Bumbling US cops who raided a medical diagnostics center thinking it was a cannabis farm got a gun stuck to the powerful magnets of an MRI machine, a California lawsuit has alleged.
The owners of the facility are claiming damages against the Los Angeles Police Department for an operation their lawyers describe as “nothing short of a disorganized circus.”
Their lawsuit details how a SWAT team swarmed Noho Diagnostic Center after the squad’s leader persuaded a magistrate to issue a search warrant.
Officer Kenneth Franco drew on his “twelve hours of narcotics training” and discovered the facility was using more electricity than nearby stores, the lawsuit said.
“Officer Franco, therefore, concluded (the facility) was cultivating cannabis, disregarding the fact that it is a diagnostic facility utilizing an MRI machine, X-ray machine and other heavy medical equipment – unlike the surrounding businesses selling flowers, chocolates and children’s merchandise,” the suit said.
…
Yeah, good point. A judge signed a warrant on just ‘this place uses more electricity than others’? The court system’s just a rubber stamp at this stage.
Don’t forget the “distinct odor” lol. That just says to me that the cops lied through their teeth to get the warrant.
“I smelled weed” is the classic cop trick to skirt around probable cause.
the ‘odor’ was probably just ‘clean’, and mr copper doesn’t know what ‘clean’ smells like so it just had to be something super illegal.
Nah, they don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. “I smelled weed” has been used for decades to skirt probable cause requirements. Because it’s transient evidence that can’t be saved or replicated, and you can’t prove that they’re lying. You can be 100% clean, but a cop claims he smelled weed and now your car’s interior paneling is getting ripped out on the side of the highway.
The cop lied to get the search approved. No more, no less.
It may very well have been true because cancer patients get CT scans but that just goes to show how a smell shouldn’t be justification for a fucking raid.