National Guard, State Police Descend on 81-Year-Old’s Property to Seize Single Pot Plant
October 6th, 2016Via: Daily Hampshire Gazette:
All that remains of the solitary marijuana plant an 81-year-old grandmother had been growing behind her South Amherst home is a stump and a ragged hole in the ground.
Margaret Holcomb said she was growing the plant as medicine, a way to ease arthritis and glaucoma and help her sleep at night. Tucked away in a raspberry patch and separated by a fence from any neighbors, the plant was nearly ready for harvest when a military-style helicopter and police descended on Sept. 21.
In a joint raid, the Massachusetts National Guard and State Police entered her yard and cut down the solitary plant in what her son, Tim Holcomb, said was a “pretty shocking” action — one that he argues constitutes unlawful surveillance and illegal search and seizure.
“It’s scary as hell,” said Tim Holcomb.
This is disturbing on multiple levels. I’m mostly curious about the technology used to detect the plants. It sounds from the article like there is some sort of device for reading the unique spectrum of light reflected by the plants in question, hence the ability to spot a single plant from the air. Does such a technology exist, or is this something the authorities want us to think? Anybody?
The unique spectrum of light, interesting… I had grown accustomed to thinking about pattern recognition, TSL tracker kind of stuff. A great number of punk cops trying to prove a point, “come up with something”. An old woman, a single plant – overkilling yet non-lethal, so the zombie theme creeps up. Take the shot.