Cops caught on pot raid video argue they deserved privacy after disabling all but one camera
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Police officers in Santa Ana, California, are seeking to quash use of a video taken during their raid of a medical marijuana dispensary taken by a hidden camera they failed to disable.
Lawyers for the officers argue they had a reasonable expectation of privacy after disabling other cameras during their May 26 raid of the Sky High Collective, report the Orange County Register and the Daily Beast. The suit seeks to bar use of the video by internal affairs investigators.
Owners of the pot shop claim the video shows officers, including some who wore masks, breaking through the door, disabling video cameras, making derogatory comments about a woman with an amputated leg, eating marijuana edibles and playing darts.
The undiscovered nanny cam was hidden on a high shelf on the advice of the pot shop’s lawyer.
“All police personnel present had a reasonable expectation that their conversations were no longer being recorded and the undercover officers, feeling that they were safe to do so, removed their masks,” says the suit, filed last week in Orange County superior court. The plaintiffs are three unidentified officers and their union.
The suit also says the video was altered to make the police look bad, and it doesn’t accurately portray what happened.
Police raided the shop for operating without a proper business license.
The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Corey Glave, says it makes no difference that the store had signs warning that the premises had video cameras. Once the officers believed they had taken down the cameras, they were illegally recorded, he said.
“We believe that under California law, if you are being recorded, or eavesdropped on—which is the legal term for it—without your knowledge or consent, that it is illegal,” he told the Daily Beast.
