Vallejo police raided the home, business and associated properties of Matt Shotwell, the operator and founder of the Greenwell Cooperative dispensary at 616 Marin Street, on 21 February 2012, in a joint operation with federal, state and local agents that opened the department’s 2012 crackdown on the city’s dispensaries.[1] Shotwell faced three counts over transporting, distributing or possessing narcotics, two counts of marijuana cultivation, and one count each of possessing marijuana for sale and maintaining a site for distribution.[1] Officers seized hundreds of marijuana plants, $8,700 in cash, his registered handgun, computers, paraphernalia and edible products from Greenwell, which served about 9,000 clients before the investigation shut it down.[1]
On 21 March 2013 a Solano County judge dismissed the year-old charges after the deputy district attorney said the state could not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, to applause from Shotwell’s supporters.[1] No operator had been convicted since the raids that began with Shotwell’s arrest, and cases against all six raided dispensaries were dismissed.[1][2] A judge separately ruled that the February 2012 raids on other Vallejo dispensaries were unlawful, forcing police to return more than $200,000 worth of marijuana to two collectives.[2]
