Judge to Name Monitor for Marijuana Air Raids

A federal judge has said he will appoint an independent monitor to ensure that the state’s marijuana raids do not violate the civil rights of neighboring residents.

U.S. District Judge Robert Aguilar did not indicate when he would do so. Because the harvest season is nearly over, however, a monitor probably would not go to work until next year.

Aguilar also stopped short of shutting down the multi-agency Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) program.

That left both residents of the affected Northern California counties and the state attorney general’s office, which oversees the program, claiming victory on Monday.

The residents had asked that the program be held in contempt of Aguilar’s injunction in February prohibiting raiding helicopters from flying lower than 500 feet over private property and requiring agents to secure search warrants before entering private property.

More Documentation

Last week Aguilar, in response to charges of police and helicopter harassment by more than 80 residents of Mendocino and Humboldt counties, ordered that starting this week, the raids must be planned and documented in more detail and that team members must be briefed before each raid on the terms of an earlier ruling that restricts the plan’s actions.

Residents have alleged in court over the last two weeks that program violations of the injunction have included buzzing by helicopters, searches without warrants and detention without reason.

Aguilar said the independent monitor, who is to report to him directly, also will investigate complaints of harassment.

“This is what we’ve been seeking. What we wanted was for the judge to put his foot on top of CAMP,” said Ronald M. Sinoway, lawyer for the residents. “This will ensure that they carry out surgical strikes instead of just wandering around.”

State officials said they do not expect Aguilar’s decision to hinder the program’s operations for this year. They are expected to bring in more than a million pounds of marijuana by the end of the harvest season in mid-October.

“We feel this is a favorable ruling,” state Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp said in a telephone interview from San Diego. “Although we fully expected the judge to have something to say to us, the evidence showed there was no intentional violation of the injunction.”