Raid! National Guard, State Police descend on 81-year-old’s property to seize single pot plant
By SCOTT MERZBACH


AMHERST — All that remains of the solitary marijuana plant an 81-year-old grandmother had been growing behind her South Amherst home is a stump and a ragged hole in the ground.

Margaret Holcomb said she was growing the plant as medicine, a way to ease arthritis and glaucoma and help her sleep at night. Tucked away in a raspberry patch and separated by a fence from any neighbors, the plant was nearly ready for harvest when a military-style helicopter and police descended on Sept. 21.

In a joint raid, the Massachusetts National Guard and State Police entered her yard and cut down the solitary plant in what her son, Tim Holcomb, said was a “pretty shocking” action — one that he argues constitutes unlawful surveillance and illegal search and seizure.

“It’s scary as hell,” said Tim Holcomb.

Those agencies also conducted raids in Wendell and Granby recently.

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Holcomb said he was told that as long as he did not demand that a warrant be provided to enter the property or otherwise escalate the situation, authorities would file no criminal charges.

“’We just want the illegal contraband,’” Holcomb recalled the officer saying. Margaret Holcomb does not have a medical card authorizing her to grow or possess marijuana.

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Procopio said that the Massachusetts National Guard Counter Drug Team — working under the Domestic Cannabis Eradication and Suppression Program and using a Department of Justice grant — looks for marijuana plants that are “outside of a locked, enclosed location that is fully inaccessible to any other person” each year during the summer growing season.

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Amherst Police Chief Scott Livingstone said he was unaware that such enforcement actions were taking place in Amherst. Mary Carey, spokeswoman for the Northwestern District Attorney’s office, said the district attorney had no role in the operation.

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Tim Holcomb said that he finds it troubling law enforcement is occurring without bringing charges. “If the state has a problem with people being discreet, the state has to use due process,” Holcomb said.

He is also left wondering if part of the motivation behind such raids is so that patients can’t self-medicate, protecting the lucrative market of medical marijuana. He hopes to have a community meeting to address the topic and promote legalization. The consequence of marijuana being illegal, and drug laws, has led to a growing prison population and racial profiling, he said.


Friday, September 30, 2016

http://www.gazettenet.com/MarijuanaRaid-HG-100116-5074664


The drug war has been quite effective in nullifying the Fourth Amendments'
"he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."