Attorney Matthew Pappas filed the lawsuit after releasing security-camera video from Sky High Holistic showing police officers ridiculing a woman in a wheelchair, playing darts, and one officer examining a marijuana-laced edible before tossing it into his mouth.
The city has also agreed to drop charges on a dozen employees who were present at the nonprofit marijuana collective during the raid, in exchange for an agreement not to pursue litigation against the city.
The agreement reads, "The defendant agrees to withdraw the Tort Claim filed with the City and agrees not to initiate a civil action against the City and/or its employees stemming from the execution of the search warrant…Based upon the above stipulations and considerations, the cost of litigation and witness unavailability, the City Attorney agrees to dismiss the criminal charges against the defendants in the interests of justice," according to OC Weekly.
Pappas was pleased with the outcome, saying, "The dismissal of charges shows Santa Ana is starting to take responsibility for the inappropriate actions taken against Sky High and its patient members."
The suit also alleges that city officials, including mayor Miguel Pulido, used legislation to favor some dispensaries over others. Measure BB was a ballot proposal in 2014, which solicited payments from dispensaries with a guarantee of receiving a place in a lottery to win a marijuana permit.
Sky High and its patients have accused Pulido and others of having a financial stake in other collectives and manipulating the lottery in an attempt to close competitors down. Pulido denied the reports, telling the LA Times that a consulting firm independent of the city handled the lottery, and that he did not receive any perks for supporting Measure BB.
"Let me just state on the record, the allegations are unequivocally and categorically false,” Pulido said. “To allege there was some influence of the lottery and therefore it’s unfair is absolutely false."
Three of the officers involved in the raid were charged with misdemeanor counts of theft, for stealing cookies and protein bars from the collective. One of the officers, 31-year-old Brandon Matthew Sontag, received vandalism charges for destroying five security cameras.
