POT RAID TARGETS PATIENT ADVOCACY GROUP

SANTA CRUZ -- County and federal authorities raided a Pacific Avenue
medicinal marijuana organization Thursday, saying the group, which
claims to be a counseling service, is nothing more than a cover-up
for an interstate marijuana cultivation and sales operation.

"They were actually selling marijuana out of there as a storefront,"
Sgt. Steve Carney of the Sheriff's Office said. "It's kind of like
street-level dealing, but putting a nice, pretty picture on it."

Five men, including the founder of the Local Patients Advocacy Group
of Santa Cruz, have been arrested and a sixth is wanted on a warrant
for selling marijuana, Carney said.

All of the men arrested claimed to be medicinal users, growers or
both, according to the Sheriff's Office.

"It's the continued abuse of the medical marijuana laws," Carney said.

The Local Patients Advocacy Group office, on the second story of 903
Pacific Ave., was one of three locations searched Thursday as
sheriff's drug detectives, agents from the county Narcotics
Enforcement Team and U.S. Postal Service inspectors from San Jose
culminated a months-long investigation.

Authorities on Thursday also raided a large commercial greenhouse in
Pajaro and a home on Crystal Heights Drive in Soquel where the garage
had been converted into a grow room, the Sheriff's Office reported.

The marijuana plants seized could have produced pot with a street
value of $1 million, according to Carney.

The Postal Service inspectors were tipped off to the operation in
2007 because some of the marijuana was being mailed from Soquel to
buyers in California, South Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia and Illinois.

From March to June, Postal Service inspectors reportedly seized 4.5
pounds of pot the men sent to buyers and confiscated thousands of
dollars worth of payments sent back to the dealers, Carney said.

The men allegedly were selling pot from the Local Patients Advocacy
Group office to people who had valid medicinal marijuana cards,
according to Carney, whose team used a medicinal card to conduct
undercover drug buys there.

"It was nothing more than 'What do you need? I can sell you ounces,
grams, eighths, pounds, anything you need,' " Carney said. "It wasn't
anything that came close to complying with the law other than, 'I'm
selling to you because you have a medical card.' "

On Thursday, detectives found about 2 pounds of marijuana packaged to
sell as well as hash and baked goods when they raided the office.

The site of the Local Patients Advocacy Group of Santa Cruz, a
downtown Santa Cruz information center that opened in 2005 to cater
to the questions and anxieties of medical marijuana patients, has a
short but storied history.

The organization rose from the ashes of the Pacific Coast
Cooperative, located in the same space -- across from the Metro
station -- after the city Planning Department closed the co-op in
March 2005. Just six weeks after the co-op opened, city officials
learned it allowed medical marijuana patients to sell and trade the
drug with each other, a violation of the city's zoning laws.

Later that year, [redacted], then a UC Santa Cruz student, opened the
advocacy center in the second-story office above Internet provider
Cruzio and the Blue Lagoon nightclub.

[redacted] told the Sentinel in September 2005 that the center was
"to provide a comfortable environment for members to discuss issues,
review educational material, access the Internet and, most
importantly, become involved in an organization to call their own."

Sheriff's Lt. Phil Wowak described the advocacy group office as "a
shop on the mall set up specifically for sales of marijuana,"
sometimes in large quantities. No one answered the phone at the
office Thursday evening.

Carney said the Pacific Coast Cooperative didn't disappear after the
city shut it down and that the Pacific Avenue office actually housed
three medicinal marijuana groups: the cooperative, the advocacy group
and Aloha Cooperative.

"They're still up and running," Carney said. "They even had T-shirts
with logos on them that said 'Pacific Coast Cooperative.' "

It was unclear Thursday evening what, if any, follow-up city
officials did after the cooperative was shut down in 2005 or if the
advocacy group's activity has been monitored for the past three years.

[redacted], the founder of the advocacy group, was among the five men
arrested Thursday.

He was taken into custody at the greenhouse at [redacted]. The men
rented the property from a trucking company, which Carney said was
not involved in the drug operation.

In the greenhouse, authorities found 368 pot plants in a 2,000- to
3,000-square-foot area protected by a security system, trip alarms,
video surveillance, the Sheriff's Office reported. A loaded shotgun
was also was found there.

"Literally, some of these plants were 10 to 12 feet tall," Carney said.

[redacted] allegedly were working in the greenhouse when it was
raided Thursday. They were both arrested on suspicion of cultivating
and possessing marijuana for sale.

At the Soquel home, deputies arrested resident [redacted], on
suspicion of cultivating and possessing marijuana for sale. Carney
said [redacted] had created a dummy company -- Santa Cruz Trading Co.
- -- to try to cover up the drug sales operation.

The Soquel home had 104 plants growing in the garage but "it looked
like a normal single-family residence from the front," Wowak said.
They recovered about 2 pounds of pot packaged to sell.

Another man at the house, [redacted] allegedly was renting space to
grow his medicinal marijuana, Carney said. He was arrested on
suspicion of cultivating, furnishing and possessing marijuana for
sale. Carney said [redacted] is suspected of mailing the pot.

Late Thursday afternoon, detectives went to [redacted] with a fourth
search warrant. They seized a shotgun, a handgun, scales, 2-3 ounces
of hash, drug ledgers and $2,500 cash, Carney said.

Detectives said more searches and arrests are possible as they track
the money generated from the drug sales. A warrant has been issued
for [redacted], wanted for suspicion of selling marijuana.

"Obviously there's a lot more going on with this circle of people,"
he said. "The more cases we do like this the more we realize
California is kind of becoming a source state for marijuana."