National Roundup

California
Police recover lizards stolen from reptile store
LOS ANGELES, Calif. (AP) — Police in California announced two arrests and the return of a pair of unique lizards that were stolen from a reptile shop last year.

The Long Beach Police Department said Friday that the two Australian lace monitor lizards were stolen from JTK Reptiles in Long Beach in November, The Los Angeles Times reports.

The lizards, which can grow to be more than 6 feet (1.83 meters) long, were valued together at $75,000.

Three people entered the store, broke into the cages holding the lizards and escaped to a waiting car, authorities said.

Police tracked the lizards to a Panorama City house Sept. 23. Jose Luis Macias Jr., 30, and Kassandra Marie Duenas, 27, who were in the house at the time, were arrested and charged with second-degree robbery.

Both men were released on $50,000 bail, police said.

Animal control handlers were called to recover the lizards before being returned to their owner, Long Beach Police Department spokesman Brandon Fahey said.

The suspects “seem to be knowledgeable about lizards and lizard value and lizard selling,” Fahey said.

Fahey declined to say how detectives found the animals.

“As far as I know, the lizards were A-OK,” Fahey said. “We lucked out there.”

California
Los Angeles faces lawsuit over marijuana delivery licenses
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two marijuana trade organizations filed a lawsuit Monday against the nation’s largest legal pot market over restrictions on stand-alone delivery services that have blocked them from obtaining licenses until 2025.

The lawsuit against Los Angeles and its Department of Cannabis Regulation seeks to overturn rules enacted earlier this year that postponed the availability of those licenses for certain businesses, even though broad legal sales began in the state in January 2018.

Under the changes, those licenses would only be available to so-called social-equity operators — people, many of color, who were arrested or convicted of a marijuana-related offense or lived in neighborhoods marked by high marijuana arrest rates.

The lawsuit does not seek to limit the right of social-equity applicants to obtain delivery licenses, but wants the court to permit other stand-alone delivery businesses to apply, which is what the law initially allowed.

The revised regulation, as rewritten by City Council in July, “is a death blow,” said Zachary Pitts, CEO of Ganja Goddess delivery service, who filed the suit along with the trade groups Southern California Coalition and the California Cannabis Couriers Association.

“It’s devastating. No one is going to last until 2025,” Pitts said.

The city cannabis agency and the city attorney’s office had no immediate comment.

The lawsuit marks the latest sign of turbulence in Los Angeles’ troubled marijuana market, which was once expected to be a world-leading cannabis economy. Instead, illegal sales continue to thrive while legal businesses struggle with hefty taxes, limited licenses and dense regulations that they say choke growth.

Coalition executive director Adam Spiker said delivery businesses have been waiting since 2018 to enter the LA market, only to have the city reverse course as it sought to address widespread complaints about its licensing and social-equity programs. Many have pulled out, damaging the supply chain.

“These people have sat here and waited” to legally enter the market, Spiker said. “Out of nowhere their pathway ,.. was taken.”

The lawsuit said that the city cannabis agency was initially required by law to issue 20 licenses under a delivery pilot program to non-social equity businesses. But the agency never accepted applications for those licenses through mid-2020.

Instead the law was recast, and only social-equity license holders would be eligible for new retail and delivery licenses through 2025.

The lawsuit said their rights were violated by “unreasonable delay and poor handling of the licensing process, followed by a change in the law.”

Pitts said the lack of stand-alone delivery licenses in LA poses economic and organizational problems for his company, which has manufacturing and distribution licenses in Los Angeles, while its primary delivery license is in Oakland, east of San Francisco. He said the company has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in LA in anticipation of a delivery license, which is now unavailable until 2025.

The delay in licenses will only open another pathway for illegal operators to flourish, he said.

In Los Angeles “every part of the cannabis industry has gotten licensing, except delivery,” he added. “It was taken away from us and it has real consequences. It’s only hurting people.”

Hawaii
Judge rejects plea in ex-officer’s sex solicitation case
HONOLULU (AP) — A U.S. judge on Monday rejected a former Maui police officer’s guilty plea in a case accusing him of soliciting sex from a woman he pulled over for operating a vehicle while intoxicated in exchange for giving false testimony at her trial.

Brandon Saffeels said he offered to testify untruthfully. But when U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi asked if he made his offer in exchange for solicitation of sex — as federal prosecutors alleged — he said he wasn’t admitting to seeking any sexual favors if he lied at the woman’s trial. He told the woman that he “would stumble on my words to make my testimony not credible,” he said.

A court document charging Saffeels with honest services wire fraud said he allegedly used his position as a police officer to access the woman’s cellphone number and solicit sex in exchange for sabotaging the case against her.

A federal prosecutor and an FBI agent read text messages and phone call transcripts between Saffeels and the woman about her case. They discussed how the charge could get dismissed with his botched testimony and he asked her to go this house. But there were no direct references to sex.

The woman felt Saffeels’ statements to her were a bribe for sex, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mohammad Khatib said. She interpreted his statements as “sexual overtures,” he said.

Maui prosecutors dropped the charge against the woman after portions of text messages and recorded phone conversations were published by the media, Khatib said.

Saffeels was expected to plead guilty, but Kobayashi took issue with how prosecutors charged him, accusing him of bribery.

Khatib said prosecutors maintain Saffeels made the offer expecting the benefit of sexual favors.

“There’s no talk about sex in those communications,” Saffeels’ attorney, Victor Bakke, said after the hearing. “It was our position that all of this sex stuff and bribery is completely irrelevant. That’s not what he’s charged with.”