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Hayward Pot Club Heightens Security
Daily Review Online | 08/11/2005

THINGS HAVE just about gotten back to normal on Foothill Boulevard since Monday night's cops-and-robbers pandemonium. But there's one significant change to the neighborhood: Big Mike.
He looks like a guy relaxing in front of a dress shop, watching the world go by.

But he's really there to keep armed thugs away from the ultra-low-key Patient's Resource Center, the marijuana dispensary that was robbed earlier this week for the second time this summer.

"I'm ex-military, and both of my parents were cops," Mike says. "Anybody coming in here now has to go through me."

I never even realized there was a pot clinic across Foothill Boulevard from The Daily Review, and I've worked here for several months. I thought the place was a small clothing boutique, or a nail salon. I thought all those young, tattooed and pierced folks were going to the poolhall a few doors down.

In other words, the Patient's Resource Center was operating in quiet anonymity — and that's just the way they like it, employees say.

This robbery, which led to a dramatic foot chase all through the neighborhood and the arrest of three men, has shaken things up, and the ambivalent relationship between the clinic and law enforcement has gotten a bit more heated.

The clinic's founder, Jane Weirick, praises the Hayward officers who quickly apprehended the three men Monday evening. But law enforcement, she said, is partly to blame for robbers hitting her establishment in the first place.

"We're not a target unless people are pointing their fingers at us saying 'They have money,'" Weirick said Wednesday. "Certain law enforcement people want to make us targets."

Weirick says she ran the dispensary for two years without incident, until Alameda County Sheriff Charles Plummer said at pot clinic hearings in May that the businesses kept thousands of dollars in cash and bales of marijuana around with little security.

"He even gave out our address, in case the thieves needed an extra hint," Weirick said. "A week later, we got robbed."

To stay compliant with the city's rules, the Patient's Resource Center keeps less than 3 pounds of pot and less than $1,000 on the premises at any one time.

But the police reported this week that the robbery suspects had $5,000 in cash on them. Weirick counters that the thieves also stole patients' wallets, and that no more than

$1,000 was actually stolen from the clinic.

It seems to boil down to a chicken-or-the-egg situation. Are the police correctly identifying the dispensary as a magnet for crime or do they make it a magnet by pointing out possible security lapses? Who knows?

I have no feeling about medical marijuana one way or the other. I used to think it was funny that most of the patients I saw seemed to be under 25 and carrying a skateboard.

But chatting with Big Mike, I saw men in business suits going into the clinic, women in their 40s and 50s straight from the hair salon. There are more than 1,400 clients of the Patient's Resource Center, seeking relief from all kinds of ailments. Whether they find it, I have no idea. What I don't know about medical marijuana could fill a book.

So, as city officials begin a discussion about closing the clinic down in the wake of this latest robbery, I hope they will judge the place by the same standards they do other businesses they have allowed to locate here.

Are they up to code? Do they follow the rules? Do they co-exist with their neighbors? Do they pay the fees they are supposed to pay?

I hope the city's decision is guided by these kinds of questions, and not knee-jerk reactions.

The obvious problem in Hayward is crime. Crime is a staple here with or without the clinics. So, do these clinics exacerbate an already bad situation? It will be interesting to hear the arguments, because, like I said, what I don't know would fill a book.

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Cassius

Liquor stores are high targets of crime too, but we still allow them to exist because alcohol is legal and sale of it is permitted with the proper license. In a state where medical marijuana is legal, a marijuana dispensary should be no different.

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