RAINBOW FARMS STANDOFF SPARKS TALK, OPINIONS

Tragedy struck the small town of Vandalia when two men were shot and killed
in a four-day standoff with police. Grover Thomas Crosslin, 46, was shot by
an FBI agent Monday afternoon and his roommate, Rolland Rohm, 28, was shot
by a Michigan State trooper Tuesday morning at Crosslin's Rainbow Farm
campground.

It began last Friday when Cass County law enforcement officers responded to
reports of fires on the campground east of Vandalia on M-60. An anonymous
call to police warned the fires were set to ambush officers.

Rainbow Farm was well known for staging festivals where drugs where
exchanged and used. Crosslin held Hemp Fest every Memorial Day weekend and
Roach Roast on Labor Day weekends.

Authorities searched the campground in May and seized 300 marijuana plants
and three loaded firearms and arrested Crosslin and Rohm on drug and
weapons charges. Rohm's 13-year-old son was removed from the property and
placed into foster care.

In June, Cass County Circuit Judge Michael E. Dodge issued an order
prohibiting Croisslin from holding festivals until his trial, scheduled
February 26, 2002.

Crosslin allegedly violated the terms of the order when he held a festival
at Rainbow Farm Aug. 17 and 18, leading to hearings that were scheduled
last Friday to revoke Crosslin's $150,000 bond and Rohm's $25,000 bond.

Neither appeared in court Friday.

Cass County Sheriff's deputies who responded last Friday to the scene where
not allowed on the grounds and found themselves in a standoff. Attempts to
negotiate with Crosslin through a third party were unsuccessful.

On Monday afternoon, Crosslin, carrying a rifle and accompanied by Brandon
James Peoples, allegedly approached an area where an FBI observer was
stationed. Upon seeing the FBI observer, authorities said Crosslin raised
his weapon to shoulder height and pointed it directly at the agent. The FBI
agent fired one round and fatally wounded Crosslin.

Authorities established negotiations with Rohm that continued through the
night. Rohn was killed the next morning after authorities saw a glow in the
upstairs of the farmhouse. At approximatley 6:30 p.m., Rohm was observed
leaving the residence and walking out into the yard with a long gun. After
several orders to put the weapon down, Rohm reportedly pointed the weapon
at a Michigan State policeman and was fatally shot.

The violent end to what was hopefully going to be a peaceful negotiation
prompted questions posed to Dowagiac residents as to what they thought of
the incident and if they thought police handled the situation well.

John Hall, a hot dog vendor on Main Street said he believed officers did
not want a confrontation.

Hall, a former police chaplain said he knows Sheriff Joseph Underwood and
other officers.

"I know the attitude of the guys. I think they did a good job. I was sick
for them when I heard he got shot because that's not what they wanted."

Crosslin was given every opportunity to give himself up, Hall said. It was
Crosslin who made the aggressive move when he came out with a gun during
negotiations.

"It was totally opposite of what he was trying to do. So that's why we
think it was a suicide by cops," Hall said.

"He had everything, why didn't he just come to court? But just seeing the
situation in the news, I knew, and even my son said it was going to end up
going wrong because he's creating his own problems."

Kris Dawkins was out of town when the incident happened, so she said she
doesn't know the details of the standoff at Rainbow Farms in Vandalia but
people at work were talking about the incident.

"Everyone was just really upset about how it was handled," Dawkins said.
Some of her co-workers felt police overreacted when they shot the two, she
said.

"Because I don't have the facts, I don't have the details, I don't know,"
she said.

Jerry Ferrari said he got the tail end of the story. It started the day he
left town and ended the day he came back, he said, and what he knew about
it, he read on the internet.

"I really didn't follow it that closely," he said. "I really don't have a
negative or positive on it. Probably a little bit of both sides."

Ferrari said in previous standoffs with police in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and
Waco, Texas, "it seems like police like to use force."

"I think they jump the gun a lot of times," he said, adding that he didn't
know what the situation at Rainbow Farm was and that it was not a good
thing for Crosslin and Rohm to have pointed guns at police.

Sally and Don Heffington said they followed the story a little bit on the news.

"I don't really know all the facts, just a lot of hearsay" Don Heffington
said. "The radio says one thing, the paper says another."

"I don't think they needed to kill him," Sally Heffington said.

"They could have shot him in the legs or something," Don said.

The two also said police could have waited Crosslin out or used tear gas to
end the situation.

Margaret Farmer said she heard about the standoff through the grapevine and
saw it on the news Friday night. She said she knew someone had shot at a
helicopter, but didn't know there was a standoff.

"Nobody can prove cops could have handled it differently." she said when
asked if she thought police handled the situation well.

"I couldn't handle it no different and you couldn't handle it no different
than what they could," she said. In that situation something was bound to
happen, she said. "I wouldn't know what to do."

No innocent bystanders where hit and no police got hurt, she said.

"That's their job. They should know what they're doing."

Darin Hackett said shooting at a helicopter and plane were actions that
threatened authorities.

"The minute he raised his gun and shot at a news chopper and at police
that's a threat right there," Hackett said.

"They could have had something to lure cops in there," he said, "so I think
they did do it fair sniping them off, if they did snipe them off."

Hackett just got out of the Navy after four years and is now in the
National Guard. He was on call during the standoff, he said. When he went
to the Cass County jail to put a resume in for corrections officer, there
were a lot of FBI agents there, he said.

Kyle Belew, owner of the Wounded Minnow Saloon, said he doesn't advocate
the legalization of pot.

"I think that actually in that whole arena, they set the whole thing back
by the choices they made," Belew said.

"I think the guy was unstable to begin with and I think the FBI did pretty
much the right thing. They gave him his chances. He shot at a helicopter.
If he didn't have a gun, he wouldn't have been shot. When it comes to that
point..."

Belew thinks the two men chose to be martyrs for the cause of legalizing
marijuana.

"Unfortunately, there's a 13-year-old boy involved in that whole thing."

"I might sound harsh, but they had their choices. They made their choices.
The FBI had to do what they had to do."

Belew also expressed concern that in highlighting the events of the
standoff, local media did not portray happenings at the farm that led up to
the incident.

"The bad thing is there were two people who were shot," he said. "They both
received bullets, and really, for what? In a way, I'm torn. Did they need
to be shot? I actually think those guys probably were not violent people.
But they chose to walk out of that house with a gun and actually point it."

Wounded Minnow cook Mike Mortimore recounted a news story he read about the
frame of mind an officer would be in if a rifle were aimed at him or her.

"I think they handled like they could," he said.

"Everybody can speculate about what happened," Mortimore said, but said
people need to think about it from the police's point of view.

"Do they want to do somthing like that? Would they come down to small town
America and draw that kind of attention?

"I think they did everything they could. Remember he's the one who shot at
the NewsCenter 16 chopper."

Mortimore supports the legalization of marijuana, saying if it is regulated
and taxed it "could help a lot of our country's problems."

He has friends who have gone to Rainbow Farm, he said, but never went there
himself.

"I always thought it was a bad idea to go out there," he said.

Mortimore said he thinks the incident hurt the cause of legalizing drugs.

"He could have chosen a better way than to get busted with 300 plants,"
Belew said. "He just did all the wrong things."