Arrests

Sheriff’s deputies in Southern California seized almost $7 million worth of cannabis plants, loose pot, and edibles during a raid on a Canyon Country strip mall in October. Narcotics investigators at the Marijuana Dispensary Task Force of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department launched a raid on a cannabis grow site in Canyon Country Oct. 19. After serving a search ...

There are many reasons marijuana reformers want to legalize the drug. But maybe the biggest is to cut racial disparities in arrest rates. It’s a big problem. African Americans across California regularly report racial profiling by police, and pot is at the center of it. This leads to massively overcrowded prisons, unnecessary incarceration, and permanent criminal records that have ruined ...

Police in multiple parts of California are rolling out the nation’s first “marijuana breathalyzers” in a unique experiment to gauge how well they pinpoint impaired drivers. Multiple high-quality studies have confirmed that driving while high on cannabis is relatively safe – at least in comparison with alcohol, which dramatically increases the risk of collision, injury, and death. High driving is ...

A wildfire allegedly sparked by an arsonist swept through parts of Northern California in August, threatening communities, burning buildings, and destroying at least one farmer’s prized marijuana crop. James McCauley told the UK’s Daily Mail that he wept when he saw his pot plants covered in pink fire retardant material that killed them and cost him an entire harvest. The ...

A mass marijuana overdose sent 19 Bay Area residents to the hospital in early August after consuming super-potent THC-laced gummy candies, authorities said. The victims, including both adults and children, were poisoned in San Francisco at a 15-year-old girl’s quinceañera, a birthday celebration popular in Latin American communities. Police said they were taken to multiple area hospitals and treated for ...

A California woman was sentenced to federal prison in July for her role in shipping marijuana to Upstate New York. Simona Borissova, a 31-year-old resident of Danville, Cal., was sentenced in July to two years in prison, three years of probation, and $274,000 in fines. She was convicted in February on charges of conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to ...

Police in California are arresting far fewer people on felony marijuana charges in the wake of a vote to reclassify those crimes as misdemeanors. Voters passed Prop. 47 in 2014, converting several cannabis-related felonies into misdemeanors. Data recently released by the office of California Attorney General Kamala Harris show the vote has led to a sharp decline in felony marijuana ...

Police in Sonoma County raided several grow sites in June, seizing equipment, shutting down two popular marijuana brands, and closing a lab used to make cannabis products sold across California. Santa Rosa police arrested Dennis Franklin Hunter, 43, the owner of Absolute Xtracts and Care by Design, both marijuana brands. Authorities said the two companies were part of an illegal ...

Two gunmen were in critical condition after the owner of a Los Angeles-area medical marijuana business shot them during an alleged robbery, police said. The shooting at the dispensary occurred at about 10:40 p.m. June 7 in the Walnut Park community in unincorporated Los Angeles County, according to officials at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The dispensary owner told ...

Voters and lawmakers in California have been easing the state’s marijuana prohibitions for many years, in large part to fight the plague of racial disparities in arrest rates. But while the overall number of small-time busts has dropped, for both white people and racial minorities, the gap in law enforcement between the two groups is growing rather than shrinking, according ...