Santa Ana police officers raided the Sky High Holistic Collective early yesterday morning and red-tagged the building, according to activist Marla James. Although no arrests were made because the dispensary was closed, police confiscated several pounds of marijuana along with video cameras and other equipment. The raid marked the fourth time that police have shown up at Sky High Collective with a search warrant, the most famous example having occurred last May when police arrested several volunteers before being captured on candid camera insulting James, (an amputee who uses a wheelchair) throwing darts, and sharing what appear in the video to be pot edibles.
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James says she received a call at 9 am about the raid and that police were still there when she showed up. “They came at 7 am and nobody was there,” James said of yesterday's raid. “This time they turned off the electricity.They boarded up the doors and put the sign up that says this is red-tagged.”
Despite holding a controversial lottery on Feb. 5 that allowed up to 20 dispensaries to apply for permits to operate legally in the city, only two dispensaries that had winning lottery balls, South Coast Safe Access and OC3, have opened so far. Because the city allowed prospective dispensary operators to purchase an unlimited number of lottery balls, the city raised millions of dollars that is supposed to be spent regulating the new industry.
As for the cops caught on camera talking about feeling dizzy after eating chocolate bars obtained from the dispensary's back room? They are still supposedly being investigated by their own department, having unsuccessfully tried to convince a judge that the camera footage shouldn't be used against them because it violated their privacy rights.
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Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).