LAPD Raids Medical Lab For (Nonexistent) Weed, Get Gun Stuck In An MRI Machine

Failures

from the keystone-kops-handling-the-Drug-War dept

Some of our nation’s finest Drug Warriors are at it again. And by “at it,” I mean doing seriously stupid, seriously unconstitutional stuff in hopes of finding drugs or (better yet!) cash that will somehow prove they’re doing anything at all to stem the flow of illegal drugs.

And yet, they weren’t even after a truly illegal drug here. The LAPD was going after some supposedly “unlicensed” weed, which means weed that isn’t generating tax dollars, rather than the substance that is mostly legal in a lot of places, including Los Angeles, California.

The raid was botched in more ways than one, but it led off with the claim always made by Drug Warriors when they need an excuse to start violating the Constitution. (h/t Radley Balko)

The owners of NoHo Diagnostic Center are suing the LAPD, the city of Los Angeles and multiple police officers, alleging they violated the business owners’ constitutional rights and demanding an unspecified amount in damages. Officers allegedly raided the diagnostic center, located in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, thinking it was a front for an illegal cannabis cultivation facility, pointing to higher-than-usual energy use and the “distinct odor” of cannabis plants, according to the lawsuit. 

Yep, cops on Drug War duty are peeping electric bills to locate grow operations. Even when they’re wrong, they still feel they’re right. There are lots of reasons a place might be using more electricity, whether it’s someone’s desktop Bitcoin rig or, in this case, a place that uses a lot of high-powered, highly-specialized medical equipment. And “distinct odor” is just a useful dodge — something used to justify otherwise illegal entries that can’t be readily disputed because there’s no body cam on the market (yet) that is capable of identifying odors.

What the body cams can catch is the butchery of rights and some incredibly incompetent policing. We’ll see if any of this footage survives — not just because the LAPD might want to cover this up, but because the officers just sort of blundered around the building, poking and prodding at x-ray machines, ultrasound devices, CT scanners, and — most comically — an MRI behind a door that clearly told everyone entering not to bring anything metal into the room. And for good reason, as one officer immediately discovered.

The MRI machine’s magnetic force then allegedly sucked his rifle across the room, pinning it against the machine…

An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit. 

Please tell me more about this “training and expertise,” Officer Disarmed-By-An-MRI-Machine. Also, explain to me why it was worth the sacrifice of a multi-million dollar machine to save a gun that’s far more replaceable than you are, Officer Doesn’t-Know-What-The-Fuck-He’s-Doing. The cop shop will always issue you another one. But without securing a win or a settlement in this lawsuit, the medical facility will have to cover the repairs out of its own pocket due to your inept blundering.

The lawsuit’s [PDF] allegations further highlight the complete ineptitude of everyone involved in this raid, starting with the officer who secured the search warrant. Behold this amazing display of detective work by someone who shouldn’t be allowed to operate MS Word, much less a handgun.

OFFICER FRANCO conducted surveillance on multiple dates in 2023, reporting the “distinct odor of live cannabis plant and not the odor of dried cannabis being smoked,” tinted windows – which he attributed to efforts to conceal cannabis cultivation, security cameras –which he associated with locations where cannabis is grown to prevent theft, and two individuals in similar attire at the premises – whom he concluded were performing maintenance or expanding the cultivation operation.

Pretty hard to square the claim of a pervasive marijuana odor with the distinct lack of marijuana on the premises. And everything Officer Franco claims is illustrative of illegal operations is also illustrative of plenty of fully legal operations — like the operation and housing of incredibly expensive medical equipment by trained professionals.

That’s not all the stupid, though. There’s more from Officer Franco, who couldn’t even be bothered to compare the NoHo Diagnostic Center to its nearest electricity-using neighbors to see if he was actually witnessing something anomalous (and, I guess, drug-related) or just the sort of normal usage split one would expect in a situation like this.

OFFICER FRANCO compared the power usage of the TARGET PREMISES to nearby businesses and found it significantly higher.

OFFICER FRANCO, therefore, concluded that the TARGET PREMISES was cultivating cannabis, disregarding the fact that it is a diagnostic facility utilizing an MRI machine, Xray machine, and other heavy medical equipment—unlike the surrounding businesses selling flowers, chocolates, and childrens’ merchandise, none of which would require significant power usage.

Officer Franco also claimed to have performed an “internet search” linking the lab to “Fouad Ashour,” despite publicly-available business records showing the business had been incorporated in 2021 by its Chief Executive Officer, Ustiana Shaginian.

This isn’t “training and expertise.” It certainly isn’t “expertise.” And if this is how Officer Franco makes inferences, there’s something seriously wrong with the LAPD’s training, as the lawsuit points out. (Emphasis in the original.)

Despite the TARGET PREMISES’ legitimate business certification, OFFICER FRANCO, as a natural next step, contacted LAPD’s Gang and Narcotics Division Cannabis Support Unit. OFFICER FRANCO learned that the TARGET PREMISES, a medical diagnostic center, does not have a license to cultivate cannabis, a finding he promptly labeled a “violation of the California Health and Safety Code.”

Based on his 15 years as an LAPD officer and twelve hours of narcotics training, and based upon the presence of security cameras (typical of any reasonable commercial business), tinted windows (a reasonable practice for any medical facility concerned with patient privacy), high power usage (as any diagnostic facility), the alleged odor of cannabis plants (in a busy shopping plaza with no prior reports), the absence of a cultivation permit (which no diagnostic healthcare facility would possess), and the presence of two men wearing identical company branded shirts (unexpected of individuals involved in illegal cultivation), OFFICER FRANCO found probable cause for cannabis cultivation at the TARGET PREMISES.

Burn him. Burn him to the ground. This wasn’t an investigation. This was an officer working backwards from conclusions he’d apparently generated without any reasonable suspicion that would warrant the initiation of an investigation until he arrived at the point he could get a warrant and start violating rights.

Given these allegations, I would sincerely hope the city of LA already has a check half-written. All it needs now is the settlement amount. Allowing this to move forward just means more cops are going be asked more questions. And the one cop, whose name leads off the lawsuit, has answered plenty of those with actions, and has raised a similar number of disturbing questions whose answers are just going to generate more liability for the PD.

And while it’s always difficult to hold a city or entire police department accountable for officers’ actions, every time these officers attest to their “training” and “experience” in warrant requests, depositions, or direct testimony, they’re implying the errors (or willful violations) they committed were at least partially based on the training provided by their employers and their service to the higher power (the city) that signs their paychecks. This is embarrassing on several levels. Hopefully, NoHo Diagnostic will get some justice here. And even more hopefully, the city will decide to make some heads roll in hopes of deterring future actions like these that not only violate residents’ rights, but insult their intelligence and rob them of their tax dollars.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, drug war, lapd, lawsuit, police misconduct
Companies: noho diagnostic center