GRASS STAINS, NOT A POT FARM, BLAMED FOR BILLS

Carlsbad Homeowners Say Their High Use of Electricity Reflects a Busy but
Boring Family Life.
Police Suspected Other Possibilities.

SAN DIEGO - Dina Dagy says her family is downright boring. She drives
a minivan. Her three children play soccer. She also does several loads
of laundry a day, pushing her utility bills so high that a police drug
team arrived at her home in Carlsbad recently, search warrant in hand.

The Dagys' electricity bill had caught the attention of investigators
who suspected the family of five must be using indoor lights to grow
marijuana.

Instead, they turned up Dagy, who says her only transgressions were,
well, boring: doing laundry, operating a dishwasher, running four
ceiling fans and three computers, and trying to keep up with three
active children who leave the lights on.

Dagy is asking police for an apology in writing and the assurance that
such incidents won't happen again. She wonders what her neighbors
think after seeing police climbing a ladder and removing a screen to
peer through her windows.

"It's hard to believe a high utility bill would be enough to issue a
state warrant," Dagy said. "In the back of your mind, you've got to be
thinking, 'There's got to be something else.' "

Carlsbad police say that they have apologized verbally several times
and that they obtained a search warrant because an initial probe
suggested someone in the house might be raising marijuana.

"I understand they feel something isn't appropriate here, but it is
very much consistent with how search warrants are prepared," said
Carlsbad Police Lt. Bill Rowland.

The practice of tracking drug growers through electricity bills is not
unusual, police officials say, because so-called "grow houses" use
intense indoor lights to simulate sunlight.

Utility bills were reviewed during a six-month investigation that
resulted in 26 search warrants executed March 19 in San Diego County,
concentrated in the Poway area.

Twenty of those raids turned up marijuana, said Special Agent Misha
Piastro, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,
which helped coordinate the effort. Piastro said he was not aware of
any complaints from those whose homes were raided, except the Dagys.

The warrant served on the Dagys was the result of a tip of "activity"
on their street, Piastro said. The federal agency asked Carlsbad
police to investigate further. When records showed the family spent
$250 to $300 a month on utilities, police took a drug-sniffing dog
past the property.

"There was a 'positive alert,' " Rowland said. In law-enforcement
circles, that means the dog sits down, allegedly in the area where it
smells drugs. A police affidavit notes that the family takes out its
refuse on the morning of trash pick-ups, a practice of drug growers
trying to conceal evidence.

So police obtained a search warrant for the Dagys' home, and, on March
19, six Carlsbad police investigators and a uniformed officer arrived
at the Dagys' door. When no one answered, they telephoned Dina Dagy's
husband, Beryl, at work. In turn, he called his wife at the elementary
school where she was volunteering in her son's second-grade classroom.
Dina Dagy recalls that her husband told her: "They're police officers.
They won't discuss this on the phone, but they're going to knock down
the door."

Dagy rushed to her minivan just as a police car drove up. She is
grateful the police did not enter the school and escort her out. "I
would have been so embarrassed," she said, "and my son would have
died: 'They're taking your mommy away!' "

Back at their house on Ivy Street, Dagy unlocked her door so that
police could search the house. They even inspected her children's
Legos and Barbie dolls, she said. No marijuana was found.

The Carlsbad Police Department will conduct a review to make sure the
investigation was conducted correctly, Rowland said. At the DEA,
Piastro said Carlsbad police appeared to have acted
appropriately.

"In my opinion, they did an outstanding job of handling that
situation," he said. "They did it in a way that was least intrusive
and least inconvenient to that family."

But Dina Dagy says that, if her family's experience was standard
procedure, something needs to change, so that other innocent families
are not targeted as hers was. She has written to city officials and to
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, hoping to draw their attention to the matter.

"We don't have a criminal record - I promise, on a stack of Bibles,"
she said.

All too often, the homes of innocent people are searched because of
faulty investigations, said Mike Marrinan, a San Diego-based attorney
who specializes in police-related civil rights cases.

"It is a very, very traumatic event to have a raid conducted on your
home," Marrinan said. "Why are they assuming criminal behavior from
facts that are completely innocent?" Even if investigators did get a
tip about drug activity on Ivy Street, informants are notoriously
unreliable, he said. And if the drug dog really "alerted," he said,
"the dog made a mistake, which is far too common."

Finally, too many judges rubber-stamp investigators' requests for
warrants, Marrinan said. "Judges need to be asking more questions and
insisting on thorough investigations before they issue search warrants."

Dina Dagy still does not understand why her family was targeted. Yes,
she admitted, she has two daisy plants in her house, an azalea plant
and cut flowers in the living room. She likes to grow things.

She paused.

"When you say 'growing things,' it sounds so ominous," she
said.