Bakersfield, California cops claim an ounce of marijuana is worth $700 in California after 6,700 pound bust

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Update, July 11 at 2:49 p.m.: We spoke with representatives from the Bakersfield PD who tell us they did not make a mistake. Seriously. The Sergeant we spoke with said that they valued the haul based on a price per-gram. Yes, they value all 3,067,192 grams at roughly $24 a pop. He said they don’t go by the bulk price, only the street price, and according to their research, they think $24 a gram is reasonable.
But the reality is that by doing that, they’ve completely blown any credibility they had left. Nobody is selling 3 million grams of pot by the gram. Nobody. Try as you may to sell even an ounce at that rate, and you’d go crazy. That’s why people (the majority) buy in bulk. Also, nobody in California is paying $25 a gram on the street. Nobody. These cops are just plain clueless about the things they are supposed to know about. A more reasonable figure would be $7.6 million, or just over $1,000 a pound. Even if it was top shelf, it wouldn’t get more than $3,500 a pound — meaning it would be worth $23.67 million at most.


We have to assume someone missed a decimal point or it was a typo, because nobody in the United States is paying $11,000+ for a pound of weed.
That’s $700 an ounce. Of course, if it was bundled schwag selling for just over $1,000 a pound that might make sense and make the value more like $7.6 million — and even that’s a stretch considering schwag wouldn’t fetch a grand anywhere in California.
Either way, the Bakersfield cops are full of it.
Original story: If you’ve got a U-Haul truck with an illegal load of 6,732 pounds of marijuana inside, try to not run a red light. In fact, try and obey all traffic laws as not to draw attention to yourself. That’s common sense, of course, but something that 22-year-old Daniel Ruiz and 24-year-old Jose Alcarez apparently didn’t get about the drug smuggling trade.
Cops in Bakersfield, California say that was the reason they pulled the two over Wednesday night and subsequently found the huge haul of pot. But instead of being happy with their bust, the cops had to go and lie about things to inflate their egos. Specifically: they claim the 6,762 pounds of pot is worth $76.4 million.
Still, the LA Times reported it without question yesterday. The Bakersfield Californian also reported it, though staff writer Ruth Brown at least had the wherewithal to question the figure blurted out by the police press release.
We’ve sent a note to Bakersfield PD’s media contact asking for clarification, we’ll update you when we get an answer.

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