen place next 
door had a wait, so I decided to look for a quieter lunch spot.

That's when I noticed the large man in the S.F. Giants cap giving me 
the stink eye. I didn't think too much about it. Midtown is mostly 
cool, but there is the occasional weirdo.

As I approached my car, however, the big dude called out. "Sir, 
excuse me. Can I talk to you?"

Now I saw the big dude had something hanging from a lanyard around 
his neck. As he got closer I could see it said "Department of Fish and Game."

OK, what is this shit? I thought. Was this guy some kind of cop? Or 
scammer? What's Fish and Game doing in Midtown? And, isn't it called 
Department of Fish and Wildlife?

The big dude started talking about how he was part of a "marijuana 
task force," he'd watched me leave the UPS store on Freeport. He said 
my car had a brake light out, and so he'd decided to follow me. And, 
now, he wanted to know why I was going from one UPS store to another. 
And he wanted to see my license and registration.

"Wait, what? You followed me?" I had no idea what he was talking 
about, but red flags were flying.

(For the record: I'm not a drug dealer. I don't even smoke pot 
anymore, it makes me nervous.)

The big dude was making me nervous, too. His story didn't seem 
kosher. I wasn't going to open my wallet or my car door for him. I 
made to leave.

"You're not leaving," he said, moving closer. "You need to understand 
that you are being detained."

"For a brake light? Who are you?" I asked. "Where is your ticket 
book? Where is your car, even?"

The big dude pulled out an ID. It said his name was John Laughlin, 
and it said Fish and Game. Was it real? I guessed maybe. How are you 
supposed to tell?

He said his ticket book was in his car around the corner, that we 
could walk over there. Uh-huh. "Tell you what," I said. "You go get 
your ticket book. I'm going to call the police and we can sort it out 
with them."

"And I'm going to warn you that you are interfering with my 
investigation," the big dude countered. "And you may be placed under arrest."

We stood there looking at each other for a while. Me thinking, What 
the hell? Him telling me he really was a real cop. Then, he called 
someone on his iPhone. I opened the voice memo app on mine and let 
him know I was recording. Shortly thereafter, some Sacramento County 
Probation Department guys rolled up in a marked car.

Laughlin told the probation guys about the UPS stores, the brake 
light and that I was nervous because I didn't know who he was. All 
true. He told them, "I advised him about 148."

Not true. I didn't know what "148" meant until I looked it up and 
learned that's the penal code for resisting arrest.

The probation guys told me Laughlin really was law enforcement. So, I 
showed him my license and registration. He gave me a little talk 
about the millions of dollars worth of marijuana being shipped 
through the mail. "Do you think that's all for medicinal purposes?" he asked.

"I don't know. Are you going to write me a ticket?" I asked. No. Did 
he have any more questions about me being a drug dealer? No, 
apparently not. Great. "Can I have the name of your supervisor?" He 
gave me a name.

The name was bullshit. It turned out Laughlin's "supervisor" no 
longer works at the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Eventually, I got in touch with David Bess, chief of law enforcement 
at DFW, who told me, yes, Laughlin worked for something called the 
Mountain And Valley Marijuana Investigation Team, or MAVMIT, a 
multi-agency anti-marijuana task force coordinated by the Department 
of Justice.

(By the way, Fish and Game did change its name to Fish and Wildlife 
in 2012. But they decided to keep the old badges around in order to 
save money.)

Bess saw nothing wrong with the stop and said Laughlin was completely 
within his authority to follow me across town and question me because 
of the brake light. Also, he said it was suspicious that I went from 
one UPS store to another. OK, maybe that's weird. But Laughlin 
wouldn't have known this if he wasn't already creeping on me.

Bess also said that Laughlin observed that I had a backpack with me, 
and that it "looked heavier when you came out of the store."

Nope, also not true. It had the same laptop and yellow notepads as 
when I went in.

I called Department of Justice spokesperson Kristin Ford, who said 
MAVMIT is tasked with finding and eradicating marijuana grows on 
public lands. I knew that much from Googling. And it's true, of 
course, that illegal pot grows are incredibly damaging to the 
environment. And dangerous to people, too. A Fish and Wildlife 
officer working for MAVMIT shot and killed a guy earlier this year at 
a grow on a wildlife refuge near Elk Grove.

But when did Fish and Wildlife agents start following random people 
around city neighborhoods? And what are we paying for that? Does 
MAVMIT have a budget? Does it file annual reports?

Unfortunately, DOJ and DFW officials so far haven't answered my 
questions. In fact, it seemed like they were annoyed by my queries, 
like I was keeping them from the important stuff they had to do. Or 
maybe they felt like I was asking questions that were really none of 
my business.

Ford at DOJ did give me one interesting detail: Laughlin was not 
actually with MAVMIT when he stopped me, like Bess said he was.

So I called Bess again, and this time he gave me a different story, 
about how Laughlin was actually helping this other marijuana task 
force. "How many task forces are there?" I asked. And what was the 
name of this other task force? Bess wouldn't say. "Because the case 
they are working on is not resolved, I cannot discuss it."

Uh-huh.

I still have a lot of questions. If the DFW is trying to catch drug 
dealers, do they know what they're doing? It seems dumb and dangerous 
to come at people on the street and say you've been following them, 
and that you're going to detain them-when you're not any kind of cop 
that most people would recognize. And just how often is DFW 
"detaining" law-abiding citizens on city streets with this sort of 
flimsy pretext?

Now, while DFW is apparently pretty bad at guessing who's a drug 
dealer, what Laughlin said about people moving weed out of state 
through the mail is true.

Since Proposition 215 and the "medical" marijuana boom, "there's a 
glut of pot and no place to unload it," says attorney Mark Reichel.

So the post office, UPS and FedEx store are conduits for 
California-grown pot headed for buyers in Maryland, or Pennsylvania, 
or North Carolina, you name it.

Of course, that means that more than ever cops are hovering around 
these mail stores, watching people come and go on their daily 
errands. And, apparently, even something innocuous like a backpack or 
a brake light can put you under suspicion.

"They are throwing probable cause out the window. It's just a big 
dragnet," says Reichel.

"Ten years ago, nobody was watching you go to the post office. Now 
they are. That's the reality. There's just way more surveillance on 
the mail than there was before," he added.

I don't want to make you nervous, but definitely don't send your weed 
through the UPS Store. Maybe don't go there at all. Or at least check 
your rearview mirror as you leave.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom