Snitch System Experiencing Growing Pains
If you have no scruples and an itch to put the screws to an enemy, here’s a dangerously easy way to do it.
Pick up the telephone and dial 1-800-388-GROW. Make up a story that so-and-so is growing pot.
You don’t have to identify yourself. No calls to Washington’s Marijuana Hotline are traced.
Anonymity is the hotline’s strength, but also its biggest flaw.
Lies and legitimate tips are treated the same. The name of a wrongfully accused suspect goes in a police file. Suspicious cops may show up at his door, asking embarrassing questions and wanting to “come in and have a look around.”
Spokane’s Neil Hansen says that’s exactly what happened to him, and he’s breathing more fire than the jet dragster he races.
“This was harassment, plain and simple,” says Neil, 38, a long-haul truck driver whose trophy-winning race car will do 250 mph in about six seconds. “These cops intimidated my wife so they could search my house without a warrant.”
Hansen was on the road Dec. 2 when three undercover officers came calling at his East Central home.
The men were members of the Spokane Regional Drug Task Force. They told Hansen’s wife, Donna, they were acting on a hotline tip. Someone reported Neil as armed and dangerous and growing 50-60 marijuana plants in his basement.
The officers had no warrant. Donna could have sent them packing. She says she let them in because she was cowed by their authority and unexpected presence.
“My first husband was killed in a car accident,” she says. “Officers came to the door and told me. So when these men came to the door I got tight in my chest.”
Here’s what this big fishing expedition uncovered: Nothing. No pot. No guns. Nothing.
Had the officers first done a little homework, says Neil, they would have concluded the information was at best dubious.
He has no criminal record. Nor have there been any suspicious spikes in the Hansens’ electrical bill, often an indicator of a grow operation. His job requires him to be randomly tested for drugs.
Neil has an idea who might have played such a nasty trick on him, but he’s keeping quiet for now.
Sgt. Jeff Sale of the Drug Task Force won’t comment on the incident. The Hansens lodged a complaint, he says, and it is being investigated.
The hotline is a federally funded marijuana eradication program administered by the State Patrol in Olympia. Advertised in places like city buses, informants are offered rewards for nailing pot growers.
Those who call are given ID numbers. The information is filtered to police agencies who have jurisdiction. Cash rewards are paid for convictions through a bank.
“If you forget your code number, you’re dead,” says WSP Sgt. Al Riehl, who manages the program.
The hotline gets results. It received 388 tips last year and paid out about $40,000 in rewards. According to Riehl, the program enjoys about a 40 percent success rate.
It’s unknown, however, how many tips are mean-spirited fabrications. Riehl doesn’t seem bothered that bad information is passed along now and then. If you have nothing to hide, what’s the big deal?
Plenty. I doubt Riehl would enjoy being under suspicion. Or having cops snooping in his home for a pot farm.
Neil could lose it all if he gets involved with drugs. He could lose his truck driving and racing licenses. He could lose the sponsorships for his dragster. He’d sure have to peel the DARE sticker off his car.
“I’ve known Neil forever. I’ve been in his basement dozens of times,” says his boss, Bob Porter. “He’d be unemployed if I saw any marijuana plants.”
Donna says the officers who visited her weren’t rude, but they sure didn’t apologize when they left empty-handed.
She is steamed and who can blame her?
“I don’t want anybody growing dope in my area. I don’t want drugs in my neighborhood,” she says. “But police need to do a better job of investigating and have a warrant before they show up at my door.”
, DataTimes