A multi-agency federal task force raided the Covelo property of 68-year-old Joy Greenfield on 7 July 2010, the first collective to apply under Mendocino County’s new cultivation permit ordinance.[1][2] Greenfield had paid the $1,050 application fee in the name of her collective, Light the Way, and her property had passed a preliminary inspection by sheriff’s deputies, whose zip-ties were meant to mark her plants as legal.[1][2] In the days before the raid she had seen a helicopter over her property, and the sheriff told her it belonged to the DEA.[1][2]
Agents entered with guns drawn, tore out the collective’s 99 plants and took Greenfield’s computer and cash while she was away from home.[1][2] Reached by phone during the raid, she told the DEA agent in charge that she was a legal grower under the sheriff’s program, and he answered that he did not care what the sheriff said.[1][2] She returned to find her house in disarray, with soda cans strewn on the floor.[1][2]
Fallout
Her attorney Bob Boyd called the raid a slap in the face of Mendocino’s government, and said neither he nor others believed the sheriff had tipped off the DEA.[1] California NORML director Dale Gieringer called the raid evidence that the DEA was out of control and urged a new federal policy toward state medical marijuana laws.[1] The DEA said little about the raid beyond calling it part of a larger investigation involving other suspects.[1][2]
