Read the whole article because it’s hilarious.
The judge that signed the warrant needs to be removed from the bench as completely incompetent. A simple inquiry into the type of business would have resolved the power consumption issues and belie the weed smell as the lie it was.
Some days I feel like the only thing I can do to make a difference is become a cop and do nothing but arrest wealthy people and state that their property was used in the furtherance of a crime. Just start doing asset forfeiture against everyone and anything that currently believes themselves insulated.
Hell, become a cop and use asset forfeiture on the police station because we have public record of the crimes they’ve perpetrated.
This officer likely faces more punishment for damage to his rifle than the damage caused by the raid.
Wow that’s like a circus lmao
I’m not surprised by the rubber stamped warrant. Cop shops are known to shop for judges that will just stamp off. I’m sure they didn’t mention that it was a MRI business but the odor of weed even combined with high energy usage shouldn’t be enough for a raid IMO. There should be some other evidence, especially in LA where it smells like weed pretty much anywhere.
I’m curious how this will go. I assume LA will settle out of court because they don’t want a precedent set that they actually going to be responsible for private property damage during raids.
I can tell you one thing- the police union won’t be paying.
Hey, y’all need to chill out. The cops have qualified immunity because they are better trained and educated than the average civilian. Y’all think this was a medical imaging center!? You don’t know that! They could have been growing dangerous Marijuana that immigrated here illegally from Mexico to eat the dogs and cats!
Thank God our boys in blue took the time to clear this potentially dangerous building of any possible threats! That MRI machine nearly got one of them until they disarmed and detained it!
Just another dangerous day on the job!
They were absolutely trying to bust an MRI center, but were disappointed and confused when it didn’t mean Marijuana Resonance Imaging
Do you know how racist you’re being right now?
It’s the Haitians who eat the dogs and cats. The Mexicans take all of our jobs.
Get it right. Jeez.
Holy shit, they pulled the emergency release on one of those MRI machines. I think that adds a zero or two to the cost of bringing back online.
Yeah, quenching the machine makes bringing it back online $200k+ depending on the system
even if it was quenched the right way: downtime, helium, restarting the entire thing would also cost pretty penny, and maybe replacement of damaged magnet too if that’s what they did
An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit.
The shutdown did have to happen (because the cop is a dumbass) but it obviously should have been done by someone who knows what they are doing. The guy should be suspended for being a dumbass and also for leaving his loaded magazine.
To give some background on this, the huge magnetic field in an MRI machine is created by a superconducting magnet. A magnetic coil submerged in liquid helium that keeps it ultra cold has virtually no resistance, so the electricity can keep going round and round and round like a racetrack without being bled off by resistance. This lets the machine maintain a very high magnetic field with very little power input.
An MRI technician can gradually ramp up or down the magnetic field power by slowly adding or removing current from the magnet. To retrieve the officer’s rifle, they could have slowly ramped down the power with a magnetic power supply while the magnet stayed cold.
When the guy slams the emergency button that does what’s called a quench. It adds resistance to the magnet, which starts turning that power into heat, and that heat boils off all the liquid helium and rapidly ramps the magnet down to zero. This should only be done if for example a patient is trapped in the machine by a metal object or similar emergency, because it damages the magnetic coil and also boils away the liquid helium, which itself is worth thousands of dollars.
LAPD (or more specifically, the California taxpayers) are in for a pricey repair bill.
“Should” be in for a pricy repair bill.
Unfortunately there’s a lot of precedent, up to and including loss of life, where the police “cannot be held accountable because it might impact their ability to do their duty in the future.”
An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process.
Everything was fine until dickless here shut off the containment grid.
Is that true?
I remember the first time they showed Ghostbusters on network TV. They dubbed ‘nose’ over ‘dick’ in that line…
Yippie-kai-yay, Mister Falcon!
LOL, even “brain” would have worked better.
😂
The mechanism they are describing here is the emergency one (like if a human is trapped against the machine by something metal and is being crushed - you need to kill the magnet NOW). There is a slower, much safer mechanism for deactivating the magnet that should have been used here but that would require the officer admitting he had made a mistake and asking for help.
Also I just want to point out that the rifle should be considered no longer safe to use unless thoroughly inspected by an expert. In a similar case some years back, the police officer’s sidearm was pulled into the machine. After retrieval it was found that the weapon had been magnetized by the scanner and as a result the firing pin was able to spontaneously release.
Also I just want to point out that the rifle should be considered no longer safe to use unless thoroughly inspected by an expert. In a similar case some years back, the police officer’s sidearm was pulled into the machine. After retrieval it was found that the weapon had been magnetized by the scanner and as a result the firing pin was able to spontaneously release.
Something tells me he won’t know that.
Hey, fingers crossed the dude’s weapon goes off somewhere in their ammo storage area, taking out as many of these chucklefucks as possible.
well i mean to be fair, if a rifle is ripped out of your hands, and into an MRI machine (which is going to be very loud) and you have no idea on how dangerous/bad for the machine it is. You’re going to hit the (probably) very big and very red button marked “E-STOP”
in fact the operator probably doesn’t even care about this, they probably only care about the raid itself lmao. The damage is just a function of the raid.
The machine is only loud when it is actively scanning a patient which it doesn’t seem like was happening in this case. Otherwise it’s relatively silent. Also the big button is (in my experience at multiple hospitals) always in a different room behind a box that you have to open. My point being this wasn’t some knee jerk reflex where he had the gun pulled out of his hands and he slapped the button. He physically had to leave the room and find the button to do this.
The machine is only loud when it is actively scanning a patient which it doesn’t seem like was happening in this case. Otherwise it’s relatively silent.
yeah well i’m assuming that if the gun was “sucked into the machine” from the hands of the police officer, that it would have probably been relatively violent. Generally magnets aren’t very polite.
Also the big button is (in my experience at multiple hospitals) always in a different room behind a box that you have to open.
yeah i would have to know the floor layout of the specific place in order to make that judgement tbh. That was just my first insight on that one though. There’s a non zero chance he saw it walking in, police are generally pretty observant, and these buttons aren’t exactly well hidden either to my knowledge so.
He probably shit his pants at the deafening sound of an MRI machine being quenched, and had to leave quickly to change them.
Yeah, I can imagine someone thinking it’s entirely electrical shitting their pants too a sound of Smaug roaring.
MRIs are entirely electrical right? They just use liquid helium for cooling im pretty sure.
Obviously there are a bunch of mechanical parts as well, that goes without saying i think though. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference between mechanical logic and solid state logic anyway.
Yes, you are right, but I meant the safety shutoff mechanism. Normally it just cuts the power to all dangerous stuff or brings it to a safe state. Here it’s not “cutting the power to the magnet”, it’s physically releasing the helium and damaging the superconductor in the process.
You don’t have to quench a magnet if it isn’t an emergency, field engineera can ramp it down slowly. Jfc what a moron.
you mean to tell me someone who isn’t an MRI tech doesn’t know how to operate an MRI?
That’s weird.
He already got suspended. His weapon was suspended there, on this outside of the MRI machine.
Suspended?
With pay of course.
Then a medal for bravery against a magnet.
Later a promotion after his buddies clear him of all wrong doing.
Not saying drugs haven’t ruined lives, but the war on drugs has ruined far more.
True. But at least we get the occasional comedy out of it.
Like the DARE program!
I think pretty much every kid I knew who went through D.A.R.E. in middle school (including me) ended up smoking a lot of weed in high school.
D.A.R.E. shirts were a status symbol, but not for the reason they would have liked.
Everyone who grew up with that was finally exposed to a drug setting–a party, some acquaintance, something. They watched these people do the drug and maybe participated out of curiosity and suddenly realized that the whole DARE thing was just a bunch of propaganda that had nothing to do with reality.
Alcohol has ruined far more lives than the drugs the “war” is based on.
Tobacco as well.
Officers allegedly raided the diagnostic center, located in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, thinking it was a front for an illegal cannabis cultivation facility, pointing to higher-than-usual energy use and the “distinct odor” of cannabis plants, according to the lawsuit.
MRI machine probably draws quite a bit
The real takeaway here is that they bullshitted smelling an odor of cannabis when there was none as an excuse to justify starting the raid in the first place. Some officer(s) lied on a form somewhere.
I don’t know if there is any single takeaway here, this story is just fucking ridiculous on every single level.
- They bullshited themselves into a search warrant based on typical cannabis “investigation methods”.
- In a state where recreational cannabis use is legal.
- Persisted in the search even after their main argument for it, high energy usage indicating a grow-op, fell away when it was clear it was indeed a medical facility.
- Made the motherfucking “Gun flies to MRI” TV trope a certified reality. This is a thing that verifiably happened now.
- Instead of getting help, used a sealed (!) emergency shutdown button…
- …which damaged the machine. And released thousands of dollars worth of helium gas.
- Forgot their loaded magazine on the ground.
This can’t be real. I’m fucking dying over here. Please let there be bodycam footage of the cop speaking in a high pitched voice after. (I know the helium was probably not released into the room, but one can hope I guess)
Made the motherfucking “Gun flies to MRI” TV trope a certified reality. This is a thing that verifiably happened now.
All those writers and directors who were laughed at and mocked have now been vindicated.
5 . Instead of getting help, used a sealed (!) emergency shutdown button…
The sealed shutdown was definitely behind glass which the cop smashed with the nearest object just like in every movie
claiming the odor of pot is, was, and will always be a bullshit lie and manufacturing of probable cause.
Is it even a justification? That’s legal in California.
Or an employee regularly smokes a joint in the alley. Article says there was one employee in the office during the raid.
Yep. And that would have been legal anyway. This was really about ring-wing zealots being right-wing.
Cut off the motherfucker’s nose, let’s all recognize potsmeller when he’s walking down the street.
Argh, the fucking police being powertripping cunts really gets me going.
“Doctors are just a bunch of overeducated assholes who think they are smarter than everyone else. What could they possibly be doing with all that electricity?”
- LAPD probably
“Experts- what do they know? I definitely smelled weed.”
“Do you think it’s the clearly sick looking person in a gown standing outside the building labeled a medical facility with a handrolled cigarette that smells like weed?”
“Nah, that’s just someone who is buying weed from them.”
“Trust me, I’m an expert.”
MRI machine probably draws quite a bit
Not after dumbass broke it.
it most certainly drew a lot of energy while the gun was inside of it lol
At one point, an officer walked into an MRI room, past a sign warning that metal was prohibited inside, with his rifle “dangling… in his right hand, with an unsecured strap,” the lawsuit said.
Honestly this might be a case where his laziness saved his life. If he’d been strapped in properly depending on where that strap goes he could’ve taken a nasty ride. And that would have been priceless to watch.
If that had happened, I’d bet money they would have arrested clinic staff for assaulting an officer or some other bullshit charge. They already do this when police shoot innocent bystanders.
I didnt know they could use the “I smell weed” excuse to raid buildings and stuff now.
Thats just like, the magic words that make all rights disappear, innit?
California has legal weed too.
The icing on the donut:
The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit.
All this to find some weed. Like why even bother?
Because if they find any cash they will take it, even if there are no drugs!
So very true.
- “Look out, it’s got a gun!!”
[police open fire for 5 minutes]I forgot that the cop resigned. Good.
An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit.
