Growing Medical Marijuana: Bringing Crime to a Neighborhood Near You?

First the of possession of marijuana was decriminalized, then growing and using marijuana for medical purposes was legalized (with a permit), and then the nation’s first Cannabis Café, where card holders can go to socialize and smoke pot, opened in the Woodlawn neighborhood. So many groundbreaking changes to Oregon law in a relatively short time, I couldn’t help but wonder how things were going for law enforcement officers, the pot growers and smokers, and the Portland neighborhoods in which they work, grow and smoke.



My biggest question is this: are legal grow houses around our neighborhoods attracting crime? The answer, I found out, is yes and no, depending on who you ask.

Yes, legal grow operations are sometimes targeted for robberies. But, according to all of the law enforcement officers I spoke with, that does not necessarily put the rest of the neighborhood at risk for being targeted for robberies themselves.



Others disagree with this assessment, saying that criminal activity, even if not directed at them, degrades the livability of the entire neighborhood.



“The vast majority of home invasions are not random,” explains Public Information Office (PIO) Mary Wheat. “And most of them are drug related.” She says even when a grower is doing so legally through the state’s medical marijuana program, they can be targets. Police do not investigate crimes differently, whether the operation is legal or not, so finding statistics on how many home invasions involve legal growing is difficult to quantify.



“A crime is a crime,” Wheat explains. “And a victim is a victim, regardless of whether or not they have a legal grow operation.”



Detective Joe Santos, from the Robberies division provides further insight.



“Unless the victim is injured or really angry, [those with illegal grow operations] won’t report it, so many that are reported are those at legal grow operations,” Detective Santos explains. “If word gets out that there is marijuana being grown in a house, it could be targeted,” he says. “They are going after product, and the cash that could accompany it.”

  The Cannabis Cafe in Woodlawn

Even if a medical marijuana grower is not completely operating at a legal level (growing more plants than they’re legally allowed, or taking money for the marijuana), they are more likely to report a robbery, Santos says, knowing that prosecution will be difficult.



Though no money is supposed to change hands when someone is growing marijuana for a medical marijuana card holder (outside of equipment and operating costs), he has seen many instances when it has.



“There are growers who operate outside of the regulations,” he says. “It is difficult to know what goes on; we can’t just search a house without probable cause.”



“The issue is one of compliance,” Detective Scott McCollister from the Portland Drugs and Vice Division (DVD) explains. “There is no oversight to make sure that legal growers are compliant.” Since growing marijuana for medicinal purposes was made legal, Detective McCollister says it appears to him that they have seen more drug-related robberies (though this may be a reflection of what Det. Santos says – that legal growers are more apt to report it).



“There is no system to check for compliance, no random inspections or anything like that,” Detective Santos explains. “But it isn’t something the police would be able to undertake anyway.” With the threat of more cuts to the already lean police department, checking for compliance would be an impossible task for them. He says without the manpower in the police department, compliance checks would fall on DHS, though DHS says that is a police issue.

“Legal for some, illegal for others – it puts law enforcement in a precarious position,” Detective Santos admits. He says he has seen people with a history of buying and selling illegal substances, and even convicted felons given permits to become medical marijuana growers. He also says that statistics show that a large number of medical marijuana cards issued are prescribed by a handful of doctors (though he wasn’t able to give me any data on this). He once had a conversation with a card holder on the diagnosis he was given that made him eligible for a medical marijuana card.



“He could not explain to me what the disease was. He obviously had no clue.”



“It’s laughable,” he says. And frustrating, it seems. “Oregon is in this weird, in-between position. There are [a lot] of ways around getting in trouble [for possession and use]. It would be easier for police if it was either all legal or all illegal."



Some of the data regarding medical marijuana card holders, care givers, grow sites, and prescribing physicians is available on the DHS web site, but if you want to know if there are growers in your neighborhood, you can’t; the names of those with cards, growers and physicians is all confidential information. Though, Detective Santos informs me that if there is reason to believe marijuana is being grown at a residence, police can access the information regarding legal growers.



"We wouldn't want to bother someone who was operating under the law," he says.



Indoor [illegal] grow operation. Photo: Oregon State Police

Still, Det. Santos concurs with Officer Wheat that the robberies they see involving grow houses do not normally spread to the rest of the surrounding neighborhood. He does admit, however, that most of these break-ins are armed robberies. From talking to perpetrators he knows that they expect to meet much resistance and to face a victim who is also armed in order to protect themselves and their product. Because of that, there are often multiple perpetrators, using an “overwhelming level of force.” Therefore, he says, those growing, even those who follow the law to the letter, are at risk for being victims of violent crimes.

“I have seen people killed over marijuana,” Det. Santos says. Though smoking marijuana does not make people violent the way some other drugs do, Det. Santos says that as long as it has an illegal street value, it will provoke violent crime.



My own confidence in what the police say – that these violent crimes do not affect the surrounding neighbors – was weakened when I read an article by Maxine Bernstein of The Oregonian. In it, she reported on two, unrelated September break-ins, both involving armed assailants, both occurring in homes where medical marijuana was grown. Though no one was shot, the victims in both crimes were attacked quite viciously; one man required reconstructive surgery after the incident.




The violence did not spill out into the surrounding community, but one of the two robberies occurred just a block from my own house. Was violence brought to my doorstep? No. But violence, in such close proximity to my own home, certainly lessened my sense of security.



I spoke to a neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous, who put it this way:


“Even if you’re not in the line of fire, it still changes the way you feel. This kind of activity in our own neighborhood affects the quality of our lives.” As someone who has been in Portland long enough to remember when drugs and violent crime were more commonplace, especially on the east side of the river, he added, “People weren’t here when crime was rampant. They’ve been living off of the investment that people in the neighborhood made ten or fifteen years ago. It was really difficult to get people involved then, but it happened and things changed. People are forgetting that they still need to perform crime prevention maintenance.”




Someone quite willing to voice his concerns was Richard Brown, a long-time community activist and local photographer.




“Guns aren’t being fired yet, and so far they’re going to the right homes,” Brown says, referring to the recent break-ins that targeted grow operations. “First time [a bystander] gets hurt, then something will be done. It’s a shame, but that’s the way stuff works.”


Brown moved into the Northeast section of Portland in 1976, and has seen a lot of change in the last 34 years. According to Brown, law enforcement was not as responsive to pleas for help from area residents when gang and drug-related crimes were a scourge to the then mostly African-American community.


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The newer residents think, ‘I pay taxes, it’s the city’s duty to do something about this.’ Fifteen years ago, when we didn’t get a response, we were forced to make crime go away ourselves.”




Legal grow operations can exist in any Portland neighborhood.

In answer to the police assertion that most of the problem with combating criminal activity is one of a lack of manpower, Brown scoffs.




“It’s always a question of manpower,” he says in an exasperated tone. “Even if there are only two police, they just need to be out there. You don’t need to sit in front of a computer to know when your peak crime hours are. Having gang units working during the day is just a waste to me.” He adds that if he were chief for a day, things would change, but no one is asking him to take the job.




"When they do ask my opinion, I think they just put up with my answers,” he says with a laugh.


The answer, he says, is for citizens to be proactive, vigilant, and involved.


“There is a feeling of complacency,” he says, “like we can’t do anything about it. This is especially true in the black community, where people are conditioned to believe that nothing would be done even if they did report it.”



During the dark days of the 90s, Brown had had enough, and took matters into his own hands. He and a group of other concerned citizens began having weekly meetings at a local church, calling the group Hope and Hard Work. Their goal was to create relationships with each other, and with the government agencies that would be instrumental in ridding their community of the problems that plagued it.


The group developed a Problem Identification Form, which allowed citizens to describe in detail what the exact nature of their specific problem was – whether it was abandoned cars, neighbors whose uncleanliness posed a health problem for the surrounding area, or something more serious, like drugs or gang violence. “We were committed to solving the problems,” Brown recalls. “We would figure out which office was in charge [of the particular problem] and we would follow up with them until the problem was solved.”



He says, in the group’s 16 year history, there were only a few die-hard regular attenders, but that was fine with him.



“It was never my intention for people to come every week. It doesn’t work that way. When they had a problem [they’d come] and when the problem was solved, they’d disappear and that was okay. We just wanted them to know that we were here when they needed us.”



Hope and Hard Work attracted the attention of law enforcement and political figures from Portland and beyond, including an FBI presence at some meetings. According to Brown, former mayor Vera Katz, who had campaigned on a platform that included reducing crime rates, attended about 80% of the meetings.

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They saw our ability to put together an instrument of problem solving,” Brown notes.


In response to police assertion that marijuana use needs to be either all legal or all illegal, Brown says, “The cops always want everything black and white.” Though he himself would gladly see marijuana use completely illegal, he doesn’t see that as a realistic answer.



The finished product, buds ready to smoke. Photo: themadpothead.

"[Medical Marijuana growers] need to understand that they’re bringing [the possibility of] violence onto themselves,” he says, adding that concerned neighbors need to find creative ways to combat that violence, too, since it is difficult for law enforcement to monitor whether or not a grow operation is legal and safe, or if it is attracting the unwanted attention of criminals.

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Brown is a strong advocate for public involvement, for a concerted, community effort to work with police to find viable solutions.
 
“Stuff can get done if there is a will to get it done,” he asserts.

Pot growers are probably not roughnecks,” he says. “There might not be trash around, no noise complaints to make; criminal activity may be hard to prove.” He suggests paying attention to a lot of traffic coming in and out of a house, a lot of quick in-and-out visits. He says documentation of suspicious behavior will go far in helping the police build a case against illegal activity.

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You can’t be the lone voice,” he emphasizes. “Fostering communication between neighbors is key. When you start organizing and realize that others have the same concerns, you’ll get far. Let the pot growers know you’re concerned and you’re watching.”



He also suggests celebrating small victories.

“If you try to solve the whole pot problem, you’ll get nowhere. The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.”

The seemingly gray legal area surrounding marijuana use and possession, coupled with a lack of a system for monitoring compliance, may be cause for alarm for some medical marijuana growers, and perhaps their neighbors who may fear getting caught in the crossfire. The way the law reads now, is there anything more that can be done by law enforcement to offer protection to the growers and their neighbors? Is it feasible to think that it is safe to allow medical marijuana grow operations to take place in private homes? Is it time to make the law black and white, as Detective Santos suggests? While these answers remain up in the air, perhaps the best defense a community can undertake is to do as Richard Brown did, and start working on the beast, one bite at a time.