The King County Sheriff’s Office is taking a careful approach to medical marijuana collective garden enforcement and drafting a letter to the County about their concerns over the reopening of Club Evo, (with a new name “Reventon”), the White Center night club with a spotted past, according to KCSO West Precinct Commander Major James Graddon, addressing the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council on August 4.
“It is really unclear to us,” Maj. Graddon said about the Sheriff’s Office approach to medical marijuana collective gardens and businesses making cannabis available to patients. He mentioned Seattle’s recent ordinance that aims to legitimize those businesses, stating, “King County is still struggling with that.”
Maj. Graddon said KCSO will take a careful approach to enforcement, waiting for clearer direction from prosecutors and legislators. He said KCSO will not take the City of Kent approach where the city council put a moratorium on dispensaries, then sent their police force out that same day to raid all operations and seize their property.
“We’ve already had to give back … 11 pounds of marijuana to one guy. That is bad law, that is creating a bad precedent for us in the future. We need to step carefully into this and figure out the regulatory pieces and do it right the first time,” he said. “We may have to tolerate these in our communities for a period of time until we figure it out … it remains a very gray area.”
Club Evo, now Reventon, applies for business license
Maj. Graddon said former White Center dance club owner Alfredo Lopez applied for a new business license with King County’s Department of Developmental and Environmental Services during the first week of August.
Lopez’s plan to reopen his 16th Ave S.W. club in White Center has been met with resistance from community members and law enforcement based upon numerous problems with fighting, shootings and crime related to the club’s operation. To read more about Club Evo’s past and Lopez’s plan for the future, please check out the Herald story, North Highline UAC tackles reemergence of Club Evo in White Center.
“We have a role to play in providing factual information from the Sheriff’s Office about what we think has happened up there and I guess the logic line is, ‘If it’s going to be basically the same (business model), we should assume some of the same problems will exist,’ and that’s not acceptable to me as the precinct commander out here,” Maj. Graddon said. “I do not want to get another report of my deputy standing there watching a gun battle as they have to chase (the suspect) down the street.“
Maj. Graddon said he has been speaking with the King County’s Executive Office, DDES and county councilmembers about the KCSO’s concerns over the club reopening.
When asked whether off-duty deputies would be allowed to work as hired as security for Reventon (as Lopez has said he plans) , Maj. Graddon leaned towards the unlikely, saying it certainly would not happen if the club procured a liquor license.
“We are not naïve, this wasn’t three months of ‘I tried hip hop and it didn’t work,’ we know that was not the case,” Maj. Graddon said about Lopez’s contention that his security and crime problems stemmed only from a short period of time before closing, where he allowed a different promoter to hold hip hop shows at the club on 16th Ave S.W.
For more information on the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council, where monthly crimes stats are presented, please visit their website.
