The DEA in Chains: When in Doubt, Call in the Local Cops

The Drug Enforcement Administration believes in starting at the top. By shutting down two of the most aboveboard and righteous of California's medical marijuana operations, the feds can perhaps instill such fear that they free themselves from chasing the shaky and the small-fry. Last October they shuttered the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center, so respected that the city of West Hollywood co-signed its mortgage and so open that it allowed Congress's General Accounting Office in for a look.

And yesterday, some two dozen DEA agents descended, chainsaws in hand, upon the medical marijuana cooperative, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), located near Davenport, some sixty miles south of San Francisco. California NORML director Dale Gieringer said, "The DEA is making a statement by going after the gold standard of dispensaries."

As the agents went about destroying some 130 plants up in the middle of nowhere in the San Lorenzo mountains, twenty or more WAMM members -- none of whom pay for their medicine -- barricaded the sole route off the property, a narrow mountain road.

First they blocked the road with a truck. Abandoning that strategy, they retreated a bit further to make their stand at a gate to the property, a heavy chain soon padlocked around the gate. Not that the woman in a wheelchair or the stout one with a cane could have physically overmastered the agents, should it have mano a mano come to that. But WAMM also called in the media, and soon several TV news cameras and print reporters stood by hoping for a confrontation.

WAMM board member Heather Edney was one of the protesters. Noting the press, she said, "I don't think the DEA wanted to have to shove a patient in front of the TV cameras." It's elemental, whether facing Bull Conner's Birmingham fire hoses or the DEA's shiny new SUVs: at some point desperate people who can't stomach it any longer prepare to put their bodies on the line.

Ready to leave, the DEA was now locked in. They had packed up the pot in their rental trucks and, charges Edney, seized some patient lists. But those pesky TV cameras remained focused on pathetic people in wheelchairs who didn't have enough sense to accept their lot and go on home. The protesters yelling louder, some agents perhaps feeling foolish, the DEA did what any good citizen needing help does: they called the cops.

Mark Tracy, the sheriff and coroner of Santa Cruz County, said that the DEA contacted his office for assistance with the individuals blocking the access road.

Special Agent Richard Meyer, spokesperson for the DEA San Francisco field division, said, "There was some sort of civil disturbance, and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office came and assisted."

But Tracy, a committed WAMM supporter, wasn't going to have his men clear an escape route for the DEA. So there matters lay for a tense hour or so until WAMM's founder and director, Valerie Corrals, started talking tough.

And why shouldn't she, considering the start to her day: men in helmets pointing rifles at her and then handcuffing her still in the pajamas that -- marked woman that she is -- she had foolishly thought to wear to bed.

WAMM board member and a guest in the house, Suzanne Pfeil, described the raid to a tele-press conference. She said she awoke sometime after 7:00 a.m. to find five agents in her bedroom pointing rifles at her. They told her to get out of bed; she told them as a polio patient and paraplegic she could not. Finally she scrambled up on her crutches, her wheelchair being elsewhere, and was handcuffed.

DEA spokesperson Meyer confirmed that, following the protocol for any drug raid, the agents wore "ballistic helmets" and -- pointing out that DEA agents have died in the line of duty -- he stated that they carried weapons sufficient to provide the necessary protection. He would not disclose the type of weapon or number of agents involved.