They have sensors on choppers that can find grow lites. Weed is a horrible drug and must be stopped.
I don’t like shows where they set people up in order to say, ‘Gotcha’. The citizens of any town where they operate should start a class action suit against them. Particularly anyone hurt in a crime that occurs during one of their candid camera moments. Better to have people turn in real footage of cops behaving badly than to manufacture them for the TeeVee.
Are Grow Lights sufficient probable cause? What if I was growing Cilantro and Coriander?
I think there’s a crucial difference here though. They didn’t actively encourage the cops to kick down the door. They just passively set up some grow lights.
The pro-life “stings” of Planned Parenthood involve actors actually trying to persuade the workers to give them abortions while overlooking statutory rape. The pretend underage actors try to sound desperate and win over the workers sympathy, and then GOTCHA YA!
There’s no persuasion involved here. Nobody was twisting the cops arms and making them raid the place.
You can put me in the, “There’s no way the cops would have known if they didn’t drop a tip.”, camp.
Tip or no tip, I like it. If they’re wasting resources it’s their own decision to go off something they don’t have probable cause for anyway.
Maybe I’m missing something, but what did the cops do wrong here? They got a tip about a weed house and busted it. So what if it was empty? What would a “good” cop do? They had a search warrant, so is the judge a bad guy too?
But this is exactly the point they are trying to prove. A very, very good point. Why is some anonymous dude calling in enough evidence to kick down the doors? It could be a jealous ex-lover with a grudge for all they know.
How do you know that’s the point they’re trying to prove? Nothing was mentioned about a tip-off and we don’t know what was done to get the cops to the house with a warrant. And you’re changing your tune. You said:
An anonymous tip doesn’t constitute probable cause to break into your house with a full police raid. They likely falsified “evidence” to support probable cause in order to get the search warrant.
I suppose I spoke too soon then. I still think it’s funny though.
The whole point is that they’re not doing anything remotely illegal.
We don’t know that yet. It seems unlikely that all that was done were that grow lights were turned on and the police showed up in less than 24hrs with warrant in hand.
Yea that whole anonymous tip thing is a convenient cover I suppose. What if the police took longer to respond to a rape during that period of time?
You mean assuming the police did falsify evidence to a judge? Then the lag time in responding to a rape is on them.
The only difference between our view on this is you are absolving one more culpable party than I am.
True, and if they did do something illegal, I’ll be happy to join in on the pile-on, as it would indeed be a colossal waste of time at best. But “innocent until proven guilty” is extremely pertinent here (though if not on a message board).
…which is the point, as DtC pointed out upthread and Rigamarole expanded on.
Even if this did slow down police response to real crime at this particular moment, it’s still quite plausible that it’ll improve things in the long run. Maybe now, the next time they detect grow lights, they won’t charge in full-bore, and leave more resources available for their other duties.
Never mind
I am. I think more good than harm comes from busting crooked cops. If cops are getting illegally obtained warrants to bust suspected marijuana growers, they’re the culpable party.
You said they did nothing illegal. I said we don’t know that yet.
But you said "The whole point is that they’re not doing anything remotely illegal. " 
Exactly.