A San Jose police officer was charged with dealing marijuana that he kept in a storage facility, authorities said Friday. Officer Son Vu, 44, was scheduled to appear Friday afternoon in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose on charges of possession with intent to sell and maintaining an illegal stash location. Vu was arrested Thursday and is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail. The 21-year department veteran has been on paid administrative leave since his initial arrest in June 2014. [continues 281 words]
A Richmond police officer won't face criminal charges over the discovery of a 4-pound package of marijuana at his Oakley home that he said he had used to train his police dog, authorities said Thursday. Officer Joe Avila, 43, was placed on paid leave after authorities found the package at his home on Sept. 24, 10 months after he first picked it up from a delivery company while on duty, police said. Investigators determined that in November 2013, Avila responded to a UPS Store in Richmond, which had intercepted the package with marijuana inside. Instead of booking it into evidence, Avila took it home, according to Barry Grove, a Contra Costa County deputy district attorney. [continues 305 words]
A San Jose police officer was arrested on suspicion of dealing marijuana that he kept in a storage facility, authorities said Wednesday. Officer Son Vu, 42, was booked Tuesday at Santa Clara County Jail on suspicion of possession of marijuana for sale. The 20-year department veteran is on paid leave. The investigation began about 4:25 p.m. when police were called to a storage facility on the 400 block of Tully Road by employees who reported finding "an amount of marijuana consistent with possession for sales" in a closet, said San Jose police Sgt. Heather Randol. [continues 144 words]
Grand Jury Alleges Theft of Property From Occupants in Residential Hotel Five veteran San Francisco police officers and a former officer faced federal corruption charges Thursday after a threeyear investigation that began when the city's public defender released surveillance videos purporting to show officers abusing and stealing from residential hotel dwellers. The grand jury indictments allege that after the FBI and San Francisco police launched a probe in March 2011, they learned three of the officers had stolen a batch of seized marijuana two years earlier. One of those officers, Reynaldo Vargas, delivered the pot to a couple of street informants, told them to sell it and then took a split of the proceeds, federal prosecutors said. [continues 972 words]
Two explosions at makeshift hash oil labs in Santa Cruz in the past two weeks are the latest in a string of similar accidents in the Bay Area, authorities said Thursday as they warned of a growing trend that has led to injuries and deaths. The blasts - reminiscent of the outbreak of methamphetamine lab explosions years ago - are linked to the production of hash oil, a thick, yellow-orange by-product of marijuana also known as honey oil, and the use of butane, a highly flammable gas that's used to extract the substance. [continues 846 words]
A judge has rejected a request from medical marijuana suppliers to bar federal prosecutors from filing charges against them or seizing their property. U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong in Oakland said the medical marijuana collectives had failed to show they would suffer "immediate, irreparable harm" without a court order. "The court is sensitive to the desires of individuals to use medical marijuana with a doctor's recommendation, as permitted by California law," Armstrong wrote in a 27-page ruling filed this week. "Nonetheless, marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and in Congress' view, it has no medicinal value." [continues 196 words]
OAKLAND -- The city of Oakland agreed Tuesday to pay $900,000 to resolve two separate police misconduct cases. The city will pay $550,000 to a boy, identified only as L.S., who sued the city after he was shot in the back by Oakland police Officer Alan Leal in the backyard of a home on the 900 block of 107th Avenue in East Oakland in July 2007. Police said the 15-year-old appeared to have put drugs in his mouth, run away, discarded a gun and was shot while apparently reaching for his waistband. [continues 149 words]
A Livermore woman has been charged with murder for allegedly smothering her 2-month-old son last year while she was coming down from a four-day methamphetamine high, police said Wednesday. Jessica Adams, 25, was arrested Tuesday, a day after Alameda County prosecutors charged her with murdering Gary Sterling at their home on the 1900 block of Spruce Street on March 19, 2009. Adams told police she had accidentally suffocated the boy while she slept, police Lt. Ava Garavatti said. [continues 230 words]
Oakland police seized 16 guns and $16,000 during raids of an illegal medical-marijuana dispensary and the San Ramon home of its owner, authorities said Tuesday. The dispensary, the Lemon Drop Cafe at 1736 Telegraph Ave., was raided shortly before 4 p.m. Friday, but police did not publicize the operation until Tuesday. Officers seized 16 guns at the cafe and at the home of its owner, Steven Smyrni, 36, who was arrested, said Officer Jeff Thomason. The cafe was selling marijuana to people without the required documentation, Thomason said. Smyrni was arrested on suspicion of cultivating and selling marijuana and possessing a firearm while committing a felony. He is being held at Santa Rita Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail. This article appeared on page B - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle [end]
OAKLAND -- Oakland intends to fire 11 police officers for allegedly lying to obtain search warrants in drug cases, officials said Thursday. The two sergeants and nine officers face dismissal in a scandal that has thrown into jeopardy the prosecutions of dozens of suspects. At least 12 have already had their cases dismissed because warrants that police used to obtain evidence were obtained on the basis of lies by officers, according to attorneys involved in the cases. The officers told judges that substances seized from drug suspects had been identified by the Oakland police crime lab as narcotics when, in fact, they had not, authorities said. Those false statements were used to persuade judges to issue warrants that police relied on to gather more evidence. [continues 590 words]
FAIRFIELD -- A medical-marijuana advocacy group sued Solano County on Monday for its failure to issue identification cards to users of medicinal cannabis as required by state law. The lawsuit, filed in Solano County Superior Court, said the county is among several in California that have failed to give out the cards, which protect their holders from arrest by state or local police for possessing small amounts of marijuana. "Solano County cannot simply flout its obligation under the law," Joe Elford, an attorney for Americans for Safe Access, said in a statement. [continues 128 words]
The owner of an Oakland factory that produced marijuana candy with names like Buddafinga and Mr. Greenbud has been sentenced to a year in a halfway house and a year of home detention for conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana. Michael Martin, 34, of El Sobrante was also sentenced Wednesday to five years of probation by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland. Martin is the owner of Tainted Inc., which started as a boutique business that made chocolate truffles and grew into a large marijuana-candymaker that bought chocolate by the ton, authorities said. [continues 58 words]
OAKLAND -- Two men were in custody Friday on suspicion of breaking into a downtown Oakland building hours after it was raided by federal drug agents during a marijuana investigation, authorities said. Arthur Palmer, 44, and Kenneth Goss, 41, both of Oakland, broke into 3333 Telegraph Ave. about 9:20 p.m. Wednesday, police said. Officers responding to a report of a burglary in progress caught them as they were going out the back door, police said. Agents with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration had left the building about 12 hours earlier after raiding it early Wednesday, one of 10 such operations at homes and medical-marijuana dispensaries in San Jose, San Mateo and other cities. [continues 418 words]
The owner of an Oakland factory that produced marijuana candy with names like Buddafinga and Mr. Greenbud has pleaded guilty to conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana. Michael Martin, 33, of El Sobrante entered a guilty plea at a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. He is scheduled to be sentenced July 2 by Judge Claudia Wilken. Martin is the owner of Tainted Inc., which started as a boutique business that made chocolate truffles and grew into a large marijuana-candy maker that bought chocolate by the ton, authorities said. [continues 366 words]
Two East Bay brothers were arrested Tuesday after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that they ran a large-scale drug operation from a Hayward medical marijuana club from which proceeds were delivered to a bank by armored car, authorities said. Winslow Norton, 26, of Lafayette and his brother, Abraham Norton, 23, of Oakland, who together ran the Compassionate Patients' Cooperative on the 21000 block of Mission Boulevard in Hayward, were taken into custody during raids by the Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement agencies. They are being held without bail. [continues 81 words]
Oakland -- The owner of an Oakland marijuana candy factory surrendered Thursday to face federal drug charges, but not before blasting the U.S. government for what he called an unfair attack by federal bullies on ailing patients who rely on medical marijuana. He was later released on a $300,000 bond. Michael Martin, 33, of El Sobrante was one of four people charged last week in connection with Tainted Inc., which started as a boutique business that made chocolate truffles and grew into a large marijuana-candy maker that bought chocolate by the ton, authorities said. [continues 500 words]
Judge Says County Allowed Ballot Data To Be Destroyed An Alameda County judge said Friday she may void election results for a failed 2004 Berkeley medical marijuana measure and order it returned to the ballot because county election officials failed to hand over data from voting machines. Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith also indicated that she may force county officials to pay attorneys' fees and reimburse a medical marijuana group more than $22,000 for the costs it incurred during a disputed recount shortly after the November 2004 election. [continues 526 words]
Ed Rosenthal, twice convicted of violating federal drug laws by growing marijuana for medical patients, wants a new trial. The 62-year-old Oakland man claims U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco wrongly barred him from telling jurors his goal was helping the sick. In a motion filed earlier this month, Rosenthal's attorney argued Breyer should have allowed him to present evidence regarding "the scientific value of medical marijuana." Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan said Rosenthal's allegations are without merit, according to a motion he filed Wednesday. [continues 80 words]
Tod H. Mikuriya, a Berkeley psychiatrist who helped draft California's medical marijuana law, died at his home Sunday of complications of cancer. He was 73. Dr. Mikuriya was a well-known medical marijuana advocate whose practice made him the physician of last resort for patients throughout California who said marijuana eases their suffering. He was the founder of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians and an architect of Proposition 215, the initiative approved in 1996 by state voters that legalized growing and using marijuana for medical purposes with a doctor's recommendation. [continues 484 words]
Family Disputes Police Theory That Attack Was Somehow Involved With Illegal Drugs Rex Farrance was a popular senior editor at PC World magazine in San Francisco, a physical-fitness buff and a family man known for his enthusiasm for life and his sensitivity to others, friends say. But according to police, Farrance, 59, was involved with illegal drugs and possibly dealing them along with his wife at their Pittsburg home. The activity, police said Wednesday, led to a home-invasion robbery Tuesday night in which Farrance was killed and his wife, a registered nurse, was pistol-whipped. [continues 744 words]
