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Police raid finds tomato growing operation
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by Rory Curtiss, KNDO/KNDU-TV
April 6, 2007
PULLMAN, Wash. -- Guns drawn, police serving a marijuana search warrant at a Pullman apartment found green leafy plant material. It just wasn't the kind they normally find in residences in the college town.
It was tomato plants.
Eight officers entered the apartment where a landlord reported seeing possible drug growing paraphernalia, including a specialized plant growing lamp inside a closet. That gave police probable cause to get a search warrant last weekend.
Pullman Police Commander Chris Tennant says he empathizes with the three startled roommates. However, he says it's the department's duty to investigate all credible complaints of marijuana growing operations.
Archived from original publication
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Commentary by Helen & Harry Highwater:
In America, your home can be raided by police, solely because it's alleged that you possess a heat lamp for growing plants -- an item so common it's sold in virtually all hardware stores, garden shops, at Target stores, etc.
If America is not yet a police state, then Police Commander Chris Tennant, who thinks possession of a heat lamp is "credible" evidence of a crime, will be reprimanded or fired.
If America is not yet a police state, then the judge who issued a search warrant on the basis of a heat lamp allegation will be removed from the bench.
Or, if America is a police state, then this raid was nothing much newsworthy, and this will probably be the last you'll hear of it.
* * *As an addendum, please note, we've reprinted the entire news item, as it originally appeared on the website of KNDO/KNDU, twin TV stations in the Tri-Cities and Yakima, Washington.
The public doesn't get to know the names of the people whose apartment was raided.
We don't get to know the name of the judge who OK'd a search warrant based solely, according to the article, on a landlord's claim that he'd seen "a specialized plant growing lamp inside a closet."
Helen & Harry
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