The County Sheriff’s Office will be asking the state for $275,000 to help it crack down on local marijuana growers and traffickers. The money would allow the Sheriff’s Department to add an officer to its narcotics team and cover the cost of a part-time prosecutor. Sheriff Phil Wowak added that the funding is especially crucial this year because of county budget cuts, which prevented him from hiring 20 new deputies.
The County Sheriff’s Office will be asking the state for $275,000 to help it crack down on local marijuana growers and traffickers. The money would allow the Sheriff’s Department to add an officer to its narcotics team and cover the cost of a part-time prosecutor. Sheriff Phil Wowak added that the funding is especially crucial this year because of county budget cuts, which prevented him from hiring 20 new deputies.
The request for funding was not without opposition. Supervisors John Leopold and Neal Coonerty attempted to block the grant application, saying that the county had far more urgent needs to deal with, including trafficking in more serious drugs. Coonerty argued that the marijuana problem would best be resolved by legalization. Wowak responded that police efforts are not focused on legitimate growers of marijuana for medical use, but rather on people who use public lands to grow the crop, which causes environmental damage, and on people growing the crop commercially under the façade of complying with medical marijuana laws. Read more at the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
