Plant Police: Garden Shopping Trip Results in Fully Armed DEA SWAT RaidLily Dane In another disturbing case of government agency overreach, the DEA raided the home of a woman whom they observed leaving a hydroponics store carrying a green plastic bag containing unknown items. The contents of that bag? Organic fertilizer for her hibiscus plants. Last September, Angela Kirking bought the fertilizer at Midwest Hydroganics in Illinois. Three weeks later, her home was raided at 5 am by four DEA agents and five Shorewood, Ill., police officers, Kirking said: The result of the raid? Agents found 9.3 grams of marijuana (less than one-third of an ounce) and slapped Kirking with two misdemeanors. Kirkings lawyer, former prosecutor Jeff Tomczak, is trying to have the search warrant and the two misdemeanor charges thrown out. He said her visit to the garden store was the sole reason for the entire investigation. 100 percent nothing else, he said, calling that far too thin a thread on which to base a search warrant, the details of which are questionable: The judge signed the warrant because Kaminski wrote that he detected a strong odor of green cannabis in one of Kirkings trash bags, and said her homes electric bill was higher than that of her neighbors. Another officer conducted a field test (which are notoriously flawed) on a green plant stem, which allegedly tested positive for marijuana. Tomczak pointed out that an application for a search warrant for a different Midwest Hydroganics customer stated that police had found no evidence of marijuana plant residue in the trash and suggested that was evidence a suspect was covering up his marijuana grow. Will County Judge Bennett Braun said he would decide whether to toss the search warrant (whc would end the case) later this month. Kirking said she hopes the judge finds the warrant invalid and that the garden stakeouts end: What lesson can we learn when growing flowers and vegetables casts a shadow of suspicion over you? Perhaps there are too many vacancies in the industrial prison system the DEA just has to go out and drum up some business. Creating criminals out of thin air your tax dollars at work. Lily Dane is a staff writer for The Daily Sheeple, where this first appeared. Her goal is to help people to Wake the Flock Up! 