Marijuana Policy Project

Federal agents, with help from Alameda County sheriff's deputies, broke into what was apparently a marijuana-growing operation on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland on Wednesday as employees from a nearby bakery watched.

The raid was part of larger action at several Bay Area locations, including sites in Hayward and San Leandro, although the Drug Enforcement Administration provided few details.

DEA Special Agent in Charge Javier Pena said documents regarding the raids remain under court seal. "Search warrants were conducted at several locations throughout the Bay Area and Northern California and items of evidentiary value were seized from these locations," Pena said.

Another DEA agent said the raids were aimed at major distributors in the upper echelons of the marijuana trade.

There have been no arrests so far, the DEA said.

An employee at the bakery across from raided locations in Oakland questioned why the DEA took so long.

"Every day I go to lunch and I smell, like, skunk or something, but I knew what it was — because it smells like marijuana," said Patty Garcia, who was working at Neldam's Danish Bakery, 3401 Telegraph Ave., across the street from the warehouse-type building that was an apparent marijuana farm.

"I had the suspicion for the longest time, a couple years, but I had also heard there was an investigation going on that whole time," said Garcia, of Oakland. She added, "When I got to work at 10 today I could smell the smell again, and all these guys in black T-shirts that said DEA, and I knew what happened."

Meanwhile, a member of the Marijuana Policy Project questioned the feds' timing, adding that if a bill now in the state Legislature passes, the DEA will get a cold shoulder from California law enforcement officials.

The bill, Assembly Bill 2743 by Assemblywoman Lori Saldana, D-San Diego, would stop state, county and city law enforcement from participating in DEA raids. The bill passed out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee on May 22.

"(Wednesday's raids) will outrage some supporters of medical marijuana, which are the majority of Californians," the Marijuana Project's Bruce Mirken said.

"Part of me wonders if this is sort of a last gasp, folks in the Bush administration who know this is going to be their last year and they're going to take out as many providers as they can before they go. "... There is some pattern to the DEA doing things at moments that seem to be relevant to legislation."

DEA officials raided 10 medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles in July 2007, on the same day the City Council there voted whether to place a moratorium on new pot clubs, Mirken said. The council voted in favor of a one-year moratorium.

Oakland police were absent from Wednesday's marijuana raids. Under Oakland's Measure Z, passed by voters in 2004, the city makes investigations of adult marijuana offenses the lowest law enforcement priority.

The raid was intense in Oakland, Garcia said. "They broke the door down; there's glass everywhere. The ground is covered with digitized medical records."

The building used to be occupied by a medical records office, Neldam's employees said.