Apparently at least three of the Santa Ana cops caught on video eating pot edibles, throwing darts and complaining about feeling “light-headed” after a raid on an illegal marijuana dispensary two months ago are still high.
The trio of officers, who are asserting their right under the Peace Officer Bill of Rights to remain anonymous, have filed suit against Police Chief Carlos Rojas and Santa Ana's internal affairs division. Their lawsuit seeks to prohibit the department from using footage of the officers during the raid that was recorded by security cameras and first made public by the both the Weekly and Voice of OC on June 11.
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As anyone who has seen the tape already knows, before the cops presumably got the munchies, they took care to destroy every security camera they could find. However, the collective had a backup surveillance system in place that recorded the entire raid minute by hilarious minute.
After both the Weekly and the Voice of OC obtained the footage from the collective's lawyer, Matthew Pappas, and posted clips of the cops eating marijuana edibles, insulting a paraplegic, and boasting about bye-gone days of drinking and driving with the judge who signed the search warrant, online for all to see, the footage went viral, landing on news websites as far away as New York City and London, England. (Among the newspapers that ran stories on the pot-candy scandal was the Orange County Register, which first reported on the new cop lawsuit yesterday).
According to the lawsuit's rather befuddled logic, because the officers were videotaped without their prior consent, it would be unfair for the videotape to be used against them in any criminal or disciplinary proceeding. “It's pretty goofy that they would be doing this,” Pappas said. “It makes them look really bad. This is like bank robbers going to a bank, painting over the cameras, missing one and then complaining that they can't be prosecuted because they have a right to privacy and they thad painted over all the cameras. It's a loony argument.”
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Email: ns****@oc******.com. Twitter: @NickSchou. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).