Posted on 10/10/2002 1:43:12 PM PDT by MrLeRoy
After mistaking a backyard patch of okra for homegrown marijuana, the La Porte Police Department has found itself in the middle of an internal affairs investigation into whether an officer stole personal property during the mistaken drug raid.
The officers on Aug. 14 served a warrant at the home of 88-year-old Irene Gilliam Hensley, in the 200 block of North Nugent Street. Officers believed her grandson, Charles Gilliam, who also lives there, was growing pot in a backyard shed and garden.
The department received a warrant after an officer -- following a tip from a family member of Gilliam's -- said he saw marijuana plants growing in the backyard after he peeked over Hensley's fence.
While the officers seized a pipe, catalogs and High Times magazines, they found no marijuana. The plants the officer identified in the backyard turned out to be okra in Hensley's garden.
[...]
Hensley said the whole situation would not have happened had her family not been feuding. It was Gilliam's 15-year-old cousin, Clinton Ryan Tully, who stated for the search warrant that Gilliam may be growing marijuana in a backyard shed.
Just days before the arrest, Gilliam and his aunt, Peggy Tellez, had been arguing. Tellez is Tully's grandmother.
While she alleges he threatened her and told her "to watch her back," Gilliam alleges she told him she would "find a way to get him out of the house."
"I did not tip the police department off (about the marijuana), but he threatened me," she said of the incident at Hensley's house a few days before the arrest.
Gilliam thinks Tellez and Tully cooked up the story about the marijuana to get him out of his grandmother's house.
The warrant specifically stated the officers seeking the warrant had experience identifying marijuana plants.
Reff said he was not embarrassed about the snafu his officers made when misidentifying the plants.
"I wouldn't say it's embarrassing, but I was surprised," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
ANSWER: To someone else.
No, that would be fried.
You mean okry, I am sure.
Or with black eyed peas.
ol' hoghead
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Heck, care, Texans can't even say, "okr..A"!
Probably puffed on the tomato plants but didn't inhale.
Let 'em start early in the morning when the dew is still on those extra leafy plants and work right through the noon day sun!
They'd run if they even saw another okry plant!
Me neither. Couldn't keep it lit.
"I'm so hungry I could eat Okra!" Unknown Texan as the seige of Goliad.
:)
You go into drug enforcement if you're too stupid to do anything worthwhile.
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