Guns drawn, four police officers raided a building in Venice, California. A terrorist cell take-down? Closing in on an evildoer? Closing down a dangerous criminal enterprise?
Well, let's just say they're protecting the public from the dangers of ... raw food:
With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.
Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.
"I still can't believe they took our yogurt," said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. "There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they're raiding us because we're selling raw dairy products?"
Staceyann C. Dolenti
Selling raw milk is legal in California if you are licensed. Would you call it ridiculous if any other business was shut down for failing to meet licensing standards?
Oh they are mad keen for all things organic, but if they get tb, so do you.
(And the reason this was done at gun point is that small, independent businesses in southern Ccalifornia have had it with corrupt health departments. Peacemakers, in Costa Mesa, ran a health department inspector out literally at gun point, and told the cops they'd be delighted to get in a shootout, kids and all. And they meant it. It too over two years for any arrests to be made, because the store was bacially an armed bunker. It was, however, open for business the entire time.)
As for the guns, anytime the police "sweep" a structure, they *should* have their guns drawn. It is safer for them and for us.
If you need a definition of the term "police state" look no further than a country that uses armed police to enforce food retail statutes.
Just because all you have is a hammer doesn't mean that none of your problems are, in fact, nails.