Cannabis Warrior of Ramsey and Company's fraudulent investigations

FRAUD as entrapment?Posted by Mickey Martin on June 30th, 2011

A story broke today in the Chico News and Review that tells how police falsified medical documents in an effort to entrap a medical cannabis collective. CN&R reports:

According to the statement of probable cause within the search warrant (dated June 24, 2010), the Butte County Sheriff’s Office conducted two undercover buys at Mountainside Patient Collective. The first was an officer with a fraudulent recommendation. He showed his ID and phony rec, but signed no paperwork and was able to purchase marijuana. The second was a confidential informant with no recommendation. He was able to walk in and buy an ounce of marijuana for $170.

Huh? A police officer can deliberately falsify his medical records, but leave a REAL patients identifying patient ID number on it so when it is verified it comes up as legitimate and then use this as a means to arrest and prosecute the provider? WTF? Is this what we are paying law enforcement to do? Here are more details on HOW they did it….

All of them approved the officer with the phony recommendation—he’d taken someone else’s valid rec, photocopied it and replaced the name and photo with his own. When staff endeavored to validate it, they were asked to log onto the doctor’s website and type in the recommendation number, which simply said it was valid and did not include the patient’s name or photo.

So the officers used FRAUD to conspire against legitimate providers in an effort to delegitimize the system? How is this okay by any stretch of the imagination? Our law enforcement is allowed to take a legitimate patient recommendation, manipulate it, submit it as legitimate, and then use their successful fraud to arrest and prosecute the provider. First off, how can a County with such budget shortfalls waste time and energy preparing such juvenile rouses? Secondly, it is clear that the unethical (and illegal) actions were the ones put forth by the officer…not the collective. This is a sad day for freedom, justice and morality.

As for the “confidential informant…” They were also a well-known legal medical cannabis patient and member of the collective. It is sad that law enforcement would find the need to fabricate this bullshit in an effort to try and make medical cannabis providers into criminals for their own political gain. This shit will not stand, and they know it. It is pathetic…..

What is also sad is that the Chico News and Review allows their own contributor to fabricate this story in the pages of their press in a slanderous effort to try the case in pubic before giving the defendants due process. CN&R should have mentioned that their source was also employed by them and contributes regularly to the paper. It is shameful really.