CA police raid medical weed dispensary, eat edibles, destroy cameras [UPDATED]

In May, police in riot gear stormed the Sky High Holistic medical marijuana dispensary in Santa Ana, California.

They ordered customers on the ground, made fun of an amputee ("Did you punch that one-legged old benita?" asks a male officer "I was about to kick her in her fucking nub," replies a female officer.) They dismantle cameras, but not before they were recorded gobbling what appear to be marijuana edibles.

Santa Ana Police Chief Carlos Rojas promised to look into the incident, but expressed reservations after reviewing the video, which had been edited by Matthew Pappas, an attorney representing the dispensary.

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From Voice of OC:

"I don't know if that's [a marijuana] edible. Where did [the officer] get it?" Rojas said. "Is that a protein bar or an edible?"

Rojas requested that Pappas turn over the full, unedited video to police to assist in the investigation.

Pappas says he doesn't know definitively that the officers were eating marijuana edibles because he "can't see the labels," but points to one officer's close scrutiny of the wrapper and other behavior as evidence that they were indeed getting high on the job.

"I believe they are consuming edibles and the behavior exhibited gives every indication that's what they'd be doing," Pappas said.

[UPDATE:] stump-kickerOC Weekly spoke to Marla James, the wheelchair-bound amputee who was in the store at the time of the raid. She's a marijuana activist and was there to monitor the officers' activity during the raid.

James and her husband David told the Weekly that they were present at Sky High because their attorney, Matt Pappas, had learned the collective would be raided from Santa Ana's city attorney, Sonia Carvalho."

"When they came back into the back room when David and I were, they asked us why we were there, and I told them we were there to observe them, the police," James recalled. "And they were really surprised about that." When James told the officers that "Sonia" had told her attorney about the raid, the officers didn't recognize the name. "They had no idea and it made them seem kind of stupid and maybe that's why they got mad."

James struggled to understand why the female officer in the video would make fun of her disability.

"You know what, I was really nice to that woman," James said. "I even complimented her on her hair. I treated that woman with respect and I have no idea why she wanted to kick my stump."