In keeping with the recent tradition of holding police officers accountable for what they do, note that police performing a dispensary raid in Santa Ana, Calif. decided the best use of their time and resources was to eat edibles, play darts, and make crude jokes about the customers and the business.
According to attorney Matthew Pappas, who edited the hidden camera surveillance video to remove dead air and is representing the business, the video shows Santa Ana police taking down security cameras in the dispensary, eating pieces of marijuana edibles, playing darts, and cracking jokes while police continue ravaging the store. At one point, this exchange between a male and a female police officer takes place, pertaining to amputee and dispensary patient Marla James:
“Did you punch that one-legged old Benita?”
“I was about to kick her in her fucking nub.”
Matthew Pappas will also bring a lawsuit against the city of Santa Ana on behalf of Marla James, claiming gross mistreatment by police during the raid. Pappas told KTLA:
“I’d like to see the police officers disciplined for the behavior that goes on here. I’d like to see the city stop engaging in illegal conduct.”
It is important to note that the raid on the Sky High Holistic dispensary was prompted because the dispensary was operating without a permit.?At the same time, though, while that may justify the raid in the first place, it does not justify the behavior by these idiot cops during.
Because of the current state of affairs when it comes to criticizing law enforcement, I feel it is important to make clear that this story, and the denunciation of these cops and their actions, in no way implies contribution to the “war on cops” falsehood being peddled on some of the more gullible parts of the public. The behavior these officers exhibited during this dispensary raid cannot be expressed as anything but unprofessional, heinous, and embarrassing. It doesn’t take an ethics professor to figure that out.
