 Ready to give out parking tickets |
Patricia Pantano, education director of the Camino de Paz Montessori School and Farm in Cuarteles, between Española and Chimayó on N.M. 76, said the raid occurred Sept. 21 during the lunch hour.
“We were all as a group eating outside as we usually do, and this unmarked drab-green helicopter kept flying over and dropping lower,” she said. “Of course, the kids got all excited. They were telling me that they could see gun barrels outside the helicopter. I was telling them they were exaggerating.”
After 15 minutes, Pantano said, the helicopter left, then five minutes later a state police officer parked a van in the school’s driveway. Pantano said she asked the officer what was happening, but he only would say he was there as a law-enforcement representative.
Then other vehicles arrived and four men wearing bullet-proof vests, but without any visible insignias or uniforms, got out and said they wanted to inspect the school’s greenhouses. Pantano said she then turned the men over to the farm director, Greg Nussbaum.
“As we have nothing to hide, you know, they did the tour and they went in the greenhouses and they found it was tomato plants and so that was the story,” she said…
Some parents, who did not want to be named, said they, too, were concerned about the raid on their children’s school.
Pantano said she did not want to make too big an issue out of the raid, but questioned why such a commotion was necessary when anyone who asked would have been given a tour of the greenhouses.
“We’re sitting here as a teaching staff, always short on money, and we’re thinking, ‘Gosh, all the money it takes to fly that helicopter and hire all those people, it would be great to have this for education.’ ”
Let us all be glad we live in a nation that has its priorities in order.
Har!
“Let us all be glad we live in a nation that has its priorities in order. Har!”
Back in 1989 I was arrested while at work for cultivation of marijuana in my Dixon, CA back yard. Being that the town was so small then and I was a local (electronics & computer store) owner operator that knew a bunch of the city employees including some of the police, I was able to talk the two officers into going by my yard to have a real look. The officers had explained that a neighbor had called in the complaint and they had pulled their car up to the fence and stood on the hood to get a view of my crop. When we arrived I let them in the yard and we walked over to the plot. The first thing they saw were the tomatoes. I was released back at my store.
I grow tomatoes in my greenhouse in my San Francisco backyard. Funny thing. I have never been raided.
#2, not yet. Where do you live again?
Slightly related: A few years ago in northern Afghanistan, I dropped in to see the new offices of the UN’s World Health Organization. Looking out the director’s office window I saw what looked like several large cannabis plants in one corner of the courtyard. I thought it was funny and mentioned to the director when she came back into the room. She was a very straight-laced German lady and hadn’t known what MJ looked like. She was apoplectic and ordered the plants cut down immediately.
The next day I was driving by and noticed what looked like several cannabis plants spread out on the tin roof of the garage. I wonder how that happened…
If I ever decide to grow pot, I am going to mix tomatoes in with it so people will just think its tomatoes ….
San Francisco. This town is about to start it’s own pot farms, like that shithole Oakland…..
#5 for the winner.
Multi-juridical Narc Task Force[s] often need to find reasons for their existence. Sure they will raid a home school style institution with full auto mp5’s. If it makes headlines it makes sense. Sounds like a political organization. Sounds like some mid East thugs with a state reporter hanging 10. An investigation would been of been easier, cheaper and less potential for lethality.
I was waiting for the part where the fuzz “Wrestled the Tomato Plants to the Ground and clapped the cuffs on them!!!”
All this for a WEED that was grown by all our Founding Father Planters – Those Damned HIPPIES !!!
These type of fellows are going to make great target practice when the revolution comes. Remember boys, when dealing with goons in body armor go for the head shot.
At the time I didn’t give much thought to it and considering the attitude that had developed towards POT I kept my mouth shut but no more than a 1/4 mile from my backyard out in a rural field sat a red barn that was a major meth manufacturing facility. You could usually see a few cars and pickups there but on certain afternoons or night a slew of vehicles even police car were there. I was told they had cock and dog fight done by a lot of the local farm laborers. For some reason the police left the meth men and their dealers alone. I left Dixon in 1992 after three of the neighbors nephews were gunned down execution style in the street in front of my home. A witness said three young black boys on bicycle did the killings then rode off into the fields behind my house. The police suspected they had not paid their suppliers.
Oh my and POT is so evil!
This whole operation is sooo cheesy I can only see it organized by the government who wants the public opinion to be in favour of decriminalization! Nothing more sensitive than children safety…
tomatoes are of the nightshade family and are a danger to the community!
durn! i shoulndt have said tomatoes i shoulda said luuuuuuuuuuuv apples..
😛
#5 & #7: I will nether confirm nor deny that I have personally seen this done with great success…
I thought they had Sniffer probes that could detect MJ in an area.. Also meth..
For all the money they spent on Raiding a school garden…$15-20,000. Could have run the facility for the YEAR..
@GetSmart
Sure, shot guns are fun but a rifle will kill them dead at a safe distance. You can always go cut off a souvenir with your survival knife later.
@ Mr. Fu
Well I would hope most Multi-juridical Narc Task Force[s]would go the way of our local one. So many years of corruption at and on all levels, plus just plain terrible police work overall, when things got so bad, that nobody could ignore the corruption, they disbanded and swept the whole thing under the rug.
You know what really scares me – is that until the law puts first time offenders charged with drug distribution and crimes of volence on remand in the slammer on their FIRST charge – this will become normal. Walk-in / Walk-out court appearances are a joke.
The photo -will- be what parking cops are wearing in another ten years, as they can’t be expected to know if the un-hinged owner will come out with an AK-47 or other weapon from a distance.
Putting troops into a dangerous situation with potentially heavily armed school students – surely the entire target could have been surgically removed with a predator drone controlled safely form Afghanistan.
Some one should rein the police in. They could have shot or tazed a student.
If I go to Pot, I will eat green fried Tomatoes.
I lived close to that area for a a few years. Bullet Proof vest isnt such a bad idea. Espanola is the lowrider capital of the world. Remind me again who typically drives lowriders in gang territories? Oh yea, nice school children just peacefully having lunch. You’re right should have sent Barney Fife in there and asked the nice kids a few question about their school tomato project.
Cops can suck…but generally cause people give them a reason.
Sometimes you really have to stop and look at things from the perspective of the police.
Justifying next year’s budget is not always easy, and just one successful raid to find marijuana could actually fund several members of the local SWAT team as well as their equipment and supplies for an entire year.
So please think of the cops. These high tech toys granted by the federal Army in the Joint Task Force capacity may not be as inexpensive as your child’s textbooks or chalk for his teachers.
They need to raid you, so that they can continue to raid you.
And what would happen without these raids?
Think about it.
The part of this that bothers me personally most is no uniforms and no warrants.
The obvious implication is that civilians are expected to obey who ever shows up in combat gear and to bleep with the rule of law, due process, and crap like that.
#24 LowlyRider – You’re absolutely right. The should “Nip it in the bud. Nip it in the bud.” ~ B. Fife
remember they hate us for our freedom. actually I’m more scared of an economy that fails for lack of skills in the next generation than I am terrorists or pot smokers.
Well it wouldn’t be a raid unless the cops had black helicopters and balaclavas.