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California


WEED WAR: RAIDS ON LICENSED FARMS AND DOG SHOOTING SPARK OUTRAGE

Seen by satellite, the four greenhouses of Nhia Yang’s state-licensed cannabis
farm (upper left) stand out amid a sea of unlicensed farms atop Post Mountain.
The licensed farm was the scene of a police raid, and death of the owner’s dog.
(SkySat)
By Paige St. JohnStaff Writer 
May 19, 2023 5 AM PT
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Video of a police raid on a Northern California cannabis farm earlier this month
has set off outrage, in part because the 36-second clip shows an officer fatally
shooting a grower’s dog.

That the target of the armed strike held a state cannabis license was equally
upsetting for many growers in the region.

Three other cannabis farms for which a Trinity County magistrate in late April
approved sheriff’s raids also were licensed by the state.

What the targeted farms allegedly lacked were Trinity County permits.


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“That is insane,” said Matthew Hawkins, upon learning from The Times that his
state-licensed McAlexander Ranch had been on the raid list but for unexplained
reasons was not served.

“It seems like they’re going after people with state licenses,” he said. “It’s
like a bomb going off over my head.”

Trinity County’s heavily forested mountains are part of the fabled but fractured
Emerald Triangle — the footing for the 1960s’ counterculture marijuana movement.
Now it is also emblematic of the continued disarray from California’s push to
commercialize a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry.

California


LEGAL WEED, BROKEN PROMISES: A TIMES SERIES ON THE FALLOUT OF LEGAL POT IN
CALIFORNIA

California’s legalization of recreational cannabis in 2016 ushered in a
multibillion-dollar industry. But many of the promises of legalization have
proved elusive.

May 5, 2023





Proposition 64, the 2016 measure that legalized recreational use of cannabis,
created a dual licensing system that requires both state and local approval to
grow commercial cannabis.

The ballot measure barely passed in Trinity County, opposed by both those who
did and did not grow weed. The majority of thousands of Trinity County cannabis
grows remain unlicensed, selling to illegal markets. Those seeking a license in
2021 were required to start over, when a local faction convinced a judge to
overturn the county’s cannabis permitting system because it did not subject
farms to environmental review.

The state Department of Cannabis Control responded with a letter reassuring
growers that it would take no action against those who lost their local permits
because of the ruling. The agency had no response to a request to comment on the
situation in Trinity County but in the past has defended its practices of
granting licenses to unpermitted growers in neighboring Mendocino County,
arguing that the law requires only that license holders be in the process of
obtaining local approval.

As of Thursday, the state had 345 active cultivation licenses in Trinity County,
but the county had approved only 134.

“What I wish for is that we would have a consistent policy throughout the
state,” said Trinity County Sheriff Tim Saxon. The dual licensing system, he
said, is “placing many sheriffs in an uncomfortable situation, including
myself.”

Saxon’s anti-narcotics squad led the May 1 and May 2 cannabis farm raids,
borrowing officers from Siskiyou County and the California Department of
Forestry and Fire Protection. Many of the search warrants acknowledged that the
farms held state licenses and their owners were somewhere in the lengthy local
permitting pipeline.

But the warrants also state that farm owners were warned they could not grow
cannabis until they secured the local permit and there was evidence many of
these farms had been growing illegally for years.

Even so, the alleged crime that brought an armed strike team to Nhia Pao Yang’s
gate the morning of May 2 — unlicensed commercial cannabis — is a $500
misdemeanor.

The state license is in the name of Yang’s son, Robert Yang, who had received a
state-funded grant to assist him with licensing.

The executive director of Cannabis for Conservation, the grant’s administrator,
said the raid violated “an understanding” between the county and sheriff that
participants “will not be enforced upon while navigating this process with us.”

“We are working to help rectify this illegal raid, and bring justice to the
situation so that our other cultivators won’t undergo this horrific experience,”
Jackee Riccio said in a written statement.

Video taken by a newspaper team shadowing the sheriff’s cannabis squad shows
officers in body armor and with drawn guns cutting the lock to Yang’s gate as
they summoned the farmer forward. Yang held his hands in the air, asking “What
do you want?” as a large brown dog tethered near the gate circled between owner
and approaching police. When asked if there were others in the house behind him,
Yang started to turn in that direction. “Stop. Come here,” an officer commanded.

Moments later, Yang backed up again as an officer attempted to take an object
from his hands. That is when his leashed dog fixated on a nearby Cal Fire agent
holding his gun on the animal. As the dog lunged forward, the Cal Fire agent
fired. “God, you shot my dog!” Yang screamed amid the injured animal’s loud
howls. The dog, named Y2K, was pronounced dead at a veterinary clinic.

On Tuesday, upset residents berated public officials for nearly an hour at a
county Board of Supervisors meeting. They questioned the presence of police in
body armor with drawn firearms on farms trying to operate legally.

“My kid’s living on the coast, in town right now, so he can be safe from these
armed madmen running around,” said Willow Creek grower Walter Wood. “We
shouldn’t have to feel that way ... especially given the amount of hoops that
we’ve gone through. It’s like thousands and thousands of hoops that we’ve jumped
through.”

Another resident, Chris Williams, who logged into the board meeting via Zoom,
asked, “What’s the point of having a legal program if law enforcement
continuously shows up to raid a farm, ending livelihoods with bogus warrants,
shoots and kills pets, traumatizes families who are just doing their job?”

Some cultivators who still lack local permits told The Times they decided to
grow anyway because they had no other source of income.

“I can’t survive here in this little town. I poured my whole life into this
little town,” one weeping woman told county supervisors, having waited two years
for a county permit. “It’s time to plant ... how do you think we’re going to
survive?”

Residents were also upset at the disparity between the official version of the
raids and what they saw on video circulating on social media channels.

The sheriff’s Facebook announcement of the raid described Yang as
“non-compliant” and said he “attempted to keep investigators away from him by
standing near one of the aggressive dogs.” It said the dog “attempted to attack
an investigator” and thus was shot in self-defense.

County supervisors took no action on the public comment, but Saxon, sitting in
the meeting, came forward to defend the decision to raid “not fully compliant”
farms. He said Cal Fire is conducting its own investigation of the shooting, but
noted the dog appeared trained to attack. And Saxon voiced dismay that Yang’s
defense lawyer released the video, part of crime scene evidence, that was now
widely circulating on Instagram and Facebook.

The Kentucky newspaper that took the video, the Louisville Courier-Journal,
would not grant The Times permission to show the footage.

Yang’s lawyer, Thomas Ballanco, himself a cannabis grower and distributor,
contended that the sheriff’s office was wrong to take aggressive action against
the farmers. “They’re not violating the state law,” he said. “They’re breaking
county zoning code.”

Court-filed receipts show police seized 12 guns from Yang’s property and
destroyed 2,365 pounds of processed cannabis. Yang was charged with unlawful
possession of commercial cannabis, a misdemeanor.

Trinity County Dist. Atty. David Brady also filed six other charges. Five are
misdemeanors: lack of dog licenses, rabies vaccinations, unreasonable tethering
of an animal, allowing a dog to attack or injure someone, and resisting arrest.
Yang is charged with a felony count of resisting arrest “by the use of force and
violence” — his dog.

Brady did not return calls to his office.

“This was not a household pet,” Saxon told the county Board of Supervisors. Yang
had stepped away from officers, the sheriff contended, “almost as if to lure the
deputies and the officers in there closer to the dog.”

At a hearing Wednesday, Yang pleaded not guilty to all counts.

CaliforniaTimes InvestigationsCannabis
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Paige St. John covers criminal justice, disasters and investigative stories for
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