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A wave of crime targeting cannabis companies has been rising steadily in recent years. Unable to use traditional banking systems, many cannabis companies often have large amounts of cash on site, along with highly valuable cannabis products that can be easily flipped on the illicit market. This makes them tempting targets for gangs and criminal organizations.\u00a0Nowhere are these attacks\u00a0more prolific<\/a>\u00a0than in California, where cannabis robberies continue to ravage legal facilities.<\/p>\n Preferred Gardens<\/a>\u2018 founder and CEO, David Polley, has been cultivating cannabis since the days of California\u2019s medical market. The company\u2019s Sacramento facility was built in 2020 and features prison-like security after he invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in installing high-end infrastructure.<\/p>\n At around 2 a.m. on Christmas morning, there was a flurry of activity at Preferred Gardens. Sadly, it wasn\u2019t Santa; instead, seven masked men heavily armed with guns and crowbars systematically destroyed the facility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite ample security at the facility that costs tens of thousands of dollars each month, Polley awoke on Christmas Day to countless missed calls, texts and notifications that the doors to his building were open.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew it was a robbery because we\u2019re in the heart of the cannabis zone in Sacramento and, unfortunately, these robberies are happening every single night,\u201d Polley told\u00a0Cannabis Now.<\/em><\/p>\n It took police ninety minutes to respond to the alarm\u2014well under the standard call time\u2014with local law enforcement blaming staff shortages. California standards require 90% of all 911 calls to be answered within 15 seconds, but according to a\u00a0local news source<\/a>, only 88% of calls going into the Sacramento Police Department meet that requirement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Security footage reveals that the perpetrators were in the facility for half an hour. \u201cThey came in, stole a bunch of stuff, left for about 10 minutes and came back to take more,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Polley believes the police response would be different if this were happening in any other industry.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is just happening every day right now. All these robberies cost a minimum of hundreds of thousands of dollars,\u201d he says. \u201cIf it were a \u2018normal\u2019 business, the police department would be all over it.\u201d<\/p>\n After the robbery, an Instagram post<\/a> by Preferred Gardens stated that the facility had \u201chighly paid armed guards on both sides of the grow, a prison fence, steel gates, live video monitoring, high tech alarms, 3 separate camera systems and motion sensors.\u201d<\/p>\n Polley says that people were stunned to hear he\u2019d been targeted. \u201c\u2019No way. How does that place? How do they get past?\u2019 Everyone says inside job, but my team is like family, so it\u2019s nothing to do with us,\u201d he says, confirming that he\u2019s looking into all avenues.<\/p>\n The government facility beside Polley\u2019s also has 24-hour guards. But for unknown reasons, the guard was either away from their post or not at the facility.<\/p>\n Like other regulated cannabis businesses operating within the law, Preferred Gardens is insured. However, as so often is the case, Polley says his insurance company refuses to pay out, even though he pays a substantial monthly amount on his policies.<\/p>\n While robberies like the one suffered by Polley are happening across the country, he thinks that other states aren\u2019t as lenient on lawbreakers as they are in the Golden State and that it seems like California \u201cis a lost cause.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know people who spent millions and millions of dollars building facilities in the Bay Area and they\u2019ve been decimated,\u201d Polley says. \u201cAfter the robberies, the police were telling them just to go ahead and shoot people that come into the facility because they were understaffed.\u201d<\/p>\n He believes the robbers from the Bay Area could be responsible for those occurring in Sacramento. In a similar scenario to what\u2019s happened in Oakland, local law enforcement isn\u2019t doing enough to catch the perpetrators and press charges.<\/p>\n \u201cLaw enforcement isn\u2019t helping; they watch these robberies happen and don\u2019t pursue the suspects,\u201d Polley says, adding that these curveballs are \u201cpart of the game.\u201d However, he still believes the law can take greater action and catch the responsible criminals.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are losing their entire livelihood from these robberies. I hope law enforcement steps up their game and does something because it\u2019s really easy for them to end it,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n The most important thing for Polley is that no one from his team was present or injured at the time of the robbery.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re pretty resilient to this kind of stuff from the medical days of robbery and raids,\u201d he says. \u201cThis industry is rough. You have to be ready for anything. We move on, we learn something\u2014we do whatever we have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n The post California\u2019s High Stakes Holiday Heists<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A wave of crime targeting cannabis companies has been rising steadily in recent years. Unable to use traditional banking systems, many cannabis companies often have large amounts of cash on site, along with highly valuable cannabis products that can be easily flipped on the illicit market. This makes them temptingContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":71332,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,17550,90,1593,14223,17551,163],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71331"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71333,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71331\/revisions\/71333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Preferred-Garden-Destroyed-Grow-Room-768x1024-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Security Issues<\/h4>\n
![\"cannabis](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Preferred-Garden-Snapped-Plants-768x1024-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Cannabis Robberies: An Ongoing Problem<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: California\u2019s High Stakes Holiday Heists<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"