Front Door Gets Pot Grower in Deep Trouble

A Fortress?

​The San Francisco Police Department has agreed to start maintaining a list of legitimate medical marijuana grows, so as to not have them raided by cops anymore, as our good buddies at The Examiner reported today.

This is good news for the cannabis movement, but it's a bit late for the 28-year old grower who faces four felonies for what he says is a legal grow.

One of those four felonies was the front door of his house. Sections of the California Penal Code provide for additional penalties if a "fortified entrance" is associated with a drug house. Now, the term "fortified entrance" itself conjures up images of cartels, not Sunset District homes, and was probably written in order to impose greater penalties on drug kingpins, not a dude with 162 pot plants in his home and legal recommendations for each.

But Cody Phillips faces that additional felony charge because of the metal gate on his house at 215 Crestmont Drive, according to the Axis of Love medical marijuana provider network. The gate is nothing special -- identical to thousands of other front gates seen on homes throughout San Francisco. But because police and prosecutors added the "fortified entrance" charge, Phillips's bail went up by $50,000, said Shona Gochenaur, Axis of Love's den mother.

As far as Gochenaur knows, prosecutors plan to bring Phillips's case forward. A spokeswoman for the District Attorney's Office did not immediately return calls and e-mails from SF Weekly for comment.

Phillips was busted because one of his buddies is a former felon, a criminal for life for -- what else? -- pot charges in Florida. While casing Phillips's house, SFPD noticed the felon going in and out of 215 Crestmont's fortified entrance, providing probable cause for the raid, Gochenaur said.

That's likely a violation of San Francisco's lowest priority ordinance, Gochenaur thinks, and police compliance with lowest priority has been an ongoing issue with cannabis advocates.

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