Grow houses versus pill mills

Shrinking budgets demand better decision-making within the Sheriffs Office, as well as throughout county government and, to be sure, throughout government at all levels. When it comes to enforcing our drug laws, a lack of good judgment leads to policies that fail to differentiate between big problems and small ones. And, this lack of good judgment illustrates just how the Pinellas County Sheriffs Office has been mismanaged. Pinellas County has the unpleasant distinction of leading the state in opiate-related deaths. While it should be obvious that pill-related law enforcement tactics should top the priority list, the PCSO has spent huge amounts of money on the surveillance of a hydroponics shop in Largo. (Hydroponics refers to the growing of plants in nutrientrich water, without soil.) It is believed that hydroponics shops are favored by people who operate grow houses usually residential homes where large quantities of marijuana are grown. Under the interim sheriffs administration while he was the chief deputy, the PCSO mounted a surveillance camera on a pole outside the Largo shop, then noted the license plate numbers of the cars that were parked there. Deputies would then go to the home addresses of the car owners. Sometimes they would take search warrants with them, and sometimes they would simply ask for permission to search the homes.

Some of those search warrants have been found to have been obtained with manufactured evidence. As a result of these shoddy law enforcement practices, many of the arrests made during these grow house investigations have been thrown out by the courts or dropped by the State Attorneys Office. While no one is denying that grow house operators are breaking the law, such operations are not threatening to public safety. The same cannot be said for so-called pill mills, which distribute large quantities of oxycodone and other extremely dangerous prescription drugs. Applying limited law enforcement resources to grow house investigations while pill mills are operating is a good example of the mismanagement we see at the PCSO on a daily basis. ##