Get Active Subscribe Support Us

WARREN SUED OVER MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Medical marijuana patients claim city officials have targeted them in violation of state law.

Warren officials including police harassed medical marijuana patients - - some suffering from cancer -- with tickets and other methods in violation of state law, according to a lawsuit filed Monday against the city.

The 23 patients from Macomb County, including seven caregivers plus two businesses, are plaintiffs in the legal action taken in Macomb County Circuit Court.

"The city has created an environment of intimidation and fear, that people are afraid to get the medicine they need," said their attorney, Michael Greiner.

He added zoning inspectors have been to a building on Hoover Road located north of 12 Mile Road where marijuana was cultivate and caregivers transferred it to patients a dozen times this year and that police have been there twice.

Plaintiffs have issued misdemeanor zoning tickets that the city is pressing in 37th District Court.  The cases are pending.

"This ( lawsuit ) has not come out of blue," Greiner said.  "We did not try to become some kind of test case or cause a ruckus."

Defendants in the case include Mayor James Fouts, zoning inspectors Lynn Martin and Everett Murphy, Police Commissioner Jere Green, and a detective whose name is not being published currently by The Macomb Daily because he is a detective in the undercover Special Investigations Division.

Greiner said some of his clients have approached Warren City Council members for help and unsuccessfully tried to convince Fouts to halt the city's actions.

"He is just not receptive.  He takes the attitude this is drug dealing," said Greiner.

A message left Monday for Fouts by The Macomb Daily was not immediately returned.

"I have no comment on pending litigation because I haven't seen it ( the lawsuit )," Green said.

Among the 23 patients, 13 reside in Warren, two live in Roseville, one is from Sterling Heights, one is from Chesterfield Township and three each reside in Shelby Township and Clinton Township.

The lawsuit alleges the plaintiffs were ticketed on multiple occasions for zoning violations despite the lack of a zoning law in Warren addressing medical marijuana.

It says police searched the property at 29601 Hoover Road without a warrant on July 7, 2015, covered building security cameras during the search and unlawfully seized property.  Greiner claims several drivers leaving the property on Sept.  17 and Sept.  18 were questioned "in what amounted to a suspicionless roadblock." He said several were threatened with criminal sanctions such as additional tickets and loss of their driver's license if they told the plaintiffs about the "roadblock."

The lawsuit also claims that during a Sept.  18 raid, agents of the city posed as one defendant, Bryan Mazurkiewicz, on the phone to tell others the facility no longer was available as a place for the transfer of medical marijuana.

The plaintiffs allege the city and individual defendants violated their constitutional rights to due process, equal protection under the law, and protection from unreasonable search and seizure.  They claim they have suffered physical pain and embarrassment, humiliation, stress, fear, nightmares and loss of income as a result of not getting their needed medication.

Greiner is directly impacted by the litigation because he owns the office building and leases suites to tenants.  He formerly was a high-ranking city employee, having served as deputy mayor in the administration of former mayor Mark Steenbergh.  Greiner said he has tried working with current officials to resolve the dispute.