Judge clears Palm Springs man’s criminal record years after pot bust

A judge has cleared a man arrested in a 2015 raid on a Cathedral City marijuana grow site.

On Monday, December 28, 2015, the Cathedral City Fire Department responded to a reported structure fire at the 36500 block of Bankside Drive. CCFD found an electrical panel had burned, and the structure housed a suspected marijuana growing operation.

Fire personnel contacted Cathedral City Police who discovered a substantial growing operation at that location as well as two adjacent locations. Officers sealed the locations and notified the Coachella Valley Narcotics Task Force (CVNTF) and Cathedral City’s Chief Building Official.

The next day, The Coachella Valley Narcotics Task Force seized 2,736 plants.

“[The grow] was big, and that requires a substantial draw on the electricity and apparently that might have been one of the issues with the electrical panel trying to keep up with it,” said said Lt. Glen Haas of the Cathedral City Police Department.

No one was injured in the fire.

On Tuesday December 29, the CVNTF served search warrants at the Bankside locations and recovered a total of 2,736 plants. The business owner, Michael King of Palm Springs, was on scene during the search and seizure of the plants. The CVNTF said King was not licensed to conduct business in Cathedral City. King, 37, was placed under arrest.

In March of 2018, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office says that a criminal case was never filed in this matter.

On March 8, 2019, the Superior Court of the State of California granted Michael King’s petition, a judge writing, in part, in an order, “The record of arrest in this matter shall be sealed… and the arrest deemed not to have occurred.”

In 2015, it was illegal to have a large marijuana grow in Cathedral City, but the city had allowed for medical marijuana dispensaries to operate with a permit.

“If it falls under compassionate use where the person is providing the marijuana for a dispensary, it’s up to the courts to determine whether or not that is applicable, as far as Cathedral City is concerned it’s not legal to grow it or have a cultivation business within city limits,” said Haas, at the time of the arrest.

CVNTF also served a search warrant at King’s home in Palm Springs where they recovered cash, and 26 lbs of packaged marijuana.

The 2,736 plants were destroyed per a court order, and the 26 lbs of marijuana seized from King’s house was booked as evidence.

The Desert City Cab dispatch office is next door to the illegal grow. Days after the fire, they didn’t have power and worked by candlelight.

“For quite some time it has been smelling really bad in here and I even called the cops several times complaining there was weed next door, and they had to be growing plants because it reeked in here for such a long time,” said Daisy, a dispatcher with Desert City Cab.