Suspects Arrested After Gunshots Ring Out in San Diego Marijuana Dispensary

Nearly a century ago, between 1920 – 1933, the United States undertook what some called “the noble experiment”; the nationwide prohibition of alcohol.
In reality, it was a horrifically stupid experiment and a miserable failure that led to increased alcohol consumption, an overall increase in crime, the rise of organized crime, the court systems were flooded with trivial cases, public officials and politicians succumbed to atrocious levels of greed and corruption, and untold amounts of taxpayer dollars were forfeited to a thriving black market.
Sound familiar?

Today we see the same exact shortcomings with cannabis prohibition, and San Diego, California keeps providing perfect examples of why this socially doomed policy is completely counter-productive and actually harmful to the communities that “experiment” with it.
Of course, these days even the San Diego Chargers are sponsored by Bud Light, and every town in America has at least one well-stocked corner liquor store where any adult is free to buy all the booze they want, and drink themselves to death right in the parking lot.
But 18 years after the state of California blazed a new trail in America by legalizing the medical use of marijuana, San Diego still has exactly zero legal marijuana dispensaries open, according to the new ultra-conservative zoning ordinance put in place earlier this year.
This week city officials boasted that they are on the verge of approving the first two, and potentially three, permits for what they consider to be “legal” weed outlets.
Meanwhile, at least 40 such shops are open for business across San Diego, hoping that those same city officials don’t match their Weedmaps ads up to their storefront locations. Every time the city finds a new store operating in the shadows of California’s Prop 215, they promptly issue a cease and desist to the building’s landlord or owner, with implied threats of property seizure if they do not comply.
Last week, we reported on a San Diego weed store that got raided after an undercover narc successfully bought some rock cocaine from the illegal shop. Guns and coke were found on the scene, and one of the men detained had a rap sheet including attempted murder and battery of a police officer.
This week in America’s Finest City, another store either unwilling or unable to play by the rigid set of rules set by the new ordinance made headlines for all of the wrong reasons.
Gunshots were fired Tuesday on Campo Road in Spring Valley, in the heart of San Diego, and two suspects were seen fleeing from a clandestine weed store shortly thereafter.
Apparently, 29 year old James Crutcher entered Spring Valley Greens around 11am and immediately brandished a firearm and told those inside he was robbing the joint.
Waiting outside in a silver sedan getaway car was 30 year old Frank Daley, but what was supposed to be a quick snatch of some cash and grass quickly went sideways.
An employee in the dispensary allegedly pulled a gun of his own and put three rounds into Crutcher before he could escape back out of the front door that he had come through just moments earlier.
Ray Healy was next door to the dispensary, at a headshop called Smoke N Stuff when a frenzied patron ran in and told he and the headshop owner that the place next door was being robbed.
Together, Healy and the headshop owner went next door and rang the intercom, only to get a reply from someone inside that “We’re being robbed”. As the two men fled the pot shop, Healy says he heard a gunshot.
Healy hid in a bar next to the smoke shop next to the weed shop.
“Hoping I didn’t get shot before the holidays,” Healy told reporters.
Daley was still waiting nervously behind the wheel for his lowlife pal to return with the stolen stash, when a bloodied and visibly shaken Crutcher came limping out of the store, followed by at least one angry shop owner wielding a baseball bat.
Witnesses say that Crutcher literally jumped onto the hood of the sedan as it tried to flee the scene, but he was flung from the car as it wildly accelerated down the street.
Cops responding to the gunfire easily apprehended Crutcher who was severely weakened by the gunshot wounds he suffered inside the pot shop.
Daley was ultimately found hiding less than a block away. A police K-9 unit was deployed and witnesses say that the dog literally dragged him across the street.
Both Daley and Crutcher were taken to the hospital under police supervision. An unnamed 32-year old man who apparently works at the smoke shop next door to the crime scene was also shot in the leg during the fracas, though it is still unclear how it happened, or who shot him.
Cops recovered at least two handguns which were both entered into evidence.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department was quick to point out that they had nothing to do with the shooting (a sign of a post-Ferguson mentality perhaps), but affirmed that they would be setting their investigative crosshairs on Spring Valley Greens…after another cease and desist, of course.
This is “safe access” in San Diego.
If you were in that store as a customer, your life was at risk on Tuesday. All for the right to a naturally growing plant with countless medicinal applications – a right earned through the will of the voters in the state of California, and taken away by an uptight city council in San Diego.
Social and moral implications aside for a moment, San Diego’s War on Weed provides glaring evidence of what is considered to be prudent economic theory; that the prohibition of a mutually beneficial exchange is doomed to fail.
Until then, it is not the smug city council members who will suffer, but the rest of society absolutely will.