[UPDATE 12:34 p.m.: Statement by Local Fire Chief] Law Enforcement’s Fatal Shooting of Dog on a State Licensed Cannabis Farm Ignites Fury

Story collaboration by Lisa Music, Kym Kemp, and Lauren Schmitt of KMUD News.

Please be warned this video of a Cal Fire Investigator shooting a cannabis grower’s dog during the serving of a warrant is graphic and disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised. [Video provided by Trinity County during discovery to the cultivator and their attorney]

A Cal Fire Investigator assisting law enforcement serving a search warrant on a state-licensed cannabis farm near Hayfork in rural Trinity County May 2 fatally shot the cultivator’s dog. The incident has garnered national attention as a video of the shooting has gone viral, sparking outrage over what some say are essentially armed soldiers from the war on drugs arresting cultivators for what many believe are civil code violations. At the same time, the Trinity County Sheriff’s Department, who led the multi-agency team that served the search warrants, points out that the cultivator didn’t have the required county permit and argues that the dog, who was trained to attack, lunged at the officer.

The raid was one of between six and nine (the number is disputed) that took place over May 1 and May 2 in remote areas of western Trinity County known for cannabis cultivation. The Sheriff’s Department states that, in total, “over 16,000 marijuana plants and 7,500 pounds of processed marijuana were discovered and destroyed. Also seized were 25 firearms, including a short-barreled Assault Rifle ghost gun and $64,566 of US Currency.” About five of the farms had California State licenses but did not have Trinity County licenses, according to Lisa Wright, the owner of one of the county’s largest cannabis consultant companies, Flowra.

Jackee Riccio, Executive Director of Cannabis for Conservation, stated that the Yang family property was given a CDFW Qualified Cultivator grant which provides assistance to transition from a DCC provisional to an annual license. Just the week prior to the raid, Yang had an inspection and was found to be in compliance.

The conflicting sides faced off at a Board of Supervisors meeting, yesterday, May 16, when Trinity County residents and call-in commenters took to the public comment session to air their grievances and Sheriff Tim Saxon provided law enforcement’s perspective. The public comment period consumed an hour and a half of the meeting as, one by one, commenters told the board that the actions that took place on May 2 were a byproduct of their handling of the county’s cannabis ordinances. Many laid the blame at the feet of Board Chair, Jill Cox.

A recent scandal involving emails between Cox and Jim Underwood, an attorney and registered agent for Trinity Action Association (TAA), the non-profit organization that filed a lawsuit against Trinity County on January 3, 2019 that sought to stop implementation of the county’s cannabis ordinances, has led to allegations that Cox is not only anti-cannabis, but colluding with Underwood and TAA.

As a result of the lawsuit filed by TAA, the county’s cannabis licensing program was shut down after cultivators had already obtained permits with the state’s Department of Cannabis Control (DCC). At the time, all Trinity County cultivators were technically outside the law which requires them to have both a county and state license, however, the DCC issued a statement saying they would not be seeking enforcement on cultivators, who through no fault of their own, had their county license rescinded.

As Trinity County attempts to align their cannabis ordinances with state regulations and environmental requirements almost nine years after the state approved legalized cannabis cultivation, growers are left in the lurch, a space advocates like Riccio are trying to fill. She was frustrated by the raid on Yang’s property and said,

Our grant just started April 1. We knew there was going to have to be a lot of education. [However,] we didn’t expect that the Sheriff’s Department wouldn’t honor that process. They messed that up.

Now, she worries that growers have a great “lack of trust” in the process.

Nhia Yang, a 64-year-old Hmong man who reportedly doesn’t speak or understand English well, has a valid state license to cultivate cannabis on his Trinity Pines property and is awaiting a CEQA study to complete his Trinity County license requirements. However, it is the growing season, so Yang, faced with a decision many Trinity County cultivators face, decided to grow while waiting for his county license. That choice, according to Saxon, led to a search warrant being issued to search his property and, ultimately, led to the death of his dog.

“As far as this location being a licensed farm, it was not fully licensed; it had a state license, but it didn’t have the county license,” Saxon told the board and the public during his statement at the Board of Supervisors’ meeting. He explained in an interview last Friday, “What my investigators are telling me is that the cannabis was not marked properly as required by DCC…[Marijuana has] to have markings to indicate [it is] in the Metrc System.” And, he added, “To legally cultivate in California, you have to have both the state and county license.”

However, the lack of a county license, according to the majority of meeting attendees, did not warrant what many deemed as militarized enforcement of a cannabis ordinance violation. “It is not through lack of effort that people don’t have a county license,” a resident stated during the BoS meeting. “It is through lack of the county and whatever went behind closed doors and whatever happened back there, but that is not the farmer’s fault.”

Sheriff Saxon, however, said in the interview with us, that by cultivating cannabis without the County license, the growers were “violating state law as opposed to a county ordinance.” He argued, “You have to make a distinction between code enforcement and criminal enforcement. With code enforcement, we give them a notice to self-abate and then it goes to a civil process.” However, a criminal action, Saxon told us, requires a law enforcement response.

But, the video of the shooting of Nhia Yang’s dog in front of him, the dog’s heartbreaking howls and Yang’s cries, “You shot my dog,” have outraged many, both in the cannabis community and out. An impassioned speaker at Tuesday’s meeting asked the board, “I want to say that if you guys have dogs at home, how would you feel if you were trying to be completely and 100% legitimate and compliant? I know that Trinity County has been waiting multiple years for licenses to be renewed.”

Echoing the sentiment of many, he said, “I feel that it is collusion against mom and pop and small growers alike. Who’s going to just go legal now that you’re entering legal farms and shooting people’s dogs…and crossing their lines? These are people who are trying to make an honest living and abide by your rules that you implemented.”

A self-proclaimed “friend of law enforcement” also spoke out against the actions and asked the Board of Supervisors to take action. “I’m looking to you for leadership, Supervisors…The video that’s circulating, it’s disturbing. The militarized raid that took place in the Pines, why is this being framed in press releases from the Sheriff’s Office as a cannabis enforcement issue?”

During his statement, Saxon claimed that the dog posed a threat to the law enforcement personnel at the scene. “That was not a household pet that was at that site. That particular animal, we have evidence, not in this case that’s going to be prosecuted, but there was evidence at that site that this dog had been trained to attack. There were bite sleeves, commonly used by police and military, to train this animal to go after people,” he alleged.

However, Lisa Wright, the cannabis consultant for the Yang family, noted that dogs are listed as part of the required protection plan for the property and guard dogs aren’t illegal.

Sheriff Saxon also defended the Cal Fire inspector. “The officer that fired the round didn’t wake up that morning saying, ‘I’m gonna go out and shoot a dog today,’” he explained to those attending yesterday’s Board of Supervisors Meeting. “This individual loves animals. He didn’t want to do that, he was forced into it.”

However, the majority that have seen the video that spoke at the meeting were not only disturbed by the actions of the Cal Fire investigator, but distrustful of the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office. A mother of an eleven-year-old boy who viewed the video stated, “I am concerned that my son went from having respect and admiration for the Trinity County Sheriffs, to now afraid.”

Adding to the distrust, some are questioning the validity of the search warrants based on the appearance of conflicting time stamps on the aerial photographs and the timing of the issuances of the warrants.

The video, Saxon said, is part of the evidence in the case against Yang. During discovery, it was released to the defense, and now, he stated, being widely publicized. However, according to Saxon, the video being circulated does not show the incident in its entirety, and does not clearly depict the situation the officers found themselves in.

“What’s not shown in that video is the attempt to get the property owner to come out to the gate several times, and that person was moving towards the gate and then would back back into the property, come out to the gate, move back to the property, almost as if to lure the deputies, and the officers, in there closer to the dog,” the Sheriff stated.

Lisa Wright, the consultant for the Yang family, argues that the 125 pound, 5’1”, 64-year-old Nhia Yang was not a threat. He wasn’t fleeing. He generally was moving towards law enforcement and had his arms raised. Wright questioned why officers advanced onto the property without making sure the dog was secured in such a way as not to be able to reach them. She stated that the dog was already agitated by large numbers of loud strangers that frightened its owner in addition to having already been pepper sprayed for an unknown reason. Wright said she didn’t understand why officers didn’t work to deescalate the situation and have the owner make sure the dog could not possibly be a threat.

Even further, Wright wants to know, “Why were they there in the first place?…Why not [use the] civil abatement process?”

She told us in a series of phone interviews that the probable cause that law enforcement provided to the judge was “basically, we flew over, we saw through an open door that there were plants there.” She asked sarcastically, “How do they jump to a major crime from seeing plants in [the open door of a greenhouse on a Department of Cannabis Control] permit holder’s property?

Additionally, the violations that Saxon alleges were found on Nhia Yang’s property are considered cannabis ordinance violations, had he had the county permit

Saxon elaborated on issues found on the Yang farm during the Board of Supervisors Meeting. He stated, “Yes, there were illegal pesticides there. We found packaged, processed cannabis there that was not …enrolled in Metrc. Now somebody here previously told me that it was from last year‘s cultivation. Well, there were no tags on it. It was not enrolled in the system, therefore it was not legal. And there were several other building violations while we were there.”

A press release listed the charges against Yang as “illegal marijuana cultivation, possession of marijuana for sale and resisting arrest.”

The allegation of “illegal pesticides” is refuted by Wright pointing out that Yang had no charges relating to the alleged pesticides. Furthermore, Riccio told Redheaded Blackbelt, “Technically anything that lacks federal residue tolerances is “illegal” on cannabis farms. Like, basic gardening pesticides that you could find at Ace Hardware,” which legal cultivators are unlikely to use due to the stringent testing cannabis must pass in order to be sold through a licensed distributor.

She added, “If [Saxon is] talking about [California] banned pesticides like we find on trespass grows (Carbofuran or sarin-based malathion) then that legally requires a whole HAZWOPER process, where everything needs to be swabbed and tested before product or material is removed or handled. CDFW certainly should have been informed if that was truly the concern. And if the concern is that it is on the cannabis, that’s a HUGE issue that [the Sheriff’s deputies] buried it in the ground.”

Further complicating the matter, the very environmental study needed for Yang’s county permit, may now be jeopardized by the actions of the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office regardless of whether there were banned pesticides on site or not.

During the BoS meeting, Wright elaborated on the environmental damage that she claims occurred during the raid:

Additionally, those officers in committing this, what we believe to be an illegal raid, committed environmental crimes. They brought an excavator, they dug a hole, and they dumped Metrc product, cannabis product into a hole along with potentially other things. We’re not sure all what went into that hole and then covered it up, destroying the evidence. Now those farmers are under strict maintained site conditions requirements by the county during CEQA analysis. They’re not allowed to disturb any ground without cultural assessments being conducted, as well as this time of year raptor and nesting bird surveys prior to any construction kind of equipment or disturbance of land.

Riccio stated, “[The Sheriff’s] are apparently not held to the same standard that cultivators are held to.”

At the end of the day, Nhia Yang’s dog is dead, Yang, himself, was just released from jail on charges for resisting arrest, and now faces further legal battles on top of his Trinity County cultivation application now being in jeopardy.

Cal Fire has launched a full investigation into their inspector’s discharge of his weapon which killed Yang’s dog, according to Saxon.

Saxon and his department are under fire for their handling of cannabis code issues with Wright calling for a freeze on all cannabis enforcement funding.

And the Board of Supervisors is charged with failing to do right by their constituents and tasked with fixing what many are calling a national embarrassment. Some are calling for Board Chair Jill Cox’s resignation.

Though federally illegal, cannabis has been decriminalized in at least 21 U.S. states, with all but a few states allowing medical use. Meanwhile, in Trinity County where not only is cannabis legalized and the county profits from its sale, cultivators are feeling under siege.

One cultivator summed up the trust issues:

“[We] can’t have an out of control armed gang …with badges and uniforms going around. I’m scared to have my kid at my house now because I don’t know what the hell is going to happen. Nobody does. So my kid’s living on the Coast in town right now so he can be safe from these armed mad men running around. We shouldn’t have to feel that way.”

UPDATE 12:34 p.m.: Post Mountain Volunteer Fire Chief Astrid Dobo which is located not far from the property where the shooting occurred is worried about how this will effect the trust firefighters need to have with their community. She wrote us, “I actually just got a call from another local fire chief who is really concerned…[W]e have always had an issue with the Hmong community being scared of firefighters especially after the Lava fire incident, but now that they see a Calfire “investigator”, who is actually a CalFire law enforcement officer, not a firefighter, shooting their dog and raiding them…We are very concerned about people being even more scared of firefighters.”

Dobo went on to say, “In most situations, firefighters, including Cal Fire firefighters, are here to help. We do not carry guns. The man who shot the dog is a law enforcement officer employed by CalFire, he is not a firefighter and will usually not show up at fires.”

Reporting on this article was provided in part by our news partner, KMUD News’, Lauren Schmitt. Listen to the audio of her report here: