I was in the parking lot when they were raiding the store. I was on my way to the salvation army next door to shop for a used microwave oven. I saw a man laying on the ground in hand cuffs. He had a small brown paper bag folded over at the top sitting on the sidewalk next to him. Soon after I entered the store I saw about 10 police officers, sherriff and temecula police come out of the building. Appearently, they used flash bang grenades before storming the building. The police soon walked about a dozen people out of the building in hand cuffs. Many of the police were laughing. They didnt seem to be think raiding a cannabis dispensery was a worthwhile thing to be spending police time on. One officer was discusted with having to do it saying, I wish I was back in Iraq, this stuff sucks. Most of the polce were very nice and respectful to everyone but of course you always have one wannabe Rambo in the group. (Rambo walked up to me while i was watching from the from of the salvation army and told me to hand my phone over because it was now evidence. I told him that i hadn't been filming anything and that it was my right either way. He then harrassed me about being infront of the store and having my cell phone flipped open but ultimately he was pissed off and said "this is serious business we're doing here". He seemed to be the only police officer there that day that was in dire need of metamucile. I hope jerk didnt screw with any of those patients (one of them had a brain tumor).

Good for the Cops and the City love to see them bust these places. Temecula is going down hill fast enough we dont need this junk in our city. Looks like our city fathers are getting the word to turn this city around , they got rid of the homeless shelter and now the pot house. Great Job by our police!!!!!

When is the City of Temecula going to acknowledge Medical Marijuana patients exist in thier city and need their medication????

What needs to happen is our ELECTED OFFICIALS need to step up and do what is necessary to regulate this activity in our city! We have witnessed for over a decade or more our city ignoring State Laws that allow for SAFE and AFFORDIABLE access to medication. Instead the CITY COUNCIL issued a business license for a transparently operating Patient Resource Center in Temecula (not somebody preteending to be a T-Shirt shop!) and instead of working with the directors to develop a proper program for Patient's Safe and Affordable access; the city instead has spent over $50,000 of our tax dollars to file a lawsuit.

How is that responsible government for the will of the voters? If the City of Temecula is so certain the citizen's are so opposed to the presence of responsibily operated Medical Marjuana dispensaries in the city then put the measure on the ballot for a vote! Be a responsible City Council.

In the absence of responsible ordinances operators like this will have continued incentive to open without proper business licenses and do what has happened here!

I plead with any and all residents of the city to voice your concerns directly to your City Elected Officials. Stop being passive and get active on this issue fellow residents of Temecula! This is YOUR CITY, see that it is operated the way you expect!

SO glad to hear that piece of crap has finally been put out of business. My question to city of Temecula city officials is WHY on God's green earth would you ALLOW a medical marijuana dispensary to open that is owned by a convicted pot grossing felon with weapon charges in the first place? Someone in City Hall really has their head up their ass! This guy has a rap sheet a mile long, including domestic abuse charges. He has had so many illegal grows and also sells pot out of his hydro store owned by him and his ex-Monica. Wise up city of Temecula.....it's almost like you people have nothing better to do than to allow these businesses to open, then pull the plug and gain large amounts of legal fees as a way to drive these semi-legitimate to pure outright criminal activities out of the town. FIGURE IT OUT CITY OFFICIALS....it appears this has just become some sort of game to you. What a WASTE of time and taxpayer money....yet you cry wolf with your budget deficits. GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER and stop all of these non-sense, fly-by night businesses from going into business in the FIRST place.....morons.

Temecula does not have a budget deficit. Just say no to drugs.

By Pro-MMJ Paul
The post by "Paul" at 7:31 AM 6-09-2011 was not made by me.
But several comments under this subject several days ago are by me.
I have made a few previous posts on patch here recently on various topics.
Paul is not as unique name of course, so I will come up with a nickname or something soon. For today I will start my comment body by PRO-MMJ Paul

By Pro-MMJ Paul
The comment by Stevo at 3:28 AM 6-09-11 was very interesting. Just a few days ago I read a story about someone recording some police action at the neighbors driveway.
The man was inside his own garage on his own property, and this policeman came up and demanded his cell phone or he would arrest him. I forgot what the rest of that story was, I read quite a few items about MMJ.

By Pro-MMJ Paul
I agreed with most all of the comments by Carl Sody abouve, and on the recent column about the first attack.

Now that the Temecula City Council has changed the public comment period from 2 minutes to 3 minutes it gives a person more of a chance to make a point.
I have spoken to them several times. Also they say they are willing to meet individually with persons. I have not done that yet.
They have been raised and get all that misleading propaganda published by the anti marijuana organizatiuons including the CaliforniaPolice Chiefs association, the CA narcotics association, the Federal NIDA or what ever its called.

I suggest we go down there more frequently and give public comments to get some of this information into the public record.

One man has driven a great distance to speak 2 minutes at the San Diego County Supervisors meeting nearly every session for over 5 years.

Actually I read those supervisors were told by legal advice they will likely face law suits about their hardline ban, so they had staff make up rules that amounted to a near prohabition. But last week they approved the first application. It wil be located way out in East SD county, It is not open yet, they are still modifying the building to meet the legal requirements.

By Pro-MMJ Paul
There is a man who does a google search most every day for new published news on Medical Marijuana. Usually there are 20 to 30 news items per day, except when his back pain is too bad.
For example a US patent was just recognized for Sativex for cancer pain. It is now patened in severqal other countries. and legal as regular prescriptions in UK, Spain, Czech Republic, Canada, and New Zealand.
It is made for under tongue application and includes mainly CBD and THC extracted from Canniobis plants. He has been granted liscense to raise the plants in England, maybe elsewhere.

By Pro-MMJ Paul
I have met several activists in San Diego. I am not sick and am not a MMJ user. But I think it is so terrible how some of these cities are willfully disobeying state laws and sending out squads of police arena for raids to arrest and harrass citizens because of loopholes that should be resoled in the legislature not by swat teams, and because of their own beliefs in the old false myths against marijuana.
So I am spending some time to they to help the cause.

Any way several of the activists also post comments daily on their facebook pages.
and sometimes 20 or 30 persons give brief comments. One of them is named Donna Lambert, (sunnysky23@yahoo.com in the FB search box.) It reached the 5,000 limit for friends, but nearly all of the site is open to everyone.
So Donna started anothe page where it does not have "friends" but is open to people to read, and you click at the top of the page on "like" to get on its newsfeed.
It can be reached by entering "Donna Lambert Freedom Fighter 420"
She also made a web site and a YouTube site for her videos.
She is serious ill as she sometimes tells about, but tries to smile and keep going. She suffered from Chemotherpy and rumitoid arthritis and severl other things that are all helped with MMJ.

By Pro-MMJ Paul
Anyhow on Donna's face book she has over 300 pictures of MMJ protests, court support groups and such things. She was raided and charged with seven felonies for trying to help a man who had a valid MMJ ID card. The penalty could have been $50,000 fine and a few years in prison. It was impossible at that time to get a fair MMJ trial in San Diego County, and almost entirely still is. That was very hard on Donna's health.
(It took 18 months, hiring and firing two attorneys, carrying protest signs around outside the courthouse for months, lots of blogging and a lot of prayer,firing her attorney and negotiating herself with the head narcotics prosecutor and verifing her serious condition with several letters from her regular medical specialists (The department head prosecutor was more reasonable than the original prosecutor who had set up dozens of stings and was very ego involved in getting guilty felony pleas. Various persons say he (the head one) is a straight shooter except he believes all MMJ sales are illegal under state law and the AG guidelines are wrong).
All felony charges were eventually dropped for a plea to one "misdemeanor" of possession of under one ounce, at that time punishable by a $100 fine with no jail time possible. So she also got the proposed probation delete. (This 2011 year that offense is an "Infraction" with a $100 fine.)

From Pro-MMJ Paul

Now more about taking pictures of officers. I recently looked on You Tube and searched for "DEA Raids" and there are a number of videos of raids by DEA as viewed from nearby, but I did not see any from inside.

So now back to Donna, whom I have met.
Among her pictures on facebook is one with her on her porch having talked to a DEA officer who is entering the doorway (with his back to the camera) to the duplex next to her door. As soon as the DEA and police raided the place next door she called her friend who lives nearby who came right over and was taking pictures with her cell phone. The DEA officer came out to talk to the tiny woman with the cell phone obviously taking pictures of them. She gave him her business card and said she is Donna's attorney (she was at that time). So he said OK but do not show any faces. So he went back in and said to the rest of them. "Act professional, and watch your language, you may be on youtube."

This was hard on Donna to see these DEA persons with hoods over their faces come right up several feet from her door to go next door. She had been raided with 10 or 12 officers approaching her own door only a few months before with many rifles pointed at her, and one with a battering ram. So she opened her door and asked them to let her put her big dog out of the house into the back yard, but they didn't let her and handcuffed her right away, then the dog ran out into the fenced front yard. She was afraid they would shoot it. This would be very hard on her because she loves her dog like crazy, and the dog loves her devotedly. The police and detectives spent hours ransacking the house and dumping out all her stuff from drawers, and dumping out all her envelopers of photographs from many envelopes into a pile on the floor and everything else was piled onto her bed so she was not able to sleep there for days, also all the pots and pans from the kitchen were dumped out. Then although there was one woman officer sitting with her the whole time some of the other officers did several unprofessional things she considered sexual harrassment and had no legitimate police activity.
.

I was just trying to find a link to Mara Felsen's facebook to share. She posts interesting things about MMJ and criminal justice on her FB. Sh eis already my friend so I see them. I could not find a link to work. She says on FB lives in San Diego, graduated from Berkeley, studied law at university of California, San Diego, studied at Scripts Research Institute.

If any detective from somewhere thinks he has discovered a new prospect to investigate, forget it. Mara is a well known MMJ activist in San Diego, and was active in NORML and several other groups. Mara has also visited with the head narcotics prosecutor with Donna to try to convince him that MMJ is good and they should allow collective dispensaries. Mara and Donna had also informed him about some new important MMJ appellate decisions no one had told him about. Obviously he has a lot of other things to deal with like drug dealers and raids for meth, cocain, heroin, drugs from Mexico, and lots of things, that some 20 prosectors in his department deal with.

Pro-MMJ Paul
I agree with your 9:28 AM comment. I was already planning to go there next meeting.
But I am kind of shy, and sometimes I chicken out.
Actually it is more frustation about what to say first, In only two or three minutes.
I read some of these 20 or 30 email subject lines every day about mostly MMJ differnet cities passing bans , or allowing dispensaries. I clicked on a link, and found an interesting arelant article, then clicked back up to where it came from two or thre levels, and guess what?
There was a 200 some page INDEX to articles about marijuana and other drugs with about 30 or 40 listings per page.
It covered the 3000 years of medicinal use in different countries, lots of medical research,etc.
It may be hard to convince them, since thay have been brought up to believe these anti-MMJ myths. I found out only 2 and a half years ago, and came to accept it only step by step because a relative was using it. I want to give them steps by step too.
However there is so much information out there.
1. The medical uses.
2. The possible real effect that it may actually FIGHT CANCER, not just help the patient de4al with the pain and withering aay.
3. The CA laws
4. The CA court appellate cases and state supreme court cases.
5. The real needs of real patients.
6. The sixteenth state (plus Washinton DC) has now signed up
7. Proving it is NOT a gateway drug,nor addictive.
8. The real problem is the DEA/NIDA lying about it being harmful and addictive

To Pro-Paul and Carl, I am a volunteer at to Co-Op on Front street ( the one with a business license from the City and now being sued by the City). You guys seem well informed about the MMJ program and we would like to have a face to face meeting for your assistance and input in our continued efforts to reach out to the City fathers. Please call us. We have made several attempts to enlighten the City of the need and the proper way to monitor/regulate the State Law. There is a safe legal way to to do this, but we need patient and community involvement. All attempts to intelligently discuss this with the City have been rebuffed.

Pro-MMJ Paul
Several weeks ago I thought I well make a little survey of what strangers think of having a dispensary in town. After I struck up a conversation about other things I asked. The first person had an emotional marijuana-phobic reaction, so I did not try to continue my little survey. I had mentioned this several times to another person I see every week or so in a group meeting and he said nothing.

This time I said a little more about the other states also having problems about details and he went ballistic. Not at me, but about the subject.

It seems his sons in their 20's and their friend went to a MMJ doctor and said they had bad headaches or something and got recommendations. He thinks they did not buy any MMJ but he was furious. Must be he believes it is a gateway drug, or makes kids into hippies or something. I gently suggested if they went to a regular doctor and said the same lies about their pain they would be prescribed oxycotin or a similar drug known to be highly addictive.
SO anyway even if City Council approved secretively they would have a lot of angry mauijuana-phobies railing at them. Meanwhile I will keep trying. several more CA cities this past week approved having outlets.

Pro-mmj Paul
Hi Steve. Maybe I could help out in some way. It is weird about my involvement.
I have never smoked tobacco nor drank any alcohol, nor taken any MJ in any form. One elderly woman I visit sometimes has offered me cookies, but I never have tasken one. She says half a cookie helps her sleep good. Her regular doctor prescribes oxycoten and things like that, but she does not want to use them. However I am fired up about the injustice of the whole subject.
I also went to San Diego several times last year and sat in on some court hearings, and a MMJ trial for one activist, and also sat in at Federal Court in support of James Stacy. I met a few of the activists there, and several members of the San Diego Medical Marijuana Task Force. They call it showing court support. I did talk at Temecula and Murrieta several times, and Wildermar and San Diego once during public comments. I have to work on what to say ahead of time or I just kind of drawl or go off on too much explanation and do not get to the other main points. So I am working on that.
But I have reasonably good academic ability, so I have figured some things out, and I have read the whole court decisions on some of these cases. But I do not memorize well. I do want to share some of the things with city council members.
But remember most of them here are right wing republican conservatives and/or religious persons who have lived pretty clean lives, and some have been in law enforcement themselves.

Carl,

Yes, that is us and the info you have is correct. 951-694-0420

Thanks,

It's about time the federal government legalized marijuana. We'd all be better off and the criminal element would no longer have much of an interest in it.

why did the cops need to shoot the dog 27 times?