Bumbling US cops who raided a medical diagnostics center thinking it was a cannabis farm got a gun stuck to the powerful magnets of an MRI machine, a California lawsuit has alleged.
The owners of the facility are claiming damages against the Los Angeles Police Department for an operation their lawyers describe as “nothing short of a disorganized circus.”
Their lawsuit details how a SWAT team swarmed Noho Diagnostic Center after the squad’s leader persuaded a magistrate to issue a search warrant.
Officer Kenneth Franco drew on his “twelve hours of narcotics training” and discovered the facility was using more electricity than nearby stores, the lawsuit said.
“Officer Franco, therefore, concluded (the facility) was cultivating cannabis, disregarding the fact that it is a diagnostic facility utilizing an MRI machine, X-ray machine and other heavy medical equipment – unlike the surrounding businesses selling flowers, chocolates and children’s merchandise,” the suit said.
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Raided based on nothing more than power usage. Ignored warning in place around the MRI to prevent an accident. Cops gun gets pulled out of his hands and he pull the emergency shutdown button. Now it will cost a couple of hundred thousand to get the MRI going again. Somehow the cops will blame someone else.
Also, they left behind a loaded magazine on the floor 🤣
Even Barney Fife is amazed at how terrible of a cop that dude is.
And if they do pay damages it comes out of your tax dollars. Great system all round.
AI RoboCop wants all the power for itself.
Another article said it was the office’s high power consumption and the SMELL of marijuana… in a state where marijuana is legal. And the ‘AC was too loud.’ And two people dressed similarly because I guess scrubs, uniforms, or a dress code are suspicious as hell. And security cameras. Like, holy goddamn shit guys. The officers, especially the team’s leader who requested the warrant and the judge who signed it, should be reprimanded for sheer incompetence.
If this is all it takes for a raid, my favorite cheap Chinese food spot should be raided, too. Hell, they get a ton of customers coming and going so they’re probably dealing, too!
According to the lawsuit, the raid of Noho Diagnostic Center stemmed from an LAPD officer’s application for a search warrant.
The officer said there had been a noise complaint about the medical center’s air conditioning units, and cannabis was possibly being cultivated inside, the complaint says.
He repeatedly surveilled the property in 2023 and reported the “distinct odor of live cannabis plant and not the odor of dried cannabis being smoked” — as well as tinted windows, security cameras and two people dressed similarly, according to the complaint.
The officer believed these were signs of a hidden marijuana growing operation, and efforts to expand it, the complaint says.
He also found that the medical center wasn’t licensed to grow cannabis and, because of this discovery, determined the facility was violating California’s health and safety code, according to the complaint.
The officer considered his observations as “probable cause for cannabis cultivation,” and a search warrant was issued, the complaint says.
Cops are not the only problem here.
Their lawsuit details how a SWAT team swarmed Noho Diagnostic Center after the squad’s leader persuaded a magistrate to issue a search warrant.
Leader and judge who issued should be fired and disbarred immediately. I feel like something should happen to the rank and file who follow such stupidity too but not sure what.
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I can see it now. The first two cops enter the room and are instantly sucked into the MRI machine due to their guns and other metal items. They comically struggle to use their radio on account of being stuck to the machine. They finally manage to get to their radio and call for help. The moment backup arrives, they are sucked into the machine as well. The third cop lands with his crotch precariously close to the face of one of the other cops. More struggling continues. New guy can get to his radio just fine and radios for more backup. The first two try to stop him but to no avail. Again, backup arrives. Again, backup gets sucked into the machine. “Hey guys, I can reach my radio just fine. I’ll call for backup.” Cue the chorus “NOOOOOOOO!”. He stops. They have a debate over how to explain the predicament to the next round of backup they need to call. They bicker a bit, but settle on an extremely nuanced and verbose message. The reply comes out static-y but they rejoice as surely they’ll be saved. Door opens. “You were breaking up. What were you trying to… AHHHHHH!” Sucked into the machine. Curtains close on the cast bickering.
You forgot the bit where they have a gun duel thru the MRI machine where all the bullets get suspended in the field and they still do matrix style moves amd think they are dodging.
07/16/1980
It wasnt great before that either, but I think the element of frustratingly silly was added about then.
Radiologist here. There are multiple safety zones (four to be precise) around the machine and extensive screening procedures are required to access the inner zones. The magnet of an MRI is always on and extremely strong. However, you need to be pretty close for it to pull a gun from your hands. Like, less than a few meters. That would be zone 4. He should never have been that close.
The button he pressed is called a quench. It’s for life threatening emergencies only. Think “patient trapped between the machine and a metal object.” It vents the liquid helium used to keep it superconductive and basically destroys the machine, but the magnetic field dissipates in minutes. There is a way to wind the machine down without destroying it in situations that aren’t life threatening or for servicing, but it takes hours for the magnetic field to dissipate and even longer to bring it back.
While I knew these machines are really dangerous to bring metals to anywhere near it; it’s quite interesting to know that there is a fail safe for these cases.
Really that long to normally wind it down. The town where grew up had a mobile mri back in 90s. It would show for about a week each month. Would they turn it off over the last day to move it?
This was almost certainly an older style of MRI that didn’t use superconductors. You could turn these off and on, but the strength of the magnetic field was much lower that what can be achieved with superconductors.
I also looked up the wind down time and I was mistaken. It’s a day long process to wind down and wind back up and MRI and do all of the testing and adjustments, but the loss of the magnetic field happens in a few hours. I edited my post.
So way more than the 200k price tag I saw the other day.
If I ever saw a building using more power, my automatic assumption would be a big machine is inside.
If it were ridiculously high, then my next guess would be a crypto mining farm.
Ain’t no way modern LED lamps for growing plants gonna be drawing that much power.
Not to mention any of these fools could have just as easily sent someone inside to check. Or if they really wanted to play coppers so bad, book a fake appointment or even just pretend to be a news agency to ask for a tour.
They didn’t wanna play private investigator, plus there’s extra legal shielding for a cop to be a dumbass than for them to actually know their stuff; it’s also not very likely of them to have a higher level education either sadly. Maybe they attend PragerU or something to pretend intelligence.
The swat leader had over 12 hours of narcotics training. Pretty much a PhD.
If their DoorDash/UberEats driver had 12 hours of experience, they’d complain and probably get them fired after they give enough low ratings. If they were working based on a public rating system they would already be fired.
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Even worse - they knew full-well that it was a medical office by the point this happened. He was just poking around the expensive shit when he lost his gun.
And then he burned probably millions of dollars when he pushed the purge button.
The summary just says gun, so I assumed hand gun. it was a rifle.
I feel like all public servants (including cops) ought to have public liability insurance, where money would end up coming from in these situations, which then the employer (police department, other department) needs to pay, the employee is aware of, and is part of their renumeration (i.e. the more their premiums cost, the less they’re making), making idiots more of a financial liability to themselves.
Quite quickly you’re going to have people acting as responsibly as possible if you’re insurance premiums then go up when you act like a moron.
Obviously this would require protections so that people don’t end up being screwed over by insurance premiums, but still, this seems to be an issue in public service all over the world, no consequences because the tax payer just ends up footing the settlement, and the public servant goes on their merry way.
it’s just tax money, that’s all
At the end of the article, which is already a litany of clownish buffoonery, it states that after destroying (effectively) the MRI machine in order to retrieve the rifle, he failed to retrieve a loaded magazine. So it was just left on the floor as they left.
Edit: autocorrect had changed it to clownfish
I don’t know which part is worse, that they destroyed a several hundred thousand dollar machine for a fucking gun, that they left the magazine behind, or that they did all that for cannabis.
They wouldn’t be able to get it out otherwise.
There are ways to get it without destroying the machine. If it’s an electromagnet it will cost you several thousand dollars because there is cooling helium inside you have to remove, but you can stop it. Even if it’s a permanent magnet there are techniques to remove metal objects. Incidents with metal objects in these rooms happen all the time in hospitals.
I don’t get why you would defend this stupid cop, especially by making stuff up. A medical device like an MRI scanner is infinitely more important than a gun, for god’s sake. Even if we assume they cost the same, what deserves to be saved is the medical device.
Maybe this could have been avoided if he only had 13 hours of training… 😥
But for real, I hope they pull the money from the pension of everyone involved, and then fire everyone involved for being literally to fucking stupid. So many people had an opportunity to do anything, to use a brain cell, but not a single one did.
Nope. The tax payers will pickup the tab.
That was a hilarious read. It just kept getting better, like I was reading Yakety Sax.
Are the cops routinely getting copies of electric bills?
If the city is also the utility provider it’s stupidly easy.
LA does have municipal power.
A lot of that information can be weirdly public. Looking up property records often comes with data about utility bills and taxes, and their payment statuses.
What the fuck? Anyone mining crypto or running servers at home better watch out before their energy company tips off their local gang and gets them raided.
Go solar.
Magsafe rifle. 😊
Could I theoretically make my home immune to guns by surrounding it with kevlar-coated MRIs
I hope you and anyone in your immediate vicinity don’t value your payment cards or electronic devices.
Who needs credit cards when I’m rich enough to build an above-ground bulletproof bunker powered by supercooled 5-tesla magnets
Drug dealer turns on MRI, NO YOU FREEZE!
