cannabisnews.com: Medical Pot Advocate has Charges Dropped! 





Medical Pot Advocate has Charges Dropped! 
Posted by FoM on December 30, 1998 at 08:54:00 PT

Richard Evans says cops trashed his home, slandered him with accusation of possessing porn. The district attorney's office has dropped drug and pornography charges against a nationally known medical Marijuana advocate, who angrily accused police of deliberately targeting his residence for a raid and slandering him. 
Richard Evans, 35, was arrested following a Friday night police visit to his residence in the 300 block of South Van Ness Avenue that police said had been initiated by a silent alarm call. But Evans told The Examiner Tuesday that he believed police had intentionally triggered the alarm as an excuse to get inside his residence, where they knew he was growing marijuana for medical use. Police completely trashed his apartment, he said, and left one of his four-inch knives lodged in a door in what he feels was a thinly veiled threat. "San Francisco police are rogue agents; it's out of control," said Evans. "I think they were triggering the alarm so they could bust in the back door." Evans also said that police had seized from his apartment two professional art books by renowned San Francisco photographer Jock Sturges that contained nude images. He vehemently denied possessing any prurient pictures. "The cops slandered me by saying any photograph in my house was pornographic," he said. "I say, if they have something pornographic, let's look at it." Evans also said he had a doctor's recommendation for using pot and that he was suspicious of how police had come to raid his home. He said he was growing marijuana strictly for medical use. Evans said he had learned Tuesday that the district attorney's office had dropped charges of growing marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale and possession of child pornography. Lt. Kitt Crenshaw, the officer in charge of the raid, confirmed that the charges against Evans had been dropped. Prosecutors said they wanted to investigate the case further before deciding whether to refile charges, Crenshaw said. Evans said he ran the San Francisco Patients and Caregivers Health Center on Mission Street and had previously been director of Americans for Compassionate Use. Events leading to the arrest began late Friday night when officers at the Mission police station said they had received a silent commercial security alarm calling them to an apartment on the 300 block of South Van Ness, Crenshaw said. Believing the device may have been triggered by someone having a medical emergency, officers forced their way into the rear of the apartment, he said. Inside, officers said, they found marijuana and summoned narcotics detectives, who obtained a search warrant and seized marijuana plants. They also seized what Crenshaw initially estimated to be 17 pounds of packaged marijuana. Tuesday, however, he said officers actually had found about "10 or 11 pounds." Evans said, "It seems awful weird that the alarm went off like that. Seems awfully fishy. It almost seems like they wanted to find a way in here." His apartment was "trashed" by police, who left a knife stuck through the door of one of the apartment's growing rooms, Evans said. "They stabbed it right through the door, just as an act of meanness," Evans said. "It's almost like they were pissed that they didn't find more money or something like that." Police officials were unavailable for comment about the knife incident. Evans had recently applied for a city permit to operate a medical marijuana club, Crenshaw said. In 1996, police in Covington, Ky., raided an apartment where Evans allegedly operated a medical marijuana buying club, across from the county courthouse. Evans told a reporter at the time that he was head of Americans for Compassionate Use, and had operated 37 buying clubs around the country. He said the clubs had to buy marijuana on the street because they had no other source, but added, "We are currently working on ways to make sure we no longer have to buy it off the street." 
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