Nine medical-marijuana collectives, along with two individuals, have filed suit against the City of Long Beach and multiple LBPD officers over an ongoing series of police raids dating back to early 2011.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court on January 2, claims that the plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment rights were violated by warrantless police raids, as well as by “judicial deception” concerning “misrepresentations or omissions of material to the finding of probable cause […] made intentionally or with disregard for the truth” related to some raids for which warrants were obtained. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
According to the complaint, “The Defendants have systematically engaged in warrantless searches, warrants secured by judicial deception; administrative citations to the collectives and their landlords and other oppressive tactics, in an orchestrated scheme to close the collectives by any means in violation of the collectives’ statutory rights.”
The plaintiffs allege that the LBPD has conducted and continues to conduct the raids with no belief that their actions will result in criminal prosecutions—”After all,” the complaint states, “medical marijuana is decriminalized in California”—but solely “to disrupt the collectives in order to force them to close their doors.”
Although medpot dispensaries are banned in Long Beach, the complaint argues that since the ban was enacted, “numerous California Appellate Courts held that a city law abolishing collectives violates state law;” and says that in August a Los Angeles Superior Court judge wrote that Long Beach’s ban “is virtually identical” to an L.A. County ban struck down by another court, “and is therefore preempted by state law.”
In a June 2011 hearing regarding a nuisance-abatement case the City brought against 562 Collective, one of the plaintiffs filing the January 2 lawsuit, Judge Patrick T. Madden expressed concern over the use of “strong-arm tactics” by Long Beach police during raids in the absence of a warrant.
“The concern that I have is, as articulated by the defendants, the evidence seems to show that the City, through its police, have used what I refer to as strong-arm tactics to knock down the doors of the collective without a warrant and without exigent circumstances,” Madden said at the hearing. However, ultimately Madden failed to grant a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the City concerning raids in general, noting that the route for such a TRO was not by way of the case then at issue.
While the City declined to comment on the lawsuit, when contacted by the Press-Telegram about the matter, City Attorney Robert Shannon offered a general statement about medpot-related lawsuits brought against the City.
“We’ve been sued numerous times, over 10 times,” Shannon is quoted as saying, “and we haven’t lost a case yet.” However, it was an appellate court ruling for the plaintiffs in Pack et al. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles—in which the City of Long Beach is named as the “Real Party in Interest,” with Shannon (et al.) representing the City against plaintiffs Ryan Pack and Anthony Gayle—that led to the City’s repealing its medpot ordinance. Shannon did not respond to the Post‘s invitation to clarify his statement.
Lead attorney for the plaintiffs is Matthew Pappas, the legal architect of the Pack case.