LPC Owners Charged

[resinous]

Proprietors of Hayward medical pot club face federal drug charges

Friday, June 1, 2007
Henry K. Lee
SF Chronicle

(06-01) 11:47 PDT HAYWARD -- The owner and manager of a Hayward medical marijuana dispensary were charged in federal court today with using the business as a front to sell pot for profit.

Hayward residents Shon Squier, 34, owner of the Local Patients Cooperative, and Valerie Herschel, 23, its manager, were charged with distribution of marijuana, maintaining drug-involved premises and money laundering.

Squier allegedly used the profit from marijuana sales to buy a Hayward home on Chronicle Avenue in the hills above Cal State East Bay for $532,107 and a Dodge pickup truck for $40,200, authorities said. Herschel allegedly used $85,853 for a down payment on a home on nearby Parkside Drive.

The two, who were arrested Dec. 11, were named today in a document known as an information, which in federal court typically signifies that a defendant intends to plead guilty. Their attorneys were not immediately available to comment today.

Authorities seized indoor growing equipment, hundreds of plants and cookies, brownies and other food that contained marijuana during raids of the dispensary, located at 22612 through 22630 Foothill Blvd.

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 215, which allows the use of marijuana for medical purposes with a doctor's recommendation. Under federal law, possessing marijuana in any form remains illegal.

Local officials recently ordered the dispensary, one of two in Hayward, to close because it had more marijuana on site than the city allowed. In an affidavit, Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Kenny Lee cited a newspaper article to show that police had found 30 pounds of marijuana at the dispensary, 10 times the amount as allowed by the city of Hayward.

Agents staked out the dispensary five times in October and November, and saw healthy-looking men entering and leaving the building each time, carrying bags with the word "prescription" on it. Agents believed that the bags contained marijuana, according to the affidavit.

[Dopey Taylor]

I feel like I'm not a very good activist when the DEA can come in and close
LPC, one of the closer MCDs to my home.

The reason they had 500 patients a day on weekdays and as many as 750 a day on weekends is because they were the best. LPC had a self imposed limit on how much patients could obtain per visit, and they limited visits to 1 per
day. Many times I've seen 3 pounds slip out the door as I was waiting in the
long lines there. We live in the land of bev-mo where stores are free to
have 2 million cases of whiskey on hand for sale and to think 3 pounds is
adequate for the volume of patients that came in as far away as Tracy and
Gilroy isn't the least bit realistic. This is an arbitrary limit imposed
from a city council that didn't take into account the actual area the MCD
was serving. There's no MCDs in Pleasanton, Fremont, Newark, Union City,
Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Mt. View, Palo Alto, Belmont, San Mateo, etc, etc. You
really think 3 pounds covers that area huh?

The reason the city wanted them closed is they were across the street from
the city planners darling project, a16 theater multi-plex they approved to
bring more people into the down town area of Hayward. Since the closure of
LPC I've notice the now unfinished multi-plex has been repeatedly tagged
with graffiti and looks far from pristine. This wouldn't have happened if
LPC was still in business. They had a guard sitting in a chair across the
street from LPC but 10 feet from where the graffiti resides now. They had
guards on the roof and 2 guards in back where you parked. I felt safe there
and that's what the movement is about, safe access. Now that's been taken
away I'm surprised that membership on this list feels no pain for LPC.

750 people a day can't be wrong. They were popular because they were good at what they did. They had houses, they had the yellow hummer, they had a throne in their house, they were wealthy from inheritance long before they opened LPC.

As far as big players taking the heat from the DEA... What? 2 days ago,
Seven Seas was raided and they are one of the smallest in the state. Lpc was
big though, but how does that justify the raid.