Police Attempt To Link L.A. Dispensary Killings To Cartels
Joe | Jun 28, 2010 | Comments 0
The Los Angeles County Sheriffs, in a basic admission that they have no leads or suspects in the recent Los Angeles dispensary worker killings, tried to link them to the Mexican drug cartels.
But the Los Angeles County sheriff, Lee Baca, sought to link them to violent drug gangs.
Sherrif Baca, who was attending a news conference to oppose an initiative on the November ballot seeking the legalisation of marijuana, said: ”It’s one thing to go in and put a gun in the face of a person who’s running a commercial establishment and ask him for the money. It’s a totally different thing assassinating the person that you’re robbing. That, to me, is very cartel-ish in its style.”
Of course the sheriff is trying to imply that medical marijuana dispensaries are a magnet for crime; in this case, very violent crime. But let’s look at this for a moment. No money or medicine appeared to be taken in the Hollywood Holisitic “robbery,” knocking down one of the main pillars of the anti-legalization movement; namely that all that weed and money just laying around invites robbery and crime. Besides, what would a Mexican drug cartel need with the money they could get from a dispensary? These gangs are making money hand-over-fist, and have no need for a few thousand dollars.
Assuming cartels are responsible for these tragedies, there is a more basic reason, one that lives in the realm of common sense. The cartels are taking on the competition.
Think about it; the dispensaries, with their legality and openness, are cutting into cartel profits. This is one of the main arguments for legalization, that it will harm the cartels, giving them less money to buy guns with which to kill innocent people. Of course the police don’t see it this way. They would rather you think that the dispensaries had it coming for selling the evil weed.
But if the cartels did these crimes, what is a more plausible reason? Robbery, or sending a message to the dispensaries to get off their turf?
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