Cops bust yet another tomato grower

Police in Pullman, Wash., got a tip from a “concerned citizen” that a grow operation was going on in an apartment that he’d just visited. Two hours later, police had their search warrant, and eight police officers went in, guns drawn.

It was indeed a grow operation. The residents were growing tomatoes.

http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2007/04/13/cops-bust-yet-another-tomato-grower/

This isn't the first time people have had their homes raided over misidentified plants. Hell, it's not even the first time it's happened with tomatoes. I've also found several home invasion raids after a citizen or police officer mistook hibiscus plants for marijuana. There was the time that police in Bel Aire, Kansas raided the home of the town's former mayor after mistaking a sunflower plant for marijuana (the sunflower is also the state flower of Kansas). In 2002, police in Travis County, Texas brought a helicopter to raid the home of Sandra Smith, during which they awoke her and her roommates to the sight of guns pointed at their heads. The marijuana they were after turned out to be ragweed. And there's Ed and Jan Carden, an Orlando couple raided when police mistook elderberry bushes for marijuana.

Then there is the long history of people wrongly raided for the crime of merely owning plant growing equipment or, even worse, merely shopping at stores that sell plant growing equipment that could be used to grow marijuana (of, for that matter, just about anything else). Here's just one example. Here's another.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119546.html