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Bumbling US cops who raided a medical diagnostics center thinking it was a cannabis farm got a gun stuck to the powerful magnets of an MRI machine, a California lawsuit has alleged.
The owners of the facility are claiming damages against the Los Angeles Police Department for an operation their lawyers describe as “nothing short of a disorganized circus.”
Their lawsuit details how a SWAT team swarmed Noho Diagnostic Center after the squad’s leader persuaded a magistrate to issue a search warrant.
Officer Kenneth Franco drew on his “twelve hours of narcotics training” and discovered the facility was using more electricity than nearby stores, the lawsuit said.
“Officer Franco, therefore, concluded (the facility) was cultivating cannabis, disregarding the fact that it is a diagnostic facility utilizing an MRI machine, X-ray machine and other heavy medical equipment – unlike the surrounding businesses selling flowers, chocolates and children’s merchandise,” the suit said.
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Leader and judge who issued should be fired and disbarred immediately. I feel like something should happen to the rank and file who follow such stupidity too but not sure what.
Yeah, good point. A judge signed a warrant on just ‘this place uses more electricity than others’? The court system’s just a rubber stamp at this stage.
Don’t forget the “distinct odor” lol. That just says to me that the cops lied through their teeth to get the warrant.
“I smelled weed” is the classic cop trick to skirt around probable cause.
It may very well have been true because cancer patients get CT scans but that just goes to show how a smell shouldn’t be justification for a fucking raid.
the ‘odor’ was probably just ‘clean’, and mr copper doesn’t know what ‘clean’ smells like so it just had to be something super illegal.
Nah, they don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. “I smelled weed” has been used for decades to skirt probable cause requirements. Because it’s transient evidence that can’t be saved or replicated, and you can’t prove that they’re lying. You can be 100% clean, but a cop claims he smelled weed and now your car’s interior paneling is getting ripped out on the side of the highway.
The cop lied to get the search approved. No more, no less.
I was so hoping this happened in a city named Keystone.
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Drug dealer turns on MRI, NO YOU FREEZE!
Unfortunately turning on an MRI and building up the magnetic field takes hours
That was a hilarious read. It just kept getting better, like I was reading Yakety Sax.
The summary just says gun, so I assumed hand gun. it was a rifle.
Hahaha that so Mich more amusing. The guy had to keep watch on his rifle stuck on a MRI machine <3
Even worse, he quenched the superconductor instead of waiting! Then took his gun back but forgot a mag on the floor!
That amazing, you can’t fake this level of dumb. The guy panicked and excavated things.
Maybe this could have been avoided if he only had 13 hours of training… 😥
But for real, I hope they pull the money from the pension of everyone involved, and then fire everyone involved for being literally to fucking stupid. So many people had an opportunity to do anything, to use a brain cell, but not a single one did.
Nope. The tax payers will pickup the tab.
Same as it ever was
What the fuck? Anyone mining crypto or running servers at home better watch out before their energy company tips off their local gang and gets them raided.
Go solar.
They also figure it out with FLIR cameras. A grow operation is going to produce a lot of heat.
This sometimes results in other amazing police work. Like going on the local news and showing the millions of dollars of marijuana plants that were seized in a raid. And then someone points out that they’re actually tomato plants.
I love when they quote how many ‘pounds of marijuana’ they got when they are weighing the growing medium, the full plant, seedlings, clones, etc .
Could I theoretically make my home immune to guns by surrounding it with kevlar-coated MRIs
I hope you and anyone in your immediate vicinity don’t value your payment cards or electronic devices.
Who needs credit cards when I’m rich enough to build an above-ground bulletproof bunker powered by supercooled 5-tesla magnets
Payment cards haven’t used the magnetic stripe for ages. At least in Europe. Then again, in Europe I never felt the need of making my home gun proof…
Do they not have the stripe as a fall back? We use chips here too, but I periodically still have to use the stripe when a chip reader fails repeatedly.
I haven’t used one in about 10 years. It used to be chip, now it’s all contactless.
Yeah, it is chip for the most part and some contactless (and some shit holes only do contactless through their phone app), but crappy chip equipment and card issues means I have to use the stripe about every quarter or so.
If you can afford the machines and the associated power usage, yes. Though the magnets inside are what you really want and would be easier to set in place than the whole machine.
If I ever saw a building using more power, my automatic assumption would be a big machine is inside.
If it were ridiculously high, then my next guess would be a crypto mining farm.
Ain’t no way modern LED lamps for growing plants gonna be drawing that much power.
Not to mention any of these fools could have just as easily sent someone inside to check. Or if they really wanted to play coppers so bad, book a fake appointment or even just pretend to be a news agency to ask for a tour.
They didn’t wanna play private investigator, plus there’s extra legal shielding for a cop to be a dumbass than for them to actually know their stuff; it’s also not very likely of them to have a higher level education either sadly. Maybe they attend PragerU or something to pretend intelligence.
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The swat leader had over 12 hours of narcotics training. Pretty much a PhD.
If their DoorDash/UberEats driver had 12 hours of experience, they’d complain and probably get them fired after they give enough low ratings. If they were working based on a public rating system they would already be fired.
Even worse - they knew full-well that it was a medical office by the point this happened. He was just poking around the expensive shit when he lost his gun.
And then he burned probably millions of dollars when he pushed the purge button.
Depends on the scale; modern LEDs just means you can make the farm bigger for the same level of power consumption. There’s also dehumidifiers, which suck a decent amount of power because they’re basically AC units.
Still, I think crypto farm would be my first guess if there’s no obvious other reason for the power usage (which in this case there is, it’s a fucking medical imaging place)
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I can see it now. The first two cops enter the room and are instantly sucked into the MRI machine due to their guns and other metal items. They comically struggle to use their radio on account of being stuck to the machine. They finally manage to get to their radio and call for help. The moment backup arrives, they are sucked into the machine as well. The third cop lands with his crotch precariously close to the face of one of the other cops. More struggling continues. New guy can get to his radio just fine and radios for more backup. The first two try to stop him but to no avail. Again, backup arrives. Again, backup gets sucked into the machine. “Hey guys, I can reach my radio just fine. I’ll call for backup.” Cue the chorus “NOOOOOOOO!”. He stops. They have a debate over how to explain the predicament to the next round of backup they need to call. They bicker a bit, but settle on an extremely nuanced and verbose message. The reply comes out static-y but they rejoice as surely they’ll be saved. Door opens. “You were breaking up. What were you trying to… AHHHHHH!” Sucked into the machine. Curtains close on the cast bickering.
You forgot the bit where they have a gun duel thru the MRI machine where all the bullets get suspended in the field and they still do matrix style moves amd think they are dodging.
07/16/1980
It wasnt great before that either, but I think the element of frustratingly silly was added about then.
Satire and real life have always been very close.
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Or Benny Hill. I can hear Yackety-Sax playing while they run around the place and end up with their gun stuck to the MRI machine.
Harambe 🦍
Real life has always been either Pythonesque or the 3 Stooges. And as far as anyone can tell, is unlikely to ever be fixed.
I feel like all public servants (including cops) ought to have public liability insurance, where money would end up coming from in these situations, which then the employer (police department, other department) needs to pay, the employee is aware of, and is part of their renumeration (i.e. the more their premiums cost, the less they’re making), making idiots more of a financial liability to themselves.
Quite quickly you’re going to have people acting as responsibly as possible if you’re insurance premiums then go up when you act like a moron.
Obviously this would require protections so that people don’t end up being screwed over by insurance premiums, but still, this seems to be an issue in public service all over the world, no consequences because the tax payer just ends up footing the settlement, and the public servant goes on their merry way.
it’s just tax money, that’s all
I doubt the insurance for this would be feasible cost wise. It’s easier to blame the victims. Police is never accountable for their actions. It’s a perk of this job.
They’re already exists a police liability insurance market, NPR’s Planet Money podcast have an episode about it.
Are the cops routinely getting copies of electric bills?
If the city is also the utility provider it’s stupidly easy.
LA does have municipal power.
A lot of that information can be weirdly public. Looking up property records often comes with data about utility bills and taxes, and their payment statuses.
Yes. As well as water bills.
And in my area its common to see drones doing line by line sweeps at night and everyone just seems unnervingly ok with that. What they are doing there is probably looking for the heat from ballasts from light but also the barometric pressure inside of homes and other buildings which can indicate if you’re cooking meth or things like that.
Its all fucked up and a complete over reach but they definitely use any data they can to nail balls to the wall.
Obviously if you live in a suburb its going to be different than if you live in the hood and use 2x more electricity and water than anyone else in the area.
Be nice if they put that much effort into finding missing kids or not letting people like Epstein go free after they get caught the first time. But there is just so much money to be made when you can set up drug dealers and steal all their money and shit.
Magsafe rifle. 😊
I would watch a cop show where they reenact all these dumb cop situations, like the acorn incident, fake fentanyl fainting, etc.
Law and Odor
…need ideas for names
Chups
Law and Oinker
New Boot Goofin.
Law and Order:
Specially Educated Unit
I’ve never really seen Reno 911 other than clips, but this sounds like Reno 911.
It’s all I could think with the acorn situation. Just need a splash of dash-cam pov overview and it’d be straight out of the show.
ah, you’re right, I can’t believe I forgot about that show. 🤦♂️ 👍
