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luvdemshrooms
Two inch dick..but it spins!?


Registered: 11/29/01
Posts: 34,247
Loc: Lost In Space
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‘We’ll never be the same’ 2
#24514323 - 07/28/17 04:20 PM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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How a hydroponic tomato garden inspired cops to raid a family’s home
The police report would claim it all kicked off at 7:38 a.m., but Bob Harte later thought it had to be earlier.
His 7:20 a.m. alarm had just yanked him awake. Got to get the kids — a boy in seventh grade, a girl in kindergarten — ready for school. Then he heard, like a starter’s pistol setting everything into motion, the first pounding on the front door of his home in Leawood, Kan., a bedroom suburb south of Kansas City. It was thunderous. It didn’t stop. Should I get up? Bob thought. Should I not? Sounded like the house was coming down, he would recall later.
Wearing only gym shorts, the stocky 51-year-old left his wife in bed and shuffled downstairs. The solid front door had a small window carved at eye-level, one-foot-square. As he approached, Bob saw the porch was clogged with police officers. Immediately after opening the door, seven members of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) pressed into the house brandishing guns and a battering ram. Bob found himself flat on floor, hands behind his head, his eyes locked on the boots of the officer standing over him with an AR-15 assault rifle. “Are there kids?” the officers were yelling. “Where are the kids?”
“And I’m laying there staring at this guy’s boots fearing for my kids’ lives, trying to tell them where my children are,” Harte recalled later in a deposition on July 9, 2015. “They are sending these guys with their guns drawn running upstairs to bust into my children’s house, bedroom, wake them out of bed.”
Harte’s wife, Addie, bolted downstairs with the children. Their son put his hands up when he saw the guns. The family of four were eventually placed on a couch as police continued to search the property. The officers would only say they were searching for narcotics.
Addie had a thought: It’s because of the hydroponic garden, she told her husband, they are looking for pot. No way, Harte said, correctly reasoning marijuana wasn’t a narcotic. And all this for pot?
But after two hours of fruitless search, the officers showed the Hartes a warrant. Indeed, the hunt was for marijuana. Addie and Bob were flabbergasted — all this for pot?
“You take the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, all the rights you expect to have — when they come in like that, the only right you have is not to get shot if you cooperate,” Harte told The Washington Post this week. “They open that door, your life is on the line.”
The April 20, 2012, raid would not furnish JCSO with the desired arrests and publicity (a news conference had already been planned for the afternoon). But it would cause considerable embarrassment. Not only were the Hartes upstanding citizens with clean records, they were also both former Central Intelligence Agency officers. And they were not marijuana growers. Rather, the quick-trigger suspicion of law enforcement had snagged on — it would later turn out — tea leaves and a struggling tomato plant.
The Hartes would eventually file a federal lawsuit against the county, city, and officers involved. And although a federal judge later threw out their claim, this week a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled that the family could move forward in court. The decision has larger implications for Fourth Amendment litigation and legislation targeting badly behaving police officers.
The scorching judicial pronouncement blasted authorities for laziness and possible fabrication, the kind of overzealous police work that’s become a sometimes deadly facet of the drug war. And despite the sustained effort of the Obama administration to power down the law enforcement’s more quixotic battles with illicit substances, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has promised to reprioritize marijuana investigations. The Hartes case is a textbook reminder how that can be dangerous.
“Our family will never be the same,” Addie told The Post. “If this can happen to us, everybody in the country needs to be afraid,” Bob added.
The events leading to the raid began a year earlier, according to court documents. Starting in 1997, Sgt. James Wingo of the Missouri State Highway Patrol started pulling surveillance shifts in the parking lots of hydroponic garden stores around the state. The project’s logic, as Wingo explained in a 2011 letter to other law enforcement agencies, was that the stores “sell items that are consistently found in indoor marijuana growing operations.” As customers came and went, Wingo would note their license plate information and enter names into a database.
In 2011, Wingo conceived of “Operation Constant Gardener.” In his letter to law enforcement, Wingo stated he would “supply your agency with the names of these customers that are within your jurisdiction. This will give your agency two weeks to initiate brief investigation” to “obtain probable cause for a search warrant.” Then, per Wingo’s plan, the various agencies would all strike on the same day — April 20. Wingo chose the timing due to the date’s association with marijuana: It was a date “celebrated in that community much as we celebrate Christmas.” Wingo promised the operation would be a “significant media event.”
The first series of “Operation Constant Gardener” raids were successful, and 30 agencies participated in the roundups. Fifty-two “indoor grows” were seized, according to court records. “The media coverage was 99% positive,” Wingo noted in an email to the agencies.
There was demand for a repeat in 2012. Thomas Reddin, a sergeant with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, emailed Wingo five months after the first raids asking about more joint operations on the upcoming April date. Wingo admitted in an email he didn’t have enough “new contacts to justify a full throttle 420 operation.” But the State Highway patrolman offered to share the names he did have with the county. On March 20, 2012, JCSO received the names from the garden store surveillance.
Bob Harte was among them.
He had met his wife, Addie, in 1989, when both were working for the CIA. Ten years later, the family relocated to the Kansas City area to raise a family. Addie worked as an attorney with a local financial group. Bob stayed home and raised the children. Around 2011, he’d come up with the idea of trying to raise tomatoes, golden melons, butternut squash and other vegetables in a hydroponic garden in the family’s basement as an educational project with his son. The setup was small, just two parallel tubes of PVC piping with plastic cups of seeds and dirt under the lamps. And to gather supplies for the project, on Aug. 9, 2011, Bob and his two children piled out of the family’s Kia minivan in the parking lot of a gardening store called Green Circle in downtown Kansas City.
Wingo was watching from a parked car and noted the license plate.
Eight months later, as law enforcement continued to search every inch of their house for drugs, Addie sat on the couch, trying to explain to her son what was going on. “I had nothing, how do you explain that? They know I can’t protect them then,” she told The Post this week. “Sitting in your home, having your Miranda rights read to you, it’s absolutely surreal.”
The raid turned up no marijuana. Before leaving the Harte house, police would only say the family had been targeted and surveilled because marijuana “seeds and stems” had been found on the property. The police also suggested the couple’s son was smoking pot, and told the Hartes to take him to a pediatrician for a drug test.
In the year following the raid, Addie and Bob both struggled to come up with an explanation for why marijuana seeds and stems would have been at their home. The couple say they’ve never smoked pot themselves. There just wasn’t a sensible reason for the raid. The unanswered question began to eat particularly at Bob; previously calm and carefree, he stopped sleeping, and found himself mentally tripping down a rabbit hole of possible scenarios. Who were they dealing with here, he wondered. Was this a situation of corrupt cops or a setup? Or did a neighborhood teen drop some marijuana on their lawn walking by?
Addie, whose brother was a former New York City police officer, watched as her children became frightened just driving by the police station or seeing a patrol car on the road.
Finally, nearly a year after the incident, JCSO provided some documentation to the couple. Right away, they understood what had happened. On the official paperwork before the raid, investigators noted they had pulled the couple’s trash before the incident as part of the investigation. But the reports didn’t refer to “stems and seeds.” They referred to “wet glob vegetation.”
“As soon as we heard that, we knew it was my tea,” Addie told The Post, referring to a loose-leaf Teavana brand tea she drank regularly. “But it took over a year and $2,500 for a lawyer to figure out what had happened.”
There was more to learn about the pre-raid investigation.
Court records later indicated that after identifying the Hartes from Wingo’s tip, JCSO conducted three trash pulls on the house. On the first, April 3, the officers noted wet “plant material” but determined it was “innocent.” At the next two trash pulls — April 10 and April 17 — the same material was found again, but this time JCSO officers tested the material with a marijuana field test. The results came back positive, but the offices didn’t take photos of the results or send the material to a laboratory for confirmation. Instead, based on the Wingo tip and the two positive drug tests, JCSO applied for and was granted a search warrant for the April 20 raid.
In November 2013, the couple filed a federal lawsuit against the county’s board of commissioners, as well as the officers involved. The family claimed the raid was an unlawful search-and-seizure in violation of the 14th and Fourth Amendments. The suit, which asked for $7 million in damages, also argued law enforcement violated state laws including trespassing and abuse of power.
In December, 2015, U.S. District Judge John W. Lungstrum threw out the family’s case citing qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that shields officers from liability for otherwise lawful acts in the course of their duty. The Hartes appealed.
This week, the three judge panel — Carlos Lucero, Gregory Phillips and Nancy Moritz — ruled against the state, sending the case back to district court. The 100-page decision pushed back hard against the claim that police officers are immune from legal responsibility if they are just doing their jobs.
“The defendants in this case caused an unjustified governmental intrusion into the Hartes’ home based on nothing more than junk science, an incompetent investigation, and a publicity stunt,” Lucero wrote in his opinion. “The Fourth Amendment does not condone this conduct, and neither can I.”
The judge went on to question the department’s claim of probable cause for the raid — particularly on the issue of the supposedly “positive” field-tested tea leaves. “There was no probable cause at any step of the investigation,” the judge wrote. “Not at the garden shop, not at the gathering of the tea leaves, and certainly not at the analytical stage when the officers willfully ignored directions to submit any presumed results to a laboratory for analysis.”
Ed Eilert, a chairman of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners, did not respond to an email seeking comment on the decision.
The appellate win, if not successfully appealed, means the Hartes will be able to press their case in district court. Five years after the raid, the couple say they are committed to pushing forward especially if the challenge could impact the latitude law enforcement takes when conducting police work.
“The Fourth Amendment was not there when we needed it,” Bob said. “We want to restore that for future generations.”
-------------------- You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers
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Fractal420
Psycellium



Registered: 06/21/13
Posts: 5,913
Last seen: 1 year, 9 days
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if you grow using hydroponics, you must be growing weed.
This family worked for the CIA, ironic. They also decided to do a round of busts on 420. Thats like burning crosses on easter sunday, or as they mention, christmas. This happened in 2012 and hope these types of raids are lower in number (and that jeff sessions doesnt increase them). It really is just so unethical.
Its literally a bounty hunting department working with some garden store, getting a list of names and going through all their trash. Is that even legal? If you see a cop going through your trash, are they allowed to do that shit? How bout go into your yard if theres clearly a fence/gate and perhaps even a "no tresspass" sign
I know theres no actual connection. But this makes me think of that series The Americans. Except backwards (CIA) Just a typical family. (I guess the cops see it like The Americans just from step 1)
-------------------- Dreaming of That face again. It's bright and blue and shimmering. Grinning wide And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes. Prying open MY third eye
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larry.fisherman
shoulda died already


Registered: 11/03/12
Posts: 36,312
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Re: ‘We’ll never be the same’ [Re: Fractal420]
#24515637 - 07/29/17 08:12 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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Guilty before proven innocent.
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rider420
Ghost in the machine


Registered: 02/11/16
Posts: 660
Last seen: 2 months, 15 days
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Re: ‘We’ll never be the same’ [Re: Fractal420]
#24515675 - 07/29/17 08:30 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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I wonder how many people have suffered and even died in the persecution of a plant that has never killed anyone. Not only in North America but the whole American continent. Thousands if not hundreds of thousands dead and millions suffering, is prohibition worth this? Booze and tobacco are legal and far more harmful then cannabis so what is the logic or even moral excuses for cannabis prohibition?
Obese people blame "evil" fast food and how good food tastes for being obese rather then their own lack of will. And drug users that have crashed and burned blame the drug rather then their own actions. How about people like me that can control how much I can eat and eat healthy? How about people like me who have quit the drugs that were addicted to "for me that's cigarettes", but still use drugs consumed in a healthy way that also respects the rights of other people. Even if these same people would want us thrown in jail for using "evil" illegal drugs.
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rider420
Ghost in the machine


Registered: 02/11/16
Posts: 660
Last seen: 2 months, 15 days
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Re: ‘We’ll never be the same’ [Re: rider420]
#24515703 - 07/29/17 08:46 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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Typical Republican response: Quote:
Come on people how do we know that those tomatoes were not genetically modified to produce THC? And that this must be a giant conspiracy to get THC into every pizza thereby causing every pizza loving person to become addicted to the evil cannabis! Without question funded and masterminded by those evil democrats!
ROLMFAO reminds me of the movie refer madness where the head of the DEA talked about how drug addicts were complete psychopaths that lack any self control while he chain smoked. The hypocrisy is quite delicious thanks.
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Le_Canard
The Duk Abides


Registered: 05/16/03
Posts: 94,392
Loc: Earthfarm 1
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The insane "war on drugs" have given cops way too much power these days. And Trumpco wants to ratchet things up. Oy.
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WoodRabbit


Registered: 06/12/17
Posts: 24
Loc: California
Last seen: 6 years, 8 months
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Re: ‘We’ll never be the same’ [Re: Le_Canard]
#24515949 - 07/29/17 11:01 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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its really crazy to me that the Feds are so far behind even the states, which are way behind the populace. Blows my mind, but then again not really. California is the most 'Liberal' and still the state laws are ridiculous. Pot and entheogens in Sched I, but most opiates in Sched II. whaa?
-------------------- Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal
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bryguy27007
Cosmonaut



Registered: 01/26/08
Posts: 10,525
Loc:
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Re: ‘We’ll never be the same’ [Re: WoodRabbit]
#24517686 - 07/30/17 08:53 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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What a bunch of assholes.
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Fractal420
Psycellium



Registered: 06/21/13
Posts: 5,913
Last seen: 1 year, 9 days
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Re: ‘We’ll never be the same’ [Re: WoodRabbit]
#24517765 - 07/30/17 09:56 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
WoodRabbit said: its really crazy to me that the Feds are so far behind even the states, which are way behind the populace. Blows my mind, but then again not really. California is the most 'Liberal' and still the state laws are ridiculous. Pot and entheogens in Sched I, but most opiates in Sched II. whaa?
Spores are illegal to send to cali. Which IMO takes so much away so the general awesomeness of cali. Also LA is talking about not making anymore bho within the city (i guess due to cali butane laws). And every building has all these warnings. Its a nanny state, but i love cali, very much actually. Nothing like Cali bud. The only thing i ever had that was stronger was in canada. Smoking cali fire makes dabs seem unneccesary. (obv per hit dabbing is still stronger but, id prefer 2 bowls of true 25% fire vs 2 dabs of even live resin)
-------------------- Dreaming of That face again. It's bright and blue and shimmering. Grinning wide And comforting me with it's three warm and wild eyes. Prying open MY third eye
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TrichoMycoAllDay
Trichocereus Farmer



Registered: 07/11/17
Posts: 124
Last seen: 4 years, 10 months
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Re: ‘We’ll never be the same’ [Re: Fractal420]
#24517954 - 07/30/17 11:37 AM (6 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
It was a date “celebrated in that community much as we celebrate Christmas.”
Gotta love how they so badly want it to seem like marijuana is replacing religion in the pothead's heart. Man, I wish 4/20 was like Christmas. Where's all my presents?
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BlueIndian
Maestro



Registered: 01/17/10
Posts: 858
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Yes trash pulls are legal if the trash can is out at the street for collection. Legal for the bums and cops to sift through. Best thing is separate clean trash from dirty trash and dispose of dirty trash elsewhere.
Technically you need a "No Trespassing" sing in your front yard to prevent a cop from being on your doorstep without a warrant. If you have that they can't even come knock on your door without a warrant. Although this does look suspect depending on the neighborhood.
And any hydro shop that knows a cop is recording tags and names of customers and doesn't do or say anything won't be open for long...
Sadly, so much stuff is cheaper online than it is in the stores so most is sold that way. Cops have their cronies planted in various delivery services so they don't really have to stake out a parking lot anymore....just look at your recent online purchases and deliveries.
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