"This will likely be the case that not only decriminalizes pot, but may even make it into a legal substance. Her son will be used as a martyr for the drug legalization crowd. how sad."
Yep, while I favour legalization, I don't think using this as an argument for it is right. To start with, as I've said, this was not a major organized-crime run grow-op. And the pot plants were not the main reason for this raid.
In any case, even if we legalized pot in this country, we would still need to up penalties for illegal grow ops in this country to be at least as harsh as those in the US, so as to discourage those who would grow it here to smuggle into the US, or the problem will not go away.
I don't think the pot plants were the reason for the raid at all. Two of the officers apparently went out there over a dispute about a vehicle that this guy bought but wouldn't pay for because of some problem with it the dealership wouldn't fix. When the police got there the suspect wasn't there but they noticed a bunch of stolen car parts and realized he was running a chop shop. The other two officers were from some sort of car theft task force or something coming to investigate the chop shop. The suspect snuck back on the property without their knowledge and killed all four of them. I think he killed the first two right before the other two got there. This killing spree would have happened whether or not he had a few pot plants growing in his quonset hut or not.