Read the whole article because it’s hilarious.
At one point, an officer walked into an MRI room, past a sign warning that metal was prohibited inside, with his rifle “dangling… in his right hand, with an unsecured strap,” the lawsuit said.
Honestly this might be a case where his laziness saved his life. If he’d been strapped in properly depending on where that strap goes he could’ve taken a nasty ride. And that would have been priceless to watch.
If that had happened, I’d bet money they would have arrested clinic staff for assaulting an officer or some other bullshit charge. They already do this when police shoot innocent bystanders.
I didnt know they could use the “I smell weed” excuse to raid buildings and stuff now.
Thats just like, the magic words that make all rights disappear, innit?
California has legal weed too.
If that fails, they can just say the MRI machine was the wrong color.
The Illinois Supreme Court recently ruled that smell isn’t enough of a connection to illegal activity. Weed is legalized there, as well. California apparently needs someone to take up a case.
I’m not surprised by the rubber stamped warrant. Cop shops are known to shop for judges that will just stamp off. I’m sure they didn’t mention that it was a MRI business but the odor of weed even combined with high energy usage shouldn’t be enough for a raid IMO. There should be some other evidence, especially in LA where it smells like weed pretty much anywhere.
I’m curious how this will go. I assume LA will settle out of court because they don’t want a precedent set that they actually going to be responsible for private property damage during raids.
I can tell you one thing- the police union won’t be paying.
Good God. What a bunch of morons.
That’s the LAPD for you. Racist meathead morons.
Proof that Magneto would win if you bring guns.
Idk, he might still be mentally scarred from that time someone brought a wooden gun.
I’ve never seen this. Legitimately hilarious!
As if the bus station scene in X-man 1 wasn’t proof enough. Leave it to the police to test trusted truths and make asses of themselves.
This is the dumbest damned thing I’ve read about all month. What the absolute fuck???
Don’t forget – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs
There’s enough to make a list?!
In most metro areas even.
Officers allegedly raided the diagnostic center, located in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, thinking it was a front for an illegal cannabis cultivation facility, pointing to higher-than-usual energy use and the “distinct odor” of cannabis plants, according to the lawsuit.
MRI machine probably draws quite a bit
“Doctors are just a bunch of overeducated assholes who think they are smarter than everyone else. What could they possibly be doing with all that electricity?”
- LAPD probably
“Experts- what do they know? I definitely smelled weed.”
“Do you think it’s the clearly sick looking person in a gown standing outside the building labeled a medical facility with a handrolled cigarette that smells like weed?”
“Nah, that’s just someone who is buying weed from them.”
“Trust me, I’m an expert.”
The real takeaway here is that they bullshitted smelling an odor of cannabis when there was none as an excuse to justify starting the raid in the first place. Some officer(s) lied on a form somewhere.
claiming the odor of pot is, was, and will always be a bullshit lie and manufacturing of probable cause.
Is it even a justification? That’s legal in California.
It is until the court system tells them it isn’t. Illinois recently did that.
Or an employee regularly smokes a joint in the alley. Article says there was one employee in the office during the raid.
Yep. And that would have been legal anyway. This was really about ring-wing zealots being right-wing.
I don’t know if there is any single takeaway here, this story is just fucking ridiculous on every single level.
- They bullshited themselves into a search warrant based on typical cannabis “investigation methods”.
- In a state where recreational cannabis use is legal.
- Persisted in the search even after their main argument for it, high energy usage indicating a grow-op, fell away when it was clear it was indeed a medical facility.
- Made the motherfucking “Gun flies to MRI” TV trope a certified reality. This is a thing that verifiably happened now.
- Instead of getting help, used a sealed (!) emergency shutdown button…
- …which damaged the machine. And released thousands of dollars worth of helium gas.
- Forgot their loaded magazine on the ground.
This can’t be real. I’m fucking dying over here. Please let there be bodycam footage of the cop speaking in a high pitched voice after. (I know the helium was probably not released into the room, but one can hope I guess)
Made the motherfucking “Gun flies to MRI” TV trope a certified reality. This is a thing that verifiably happened now.
All those writers and directors who were laughed at and mocked have now been vindicated.
5 . Instead of getting help, used a sealed (!) emergency shutdown button…
The sealed shutdown was definitely behind glass which the cop smashed with the nearest object just like in every movie
Cut off the motherfucker’s nose, let’s all recognize potsmeller when he’s walking down the street.
Argh, the fucking police being powertripping cunts really gets me going.
Didn’t they recently rule that cops can no longer use the “I smelled weed” excuse as reasonable suspicion/probable cause? Maybe that was just one state.
Seems doubly ridiculous that this happened in California
That was Illinois but honestly it’s just obvious in any state with a recreational/medicinal use law.
It’s ridiculous they’re allowed to keep using it as an excuse in general.
And if it did smell like weed near the MRI place, you know what I’d suspect? That’s a venn diagram with cancer patients in the middle.
You really want to crack down on cancer patients?
I’m sorry, you’ve been disqualified from any chance of employment as a police officer. You’ve shown entirely too much critical thinking here.
The answer has always been yes.
Look, WA was one of the first states to legalize, just weeks after CO. There was a police officer in Seattle who had to be reassigned because he kept writing tickets to people with weed even though it was legal. The point? Right-wing nuts are antisocial.
Arizona was sending people to prison even though they had the medical marijuana card on them. It took the State Supreme Court to tell them they couldn’t just redefine words to say the new law didn’t count for edibles and vapes.
You are using critical thinking. Please stop.
i think that was illinois during traffic stops
It has personally saved my ass 👍
MRI machine probably draws quite a bit
Not after dumbass broke it.
it most certainly drew a lot of energy while the gun was inside of it lol
Holy shit, they pulled the emergency release on one of those MRI machines. I think that adds a zero or two to the cost of bringing back online.
Yeah, quenching the machine makes bringing it back online $200k+ depending on the system
I’m just an XRay tech. But I would expect at least one whole day, for a pair of engineers to get it running again and re-certified. $20-50K for their time, plus missed revenue from the lost day. Best case could total $100K easy. Way more, if the damage is more than cosmetic.
You’re not counting the materials costs. I doubt that medical grade helium is cheap.
True. I don’t know how much that is. But liquid helium shouldn’t be “medical grade” really. It’s just a coolant for the superconducting magnets, same as any industrial use.
I presume that it has to be certified and probably heavily filtered. It’s not going to be the same as what goes into party balloons.
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It isn’t, but as Thetimefarm above says, the paper trail is what matters. Medical grade liquid helium for MRI machines is a thing. That paper trail is what adds a few zeros to the cost.
As a side note, this is similar to why Fluke multimeters are so expensive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay9wFQAW19Y
tl;dw: companies have reams of documents for their certification procedures of equipment, and calibration of the equipment to certify the equipment, and they’re based around the specifics of Fluke mutimeters. They aren’t more accurate or even much fancier than a nice hobbyist meter. Those companies must buy Fluke or completely redo all their procedures with accompanying documentation and certifying by professional engineers. If you’re not such a company, don’t bother spending all that extra money on Fluke.
Amazingly people hate this concept, and it’s strange. We all got downvoted for pointing this out.
Medical grade or grade-4.0 is less pure than research grade or grade-6. That’s 99% vs 99.9999%.
Medical grade might be used for inhalation by patients and traces of other air is perfectly acceptable. MRI cryocoolers need more purity to keep the magnet cold.
https://www.westairgases.com/blog/exploring-the-most-essential-and-underappreciated-uses-for-helium
Liquid helium is -269 °C. There is no risk of confusing it with what’s in balloons.
And its a medical setting which means that the products you use will be certified and calibrated in just the right way.
“Medical grade” is less pure than what MRIs (research grade).
Medical grade or grade-4.0 is 99% pure and is meant for inhalation. “Research grade” or grade-6 is 99.9999% pure.
https://www.westairgases.com/blog/exploring-the-most-essential-and-underappreciated-uses-for-helium
In my experience the only thing that makes a material professional grade is a paper trail. If something goes wrong and you get sued you want to be able to absolutely prove you didn’t cheap out on any of the materials. It adds a lot of cost to keep batches separate and making sure none of the paperwork gets mixed up. Especially if multiple companies are involved in creating and distributing the material. I work in an ISO compliant shop and we have a lot of folders moving around with different orders, it can be a nightmare keeping everything straight when things are busy.
Yeah, I think I remember something like 10-20k to refill the cooling on an MRI, and that is just topping it off as some is slowly lost. The helium is just used to cool it. Helium is helium, so no such thing as medical vs not. The cost to repair this thing is going to be absurd. They are making better machines now have little to no loss, but I don’t think those are super prevalent yet.
More than a day. Ramping can take multiple days, then it has to be conpletely recalibrated and shimmed.
Probably need a new magnet, quenching can melt those puppies. Lot of energy stored in that field.
Yeah, that liquid helium and the MRI down time are super expensive
even if it was quenched the right way: downtime, helium, restarting the entire thing would also cost pretty penny, and maybe replacement of damaged magnet too if that’s what they did
Not saying drugs haven’t ruined lives, but the war on drugs has ruined far more.
Alcohol has ruined far more lives than the drugs the “war” is based on.
Tobacco as well.
True. But at least we get the occasional comedy out of it.
Like the DARE program!
Everyone who grew up with that was finally exposed to a drug setting–a party, some acquaintance, something. They watched these people do the drug and maybe participated out of curiosity and suddenly realized that the whole DARE thing was just a bunch of propaganda that had nothing to do with reality.
I think pretty much every kid I knew who went through D.A.R.E. in middle school (including me) ended up smoking a lot of weed in high school.
D.A.R.E. shirts were a status symbol, but not for the reason they would have liked.
Even D.A.R.E. knew it wasn’t actually effective, but they had sold it to enough lawmakers to get it written into education requirements and the steady stream of money meant they defended it until the end.
The sheriff and head of our county DARE program awarded me an award for the best anti-drug essay when I was 10. He committed suicide after getting busted on drug and corruptions charges years later. I’ve been smoking weed pretty regularly since I was 17 and using psychedelics yearly since I was 20
It’s nice that this time, we can just laugh at it. It’s not like all the other times where they beat up a black guy and shot his dog for allegedly counterfeiting a twenty.
The icing on the donut:
The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit.
Literally just a legally-sanctioned gang at this point.
A gang would get rid of anyone that incompetent.
True. It’s like if a street gang had really good PR and a super corrupt “union” to run cover for them.
At all points. It was a gang that
started wearingwas given badges, not a ‘serve and protect’ force that (d)evolved into a gang.Well I can only speak for where I grew up (not CA) in the 90s, and police were far less militarized back then.
They may have always been racist pieces of shit, but things are definitely much worse than they were back then.
Oh, that’s def true, headlines about military equipment being bought by normal USA police departments keep popping up.
The militarisation def doesn’t help with the problem.
But I was referring more to the start, the colonial and early independent era, what existing groups were recruited/rebranded into the first police departments.
“The only thing that stops a bad MRI with a gun is a good MRI with a gun.”
Wow that’s like a circus lmao
Why did he leave the magazine though? What if he would have encountered some pet dogs later that day?
An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit.
