MCGINN TO MEET WITH POLICE ABOUT ENFORCING MYRIAD POT LAWS

On Monday, Mayor Mike McGinn will sit down with top law-enforcement
officials from Seattle and King County to talk about how police are
enforcing conflicting city, state and federal marijuana laws.

McGinn, who supports legalizing pot, said a recent Seattle police raid
that netted just two legal medical-marijuana plants shows the dilemma
police face as they navigate the inconsistent laws.

The Seattle Anti-Crime Team that burst through the door of a Leschi
renter was following city policy, according to a Seattle Police
Department spokesman. The officers had a search warrant. When they
realized the tenant had a legitimate medical-marijuana card, they left
without arresting the man. And they fixed his front door.

But the mayor is questioning whether there's not a better policy to
help guide police.

"We're not giving -- the law doesn't give -- clear policy guidance to
the police or prosecutors necessarily, or even the public, and the
recent raid highlighted that issue," he said.

Joining the mayor will be City Attorney Pete Holmes, who, when he ran
for office a year ago, promised to stop prosecuting people for simple
marijuana possession. Police Chief John Diaz, Sheriff Sue Rahr, King
County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, and City Council member
Nick Licata also are planning to attend.

In the meantime, McGinn already asked Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel
to review all marijuana investigations when officers are seeking a
search warrant.

"We just want to give them greater scrutiny and determine whether
there are other methods that we could use ... but the raid reflects
the fact that we don't necessarily give police officers the clarity
they need to do their job," McGinn said.

Complicating matters for police is the fact that people who qualify to
use pot for medical conditions can legally grow it. Washington state
allows medical-marijuana patients to possess 15 plants and 24 ounces
of processed marijuana. Under certain conditions, patients can be
authorized to have more.

At the federal level, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder last month
announced new guidelines for federal prosecutors in states that have
laws allowing the use of medical marijuana. The U.S. guidelines do not
say medical marijuana use is legal.

Seattle Police Department spokesman Sean Whitcomb said the laws put
police officers in a tough position. They don't know, after all, who
is even legally authorized to grow marijuana.

"Is it our job to compromise the investigation to give the benefit of
the doubt to people?" he said.

But given strict, federal patient-privacy laws, there isn't a state
database of medical marijuana patients -- and therefore, there's no
way for police investigating a suspected grow operation to know if the
grower is an authorized medical marijuana patient or someone looking
to turn a profit, said Ian Goodhew, deputy chief of staff to King
County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg. Because for-profit, large-scale
marijuana growers are often well armed, officer safety is always a
consideration, he said.

In the Leschi case, officers, were following up on a citizen
complaint. They went to an apartment in the 900 block of 29th Avenue
South and spotted ventilation equipment common to marijuana grow operations.

According to the search warrant, Anti-Crime Team Officer Tyrone Davis
and Sgt. Garth Green noted that a window was boarded up and rigged
with a fan. They climbed the stairs to a second-floor landing and
smelled "an odor consistent with the smell of marijuana plants," the
warrant says.

The officers did try to determine how much electricity the apartment's
occupant was using because unusually high power consumption can
indicate the presence of specialized pot-growing lights, said Ian
Goodhew, deputy chief of staff to King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg.

But Seattle City Light said it could only provide information about
the building's power use, but not that of individual units, he said.

Davis and Green got a search warrant and returned on Oct. 25 at about
9:45 p.m. According to an incident report, they knocked on Walter
Laudanski's door and called out that they were police officers with a
warrant. When no one answered, the officers broke the lock on the
front door, entered the apartment and searched it.

Laudanski, 50, couldn't be reached Friday. He told a reporter for The
Stranger newspaper that he was tying his robe and about to answer the
door, but police barged in before he could get there.

They found two potted marijuana plants in the bedroom and some glass
jars containing marijuana.

Laudanski had valid paperwork indicating the marijuana was for medical
purposes.

"In hindsight, it looks like more force" was used than necessary,
Goodhew said, "but you have to remember that police didn't know what
they would find."

In contrast, Goodhew said, police raided another home last week in
Renton. Officers discovered more than 600 mature plants and 70 pounds
of harvested pot with a combined street value estimated at $1.3 million.

"Those are the extremes of what police can find," Goodhew said of the
two cases. "Police have the duty to investigate criminal activity.
Sometimes they find criminal activity, sometimes they don't, but they
need to be able to do their jobs in an effective manner."

In the case of the Leschi raid, Whitcomb said, officers also had no
reason to consider Initiative 75, the 2003 measure Seattle voters
approved that made arresting and jailing adults for possessing
personal amounts of pot the department's lowest law-enforcement priority.

The Leschi search wasn't deemed a possession case.

While that's technically true, McGinn said, I-75 does apply to the
situation "on a practical level" because it reflects the public's
changing attitude toward marijuana.

"Both the medical-marijuana law and I-75 reflect the public's intent
with regard to marijuana, and that does influence how you think about
your policies regarding it," he said.