Last Thursday, a squad of narcotics officers raided a Texas house they suspected of containing a pot-growing operation. But when they walked in, they found—not pot—only two Christmas trees under grow lamps. A note on the wall said the cops were the ones under investigation, and every room in the house had cameras rolling. Hah! Under the leadership of former police officer Barry Cooper, a new reality show called KopBusters had orchestrated the county’s first-ever reverse-sting on a drug raid:

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.

The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.

You can watch the cops searching the house, guns drawn and ready to shoot—ostensibly at docile pot growers—in this video. And here’s the report on the local news (it’s kinda loud, so you may want to turn down the volume):

Does this mean we should all start growing tomatoes in our basement to foil local cops? Not so much. When the cops come, they be snooping through your house with guns drawn, too. And, as we know, cops regularly shoot unarmed people in their houses when they suspect dangerous ol’ drugs are involved. But cops aren’t big on busting grow houses around these parts. If you did start a basement garden, you’d probably just get a fine crop of tomatoes and a wicked electricity bill. Best to leave it to the pros: KopBusters vows to take their campaign across the country.

Via Reason.

23 replies on “Busted!”

  4. Seven years for possession with intent? SEVEN YEARS??
    Oh my god. Do they know how bad seven years in prison will fuck up your life? Do they know how harmless pot is? Holy fuck.

  6. Who is going to give a damn in Odessa Texas? It’s not as if there’s a real danger of Texas basement tomato farmers being unreasonably searched as likely pot growers, and my guess is the average Texan figures common sense trumps the law.

  8. Can anyone point to the affidavit that generated the search warrent? (Kopbusters says they “usually” claim an informant or smell, but did they in this case?) What did Kopbusters do to arouse their suspicion? (Just turn on the grow-lamps? Maybe if they turned on 100 of them, but just two?)

    If KopBusters has played their cards right, this has the potential to be a great “reverse bust”, but that isn’t yet clear.

  10. Or we could just do like Canada did and stop wasting tax dollars on this.

    More people die every day from smoking cigarettes and drinking, fwiw.

  11. I guess we should all start doing this right? Taxing the cops so that instead of wasting the resources to do these busts with the illegal cameras they might actually investigate possible grow ops.

  12. i like it! of course, when you are trying to make it look like illegal activity is going down why would you be surprised when the police think that illegal activity might be going down?

    so, even though i don’t approve of the police tactics often employed, this is a actually a sort of reverse-entrapment.

  14. @12,

    The police have every right to think there might be illegal activity going down. What they don’t have a right to do is lie and fabricate evidence to get search warrants, especially when they then proceed to use no-knock raids which frequently get people killed.

  15. @14 of course; most no-knock raids suck.

    you sound like you are reprimanding me, so i’m afraid you missed my point. i don’ t have to think no-knock raids are good to criticize this kopbuster operation.

    when you try to make it look like a law is being broken, the police likely have probable cause to think a law is being broken. that really is just plain common sense. it’s not really the “gotcha!” i want. for instance, if i use a crack pipe in front a cop to smoke rock candy, of course the police are going to respond.

    the real gotcha’s with police can only happen when you catch the cops and nothing questionable is really happening. this occurs from time to time with video surveillance, or the occasional bystander getting film or photos. almost by definition, you cannot create a fake situation that attracts the police without doing something that creates probable cause.

    and that’s like using the faulty police tactics to expose the faulty police tactics.

    kopbusters are trying to make it look like something illegal is happening… that’s the point. that just happens to be probable cause. furthermore, for those of you who care so much about where police are spending their efforts, it also creates an enormous time and money waster.

    ps. i would, however, like to see if they caught the police fabricating a witness (or something — anything — illegal) on this story. i’m not sure how they did that, though. unless i missed something.

  18. @15 using grow lights is NOT ILLEGAL. Having your electricity spike in NOT ILLEGAL. having a heat source in your attic in NOT ILLEGAL.

    use a crack pipe in front a cop is not equivalent to using a grow light.

    I am growing peppers and tomatoes in my basement right now. Since I am using grow lights, it may “look like illegal activity is going down.”

    “almost by definition, you cannot create a fake situation that attracts the police without doing something that creates probable cause. “

    this is stupid. ever heard of black people? they apparently are always creating a “fake situation that attracts the police without doing something that creates probable cause.” like walking down the street.

    Bellevue police use to tail people leaving a grow shop to find out where they lived. then they got a warrant! they insisted that by shopping at the store, you are probably doing something illegal. LAME!

  19. You Trust Pigs @ 18:

    You seem a little confused about the nature of probable cause. It is perfectly possible for entirely legal behavior to constitute probable cause of a crime. Several $100K transfers in and out of a school teacher’s checking account might constitute probable cause, as might operating a large number of grow-lights. The important thing is that the illegal explanation of the observed facts is more likely than the legal explanation. The standard is not “beyond a reasonable doubt” (P > 95%), just “more likely than not” (P > 50%), thus the adjective “probable”.

    If they got a warrent on the basis of openly visible grow-lamps, the cops didn’t do anything wrong. If they lied (e.g. made up an informant) to get the warrent, or executed a search without a warrent (e.g. by using wall-penetrating IR technology), then they did do something wrong.

  21. #19 you seem a little confused about the difference between “reasonable suspicion” and “probable cause.”

    growlights <> probable cause

    hence the lie about smells.

  22. Your Name Here @ 21: That depends on the judge. So far the “lies about smells” allegation is just that. I would love it if KopBusters could produce a blatently false affidavit showing that in this case an officer had testified to a smell. But the fact that they have not already makes me suspect that it didn’t work out so neatly for them.

  23. wow – what a fantasy – is it really real? Busting the busters? Can they get 7 years hard time for being knobs?

    “Criminal intent of intentionally incriminating”???

    Pleeeeeeze?

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