The Daily Populous Wednesday September 25th, 2024 evening edition
Authored by sfgate.com and submitted by licecrispies

FILE: An LAPD officer looks at a car at the unveiling of two new Ford Fusion hybrid pursuit-rated Police Responder cars at LAPD headquarters. David McNew/Getty Images

An officer with the Los Angeles Police Department found out the hard way that you can’t take metal near an MRI machine after their rifle flew out of their hands and became attached to the machine during a pot raid gone bad, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week.

The incident’s details were described in a lawsuit filed by the owners of a Los Angeles medical imaging center, who allege that their business was wrongly targeted by LAPD during a raid in October 2023 The lawsuit was first reported on by Law360.com.

The owners of NoHo Diagnostic Center are suing the LAPD, the city of Los Angeles and multiple police officers, alleging they violated the business owners’ constitutional rights and demanding an unspecified amount in damages. Officers allegedly raided the diagnostic center, located in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, thinking it was a front for an illegal cannabis cultivation facility, pointing to higher-than-usual energy use and the “distinct odor” of cannabis plants, according to the lawsuit.

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Officers raided the facility on Oct. 18, 2023, and detained the lone female employee while they searched the business, the lawsuit said. However, they didn’t find a single cannabis plant and only saw a typical medical facility with rooms used for conducting x-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans and MRIs, the owners said.

The officers then released the employee and told her to call a manager, the lawsuit said, while they continued to wander around various rooms of the facility. The plaintiffs say the officers’ behavior was “nothing short of a disorganized circus, with no apparent rules, procedures, or even a hint of coordination.”

At one point, an officer walked into an MRI room, past a sign warning that metal was prohibited inside, with his rifle “dangling… in his right hand, with an unsecured strap,” the lawsuit said. The MRI machine’s magnetic force then allegedly sucked his rifle across the room, pinning it against the machine. MRI machines are tube-shaped scanners that use incredibly strong magnetic fields to create images of the brain, bones, joints and other internal organs.

An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit.

Doggleganger on September 25th, 2024 at 03:26 UTC »

> Officers allegedly raided the diagnostic center, located in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, thinking it was a front for an illegal cannabis cultivation facility, pointing to higher-than-usual energy use and the “distinct odor” of cannabis plants, according to the lawsuit.

So the police raided the medical center because they thought it was a front for growing weed (due to high energy consumption). When they should have recognized their error, they instead wandered around the facility until some dumbass took his rifle near the MRI machine.

lahdetaan_tutkimaan on September 25th, 2024 at 03:19 UTC »

When I was a kid, I thought that policemen knew a lot about all sorts of things because they were out in the world interacting with people in all sorts of places. As a kid, I would have thought that a police officer would know how an MRI machine works because they just know about all sorts of things

Adulthood has taught me that this is manifestly untrue

clarkwgriswoldjr on September 25th, 2024 at 02:52 UTC »

I didn't know this part, helium gas and that the emergency button damages it. Wow.

"An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit."