Santa Cruz sheriff’s deputies stormed a Monterey County pot grow. Why?

On Oct. 12, 2016, Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputies served a search warrant on the Soquel home of Andy D’amico, a San Jose firefighter and cannabis grower who sells his product to dispensaries. D’amico is also a co-founder of Day Dreamers Chocolates, an award-winning maker of cannabis-infused edibles.

At D’amico’s home, the deputies found about what you’d expect to find for a guy in that line of work: about 80 plants in full flower (as the search warrant put it, “they appeared well cared for, green, vibrant and healthy),” as well as marketing material for Day Dreamers. The deputies found cash, they found receipts for places like Home Depot and Santa Cruz Hydroponics and Randazzo Enterprises, a Castroville-based demolition contractor; they found business cards and invoices; and they found D’amico’s cell phone. He gave them his security code to access the device, and they pored over his contacts and texts.

What they didn’t find is more telling. The search warrant claimed deputies had probable cause to believe D’amico was committing a felony; they didn’t find evidence that D’amico had committed any crime. He was never arrested or charged.

But they did find correspondence with the Monterey County Resource Management Agency and a lease agreement for ag property and greenhouses in Monterey County, which in turn led them to get another search warrant, signed by a Santa Cruz County judge. and a raid on a property on Fuji Lane in an agricultural area just outside Salinas.

The now-infamous incident has become something of a spook story Monterey County cannabis growers tell each other. And it’s made some reconsider how they operate, and if they should operate at all.

That weed is being grown in greenhouses on Fuji Lane is maybe the worst-kept secret in town. Like most of the greenhouses that have been converted from growing plants and flowers to, err, growing different plants and flowers, they are secured by high-privacy perimeter fencing. If the fences didn’t give it away, the smell would: Drive by and it’s apparent what’s growing inside.

So with a second search warrant in hand, Santa Cruz deputies converged on the Fuji Lane property. Once inside, they dismantled the security cameras (standard procedure, I’m told – if suspects are monitoring the video, it gives them less time to arm themselves or destroy evidence) and got to work seizing live plants and marijuana drying in an outbuilding.

In all, about 2,000 pounds of marijuana worth about $4 million was confiscated.

As the deputies worked, lawyers began to show up – that’s lawyers with an s, because D’amico wasn’t the only grower working in that greenhouse. D’amico’s attorney, Ben Rice, convinced the deputies to leave the product onsite with the promise his client wouldn’t touch or remove it from the premises.

Then they waited. October passed, November passed, then December. In January, Rice filed a motion demanding the return of his client’s property, and a judge agreed. In the end, the Santa Cruz County District Attorney declined to prosecute; deputies apparently offered the case to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office, which had no interest in getting involved.

If D’amico did anything wrong, it’s a land-use violation; he thought he had an exemption to grow under current county rules, but he didn’t. But that’s nothing that should have drawn the attention of law enforcement.

So why did it? One source tells me a former Santa Cruz deputy left law enforcement to go into the cannabis-growing business, he contacted D’amico about buying clones from him (though no deal ever went through) and his former colleagues are pissed. Two others muse that the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors has turned conservative. Another source who grows cannabis in Monterey County tells me it has growers wondering if they’re next on some law enforcement organization’s warrant list.

“It really concerns me. Those of us growing indoors want to comply and do the right things,” he says. “All it would take is a single patrol car to drive around and see the lights on and the steam power going on in all of these older greenhouses” to find the indoor grows.

MARY DUAN writes The Local Spin for the Weekly. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com