LEGIT MEDICAL POT GROWERS TO BE IDENTIFIED

After police confiscated 162 marijuana plants from a Taraval
neighborhood home last week, a registry of certified medical cannabis
growers in San Francisco will be put together by the Police
Department and health officials.

The arrest has caused an uproar among medical marijuana advocates
because the suspect provided pot to a dispensary and had papers that
allowed him to grow the plants, according to members of Axis of Love,
a collective of medicinal marijuana providers.

On June 10, police raided a home at 215 Crestmont Drive about 1:30
p.m., according to police. Officers arrested Cody Phillips, 28, and
took the 162 plants, several bags of marijuana, cash and growing equipment.

Prosecutors charged the case and there was some confusion about the
legitimacy of the grower's papers, according to police Cmdr. John
Loftus. The home also had problems with its electrical wiring, and
PG&E was called to the house at one point.

There's currently a citywide permitting process for medical
dispensaries that includes hearings in front of city planners, but
there's no local registry for the growers who supply medical marijuana.

"We are hoping for some kind of guidelines so that they can register
with the Department of Public Health," Loftus said. "There is a large
criminal element that grows marijuana illegally and does it for
profit. We're having problems distinguishing between the two."

The Police Department has not been able to provide consistent numbers
on marijuana arrests despite repeated requests from media
organizations and an oversight committee formed in 2006 after The
City passed legislation making marijuana offenses the lowest
priority for police.

One member of the Marijuana Offenses Oversight Committee, Catherine
Smith, said there have been 71 raids on grow houses in the past year.
Many of those have come in the Taraval police district, which
includes the Sunset district.

"That's a lot of home invasions," Smith told the Police Commission on
Wednesday. "Some of them were warranted. Most of them were not."

Police commissioners Petra DeJesus and Jim Hammer agreed with the
idea, saying there should be a way to separate legitimate medical
cannabis growers from illegal ones.