A couple of one-time Rohnert Park police officers spent years posing as ATF agents and shaking down legal medical marijuana drivers for their cash and stash, and they got busted, but now their sentencing is delayed.
Before we had recreational marijuana at the beginning of 2018, we had the medical marijuana era, a sort of “wild west” period when, well, laws and regulations were much looser. Weed businesses tested these loosely regulated boundaries, as did criminals, as did cops who were criminals on the side. One notorious case of the latter was two Rohnert Park police officers who would pull over and shake down medical marijuana drivers, while falsely posing as federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms (ATF) agents, and simply stealing the drivers’ weed and cash for themselves.
These now-former officers Brendan “Jacy” Tatum and Joseph Huffaker were eventually arrested and indicted, and have turned on each other in a sense, or at least, Huffaker testified against Tatum in exchange for a lighter sentence. That sentence was supposed to have been handed down Wednesday, but Bay Area News Group reports that Huffaker’s sentencing has been delayed until February 4, because he fired his attorney (who still appeared in court Wednesday), which also means a likely delay in Tatum’s sentencing that’s scheduled for February 18.
Oh and as a hilarious aside, KQED reported last year that Tatum was busted for an illegal marijuana grow on his property last February. “I made a mistake, I know,” he reportedly told inspectors who discovered this. “I’m just trying to make some money and get things squared away for my family before I go to prison.”
Regardless, the other cop Huffaker is hoping for a sentence of home confinement and one year of supervised release. Prosecutors scoff and want a five-and-a-half year prison sentence, despite that Huffaker has many supportive letters from his buddies in law enforcement.
“Despite significant familial and community support that many defendants don’t have, as well as a solid job and relative financial security, [Huffaker] engaged in criminal activity based seemingly on greed and a desire to exert power over those within his domain,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memo, per the News Group.
Though perhaps we should not feel that bad for former Rohnert Park police officer Joseph Huffaker. As the Bay Area News Group points out, the City of Rohnert Park had to pay him a $75,000 settlement to get him to quit his job as a cop, despite the lengthy list of federal charges against him.
Image: SAN FRANCISCO - JUNE 22: A Federal law enforcement agent carries a pile of marijuana plants siezed during a raid of a medicinal marijuana club June 22, 2005 in San Franciso, California. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that Federal authorities may prosecute sick people whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease pain, concluding that state laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
