Special to the lbpost.com by contributing writer Greggory Moore
Once upon a time, the federal government of the United States of America was under the delusion that distributing marijuana as medicine to those deemed by a doctor to benefit from it was such a big problem that, even in the face of a major economic crisis and while maintaining heavy troop presences in multiple foreign countries, federal resources should be expended to keep this medicine from patients, even when it was being distributed in compliance with state law.
Nowhere was such expenditure more prevalent than in a land called California, which suffered over 150 such encroachments by the Drug Enforcement Administration between CE 2000 and 2008. Several of those encroachments—called “raids” in the parlance of the issue and generally featuring wanton destruction of property by riot-geared agents wielding assault rifles—took place in the City of Long Beach. It was enough to make this Long Beach boy wonder: What is the City doing in the room to maneuver between federal and state law?
I spent much of the last half of 2008 putting together an article based on that wonder. One of the people I spoke with during that time was Assistant City Attorney Mike Mais, who told me that the city attorney was advising the City to take a “wait and see [how various pertinent lawsuits play out elsewhere in the state]” stance on the issue, along with the fact that his office had no first-hand information that any medpot dispensaries then operating in Long Beach were doing so in violation of state law.
In October, one of those aforementioned raids took place, shutting down a little establishment called Long Beach Holistic, which happened to be at the center of my article. That article, “Keep Off the Grass!“, was published by The District Weekly on December 10.
In response to my story, it was suggested to me that Long Beach City Attorney Robert Shannon may have long harbored a desire to see such dispensaries out of Long Beach altogether. I had no reason to suspect this, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to put together a simple Public Records Request (PRR) that the city attorney produce any and all documents reflecting any communication between the City of Long Beach and any outside law-enforcement agency (e.g., the DEA) regarding medpot dispensaries. It went out in the mail December 18.
I’m no lawyer, but California Code § 6253(c) is quite clear: an agency receiving a PRR has 10 days to respond to the requester. In “unusual circumstances” the time limit may be extended by written notice; or, in the absence of such notice, by a maximum of 14 days. That is the law.
How long did it take for the city attorney to comply with the request? Seventy-one (71) days—and that only after considerable effort on my part. See for yourself:
– 1/16: Having received no response, I call city attorney’s office and am told my PRR had been received 12/20 (that’s a Saturday, but…) and assigned to Randall Fudge, for whom I leave a voicemail.
– 1/20: Fudge calls back and explains that somehow my PRR was lost in the shuffle and nothing has been done with it, but that he’ll get on it.
– 1/23: Fudge tells me he doesn’t think they have anything that fits but asks me to clarify what I’m looking for. This is also the first of a few times he will suggest that were there to be documents of any communication between his office and the DEA, they might be protected by attorney-client privilege. I opine that this does not sound accurate—but what do I know?
– 1/26: I leave a voicemail for Fudge.
– 1/29: Fudge calls back and again asks me to clarify what I’m looking for, and again I clarify: any communication between the City and outside law enforcement concerning medpot dispensaries. Fudge tells me he’s going on vacation, so there may be a delay, but that his office will continue working on it.
– 2/17: Having heard nothing since our last conversation and figuring his vacation couldn’t have been more than two weeks, I call Fudge, who promises he’ll call me back the next day. He doesn’t.
– 2/20: I leave Fudge a voicemail.
– 2/24: Still having not heard back from Fudge, I leave a voicemail for Mike Mais. For some reason this inspires Fudge to call me back immediately, though merely to tell me they haven’t found anything. I ask if that includes communication from his office to the DEA: again he says that this might be covered under attorney-client privilege. I point out that his office is required to notify me in writing documenting not only whatever they are turning over but also anything they found but are not turning over (and an explanation of why). Fudge tells me he will put this together.
– 3/3: I call Fudge to tell him I have not received anything, to which he expresses surprise, claiming that they sent something to me on 2/24.* As I live across the street from City Hall, I ask him to retrieve a copy of whatever they sent while I walk over so he can hand it to me in person. And that is what we do.
(*Before we get to what I was given, a curious footnote: eventually I did receive the packet Fudge claimed his office sent on 2/24. One problem: the postmark is 3/4)
What I received from the city attorney is two related documents: 1) a template of a two-page DEA form letter threatening the owners of buildings housing dispensaries with all sorts of nasty things. (It seems no one in the city attorney’s office knows how they acquired this.) 2) a fax dated 8/13/2008 from the DEA’s Deanne Reuther to Deputy City Attorney Cristyl Meyers with the same form letter, except dated July 30 and with the addressee information filled in; and including a cover sheet with a handwritten note from Reuter to Meyers: “I think you are right about new owner and will work on sending a new letter out.” The dispensary in question just happens to be Long Beach Holistic, the one at the center of my District story, the one raided by the DEA last October. I later confirm that the addressee information of the July 30 letter was out of date and that a version of the same letter with the correct addressee information was sent out by the DEA on August 22, the first step in the campaign of harassment by the DEA against the property owners until the raid that put Long Beach Holistic out of business.
Of course I wanted find out about Meyers’s conversation(s) with the DEA, so beginning 3/6 I leave a series of messages, none of which are answered. On 3/12 I ask her secretary if I might make an appointment to see Meyers, or that at least if Meyers doesn’t wish to comment she might let me know. Later that day I receive a call from Mais, who asks what I want to speak with Meyers about, and I mention the fax and her apparent discussion(s) with the DEA. He promises to speak with her the following morning and call me back. Because he had proven very responsive prior to now, I am quite surprised when he neither calls the next day nor returns my follow-up call of 3/16. It is only when I get put through to him on 3/17 (his secretary did not ask my name) that I get a hold of him. I ask what Meyers had said when he spoke with her: “Well, that’s between her and I,” he answers. I ask about her communication with the DEA: “The communication was not about any particular medical-marijuana dispensary. It wasn’t about a particular site.” Hearing this is quite a shock, as spread out in front of me is the aforementioned fax, and so I point out that what he just told me is flatly untrue. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” he replies. “I don’t know what you have in front of you or don’t have in front of you.” Me: “So when you just told me that it wasn’t about any specific dispensary, you were basing that on what Cristyl Meyers told you?” Him: “I’m basing it on what I know.” Finally, he relents: “I don’t know what communications Cristyl has had with the DEA.” This brings us fill circle: I want to speak with Meyers to find out.
Within the hour she finally calls me.
But there isn’t much to our conversation, as Meyers patiently answers my questions by vacillating between two somewhat conflicting claims: that any comment she may have made to the DEA about Long Beach Holistic specifically would have been “innocuous,” and that she can’t be expected to recall the details of a one-off conversation seven months ago. (I don’t bother to point out that we were supposed to be having this conversation in January.)
(Of course I would have been happy to hear what Agent Reuther had to say about the discussion(s) with Meyers—but she continues her trend with me (see District article) of calling back only when she thinks I’ve got a tip about a dispensary the DEA might to consider raiding.)
Although Robert Shannon himself declined to comment on the allegations that started all of this in the first place, Meyers echoed a statement made by Mais: “The city attorney’s office has not asked the DEA to take any action against any medical-marijuana facility in the City of Long Beach, period.”
Is that true? I’d like to think so. But the city attorney’s handling of the PRR, Fudge’s suggestion that communication between his office and the DEA might be privileged, the March 4 postmark of a packet I picked up March 3 that supposedly had been mailed February 24, that at the very least Meyers gave the DEA some information concerning a dispensary that was raided two months later, Mais’s false assertion that Meyers had not discussed any specific dispensaries with the DEA—none of this leaves me comfortable. I began researching this story based on a suggestion that the city attorney has long harbored a desire to purge medpot dispensaries from Long Beach. Very easily there could have been nothing to write about.
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