US cops get gun stuck to MRI machine in bungled cannabis raid

fpslem@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 704 points – US cops get gun stuck to MRI machine in bungled cannabis raid
yahoo.com

Bumbling US cops who raided a medical diagnostics center thinking it was a cannabis farm got a gun stuck to the powerful magnets of an MRI machine, a California lawsuit has alleged.

The owners of the facility are claiming damages against the Los Angeles Police Department for an operation their lawyers describe as "nothing short of a disorganized circus."

Their lawsuit details how a SWAT team swarmed Noho Diagnostic Center after the squad's leader persuaded a magistrate to issue a search warrant.

Officer Kenneth Franco drew on his "twelve hours of narcotics training" and discovered the facility was using more electricity than nearby stores, the lawsuit said.

"Officer Franco, therefore, concluded (the facility) was cultivating cannabis, disregarding the fact that it is a diagnostic facility utilizing an MRI machine, X-ray machine and other heavy medical equipment -- unlike the surrounding businesses selling flowers, chocolates and children's merchandise," the suit said.

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It gets worse:

Instead of seeking expert advice on how to retrieve the weapon, one officer decided to activate the emergency shutdown button.

"This action caused the MRI's magnet to rapidly lose superconductivity, leading to the evaporation of approximately 2,000 liters of helium gas and resulting in extensive damage to the MRI machine," the suit said.

The officer then retrieved his gun, but left a magazine full of bullets on the floor of the MRI office, the suit says.

When you're never, ever, punished, eh who gives a fuck

Exactly, the city is going to be on the hook for this, at worst he'll get a talking to by the chief.

California still has a 10 round magazine capacity limit for ordinary private ownership, I believe. (Last I heard the ruling striking it down was stayed).

So, did this cop negligently just leave a super illegal thing (by California legal standards) on the floor for some medical technician to eventually pick up and get legally slapped for?

TBF, If I saw a big red button labeled stop, I would have pressed it in that scenario, most emergency stops don’t destroy the entire system.

You would have pressed it to retrieve a personal item? Seriously? Like if you're visiting a factory and your phone fell on the assembly floor you would run to the first red button you could find and press it without asking anyone? If so, please never get on an airplane.

I’m wondering the timeframe. Did the gun SWOOSH out of his hand and then he slammed the button right in front of him worried the gun was going to explode or something?

What’s unforgivable is cops in LOS ANGELES even using one penny of taxpayer dollars to even think about cannabis. I guess they’re protecting state coffers - illegal buds = no tax revenue.

I’d want them to respond to complaints about growers near schools or something… and try to be proactive I suppose if a residential neighborhood reeks…

But reviewing all business power consumption and going on fishing expeditions WTF?! In LA?!?

Like my redneck ass town wouldnt consider that enough due to the amount of folks qith home machine shops and specialist equipment. But somehow LA isn't supposed to have that.

If it was me, i would ask the people there how to retrieve my stuff.... I might get into trouble but hey in this scenario im a police who lose their gun to MRI machine so I'll look stupid either way

The people there were probably handcuffed on the floor and not in a mood to help.

With the benefit of hindsight we all would.

Also, the benefit of common fucking sense to ask the professionals before just hitting an emergency button when there's no immediate danger.

The ones I'm familiar with don't say stop on them and they have a plastic guard over them to make you be really sure you want to hit it. It also causes damage to our tools (giant electron microscopes) because it has to make itself safe instantly, which means neutralized a lot of electricity, various gasses, and mechanical parts in an instant.

But it's also not unusual that E-Stops can cause severe damage to a machine when used. After all, such switches are meant to instantaneously bring everything to a screeching halt for safety reasons without worrying about the machine.

And in this case, the E-Stop is meant to prevent the MRI from exploding and sending pieces of shrapnel flying everywhere. MRI machines can be quite dangerous in operation.

MRI machines don't explode and send shrapnel everywhere lmao.

The quench button is used if a person is pinned by a ferrous object, or if there's a large fire in the room and firefighters need to get in the room.

The electrical E-stop button is used if the equipment is on fire, or if there's flooding.

MRI machines do explode and send shrapnel everywhere. Emergency stopping them causes the helium that's trapped in the part that rotates the magnets to become a gas, then expand as the magnets superheat. In some cases, this causes an understandable explosion.

Seriously happened once already this year https://healthimaging.com/topics/medical-imaging/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri/mri-explosion-leaves-3-injured-including-2-hospital-staffers , the cop is lucky.

I agree, imagine if you were just sitting around figuring out what to do and the gun went off in the MRI possibly killing someone. The mistake was entry in the first place, not this

a magazine full of bullets

I know this is just the reporter's ignorance, but I'm imagining a magazine full of bullets, no cases, powder, or ever primers.

I don't know about anyone else, but comments like this make me want to use firearms terminology incorrectly on purpose.

Forgive my ignorance but isn't a bullet made up by those things? Why would they need to mention the components of the bullet for it to make sense?

A round consists of a casing, a primer, gun powder, and a bullet. A bullet is just a hunk of metal. What was left behind should have been addressed as a magazine full of live rounds, or live ammunition. (simplified version, there are many different types of rounds)

As opposed to a magazine of spent rounds?

Came to the comments b/c I was wildly confused. Nowwww I get it, live round ammunition. Thank uuuu

Are you going to write a correction letter to the editor?

Raided based on nothing more than power usage. Ignored warning in place around the MRI to prevent an accident. Cops gun gets pulled out of his hands and he pull the emergency shutdown button. Now it will cost a couple of hundred thousand to get the MRI going again. Somehow the cops will blame someone else.

Also, they left behind a loaded magazine on the floor 🤣

Even Barney Fife is amazed at how terrible of a cop that dude is.

Losing 2,000 litres of helium is possibly the worst part of this.

A large part of the price as well. Not to mention magnets that were destroyed.

Don't know about MRI machines but reenergizing NMRs that were quenched is fucking expensive

I love how cops take less training to arrest people than I took to professionally reset passwords

Leader and judge who issued should be fired and disbarred immediately. I feel like something should happen to the rank and file who follow such stupidity too but not sure what.

Yeah, good point. A judge signed a warrant on just 'this place uses more electricity than others'? The court system's just a rubber stamp at this stage.

Don't forget the "distinct odor" lol. That just says to me that the cops lied through their teeth to get the warrant.

“I smelled weed” is the classic cop trick to skirt around probable cause.

the 'odor' was probably just 'clean', and mr copper doesn't know what 'clean' smells like so it just had to be something super illegal.

Nah, they don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. “I smelled weed” has been used for decades to skirt probable cause requirements. Because it’s transient evidence that can’t be saved or replicated, and you can’t prove that they’re lying. You can be 100% clean, but a cop claims he smelled weed and now your car’s interior paneling is getting ripped out on the side of the highway.

The cop lied to get the search approved. No more, no less.

It may very well have been true because cancer patients get CT scans but that just goes to show how a smell shouldn’t be justification for a fucking raid.

Can anyone pinpoint the timeframe in which real life became a series of Monty Python skits?

I can see it now. The first two cops enter the room and are instantly sucked into the MRI machine due to their guns and other metal items. They comically struggle to use their radio on account of being stuck to the machine. They finally manage to get to their radio and call for help. The moment backup arrives, they are sucked into the machine as well. The third cop lands with his crotch precariously close to the face of one of the other cops. More struggling continues. New guy can get to his radio just fine and radios for more backup. The first two try to stop him but to no avail. Again, backup arrives. Again, backup gets sucked into the machine. "Hey guys, I can reach my radio just fine. I'll call for backup." Cue the chorus "NOOOOOOOO!". He stops. They have a debate over how to explain the predicament to the next round of backup they need to call. They bicker a bit, but settle on an extremely nuanced and verbose message. The reply comes out static-y but they rejoice as surely they'll be saved. Door opens. "You were breaking up. What were you trying to... AHHHHHH!" Sucked into the machine. Curtains close on the cast bickering.

You forgot the bit where they have a gun duel thru the MRI machine where all the bullets get suspended in the field and they still do matrix style moves amd think they are dodging.

07/16/1980

It wasnt great before that either, but I think the element of frustratingly silly was added about then.

Or Benny Hill. I can hear Yackety-Sax playing while they run around the place and end up with their gun stuck to the MRI machine.

Real life has always been either Pythonesque or the 3 Stooges. And as far as anyone can tell, is unlikely to ever be fixed.

The summary just says gun, so I assumed hand gun. it was a rifle.

Hahaha that so Mich more amusing. The guy had to keep watch on his rifle stuck on a MRI machine <3

If I ever saw a building using more power, my automatic assumption would be a big machine is inside.

If it were ridiculously high, then my next guess would be a crypto mining farm.

Ain't no way modern LED lamps for growing plants gonna be drawing that much power.

Not to mention any of these fools could have just as easily sent someone inside to check. Or if they really wanted to play coppers so bad, book a fake appointment or even just pretend to be a news agency to ask for a tour.

Depends on the scale; modern LEDs just means you can make the farm bigger for the same level of power consumption. There's also dehumidifiers, which suck a decent amount of power because they're basically AC units.

Still, I think crypto farm would be my first guess if there's no obvious other reason for the power usage (which in this case there is, it's a fucking medical imaging place)

They didn't wanna play private investigator, plus there's extra legal shielding for a cop to be a dumbass than for them to actually know their stuff; it's also not very likely of them to have a higher level education either sadly. Maybe they attend PragerU or something to pretend intelligence.

The swat leader had over 12 hours of narcotics training. Pretty much a PhD.

That was a hilarious read. It just kept getting better, like I was reading Yakety Sax.

Could I theoretically make my home immune to guns by surrounding it with kevlar-coated MRIs

I hope you and anyone in your immediate vicinity don't value your payment cards or electronic devices.

Payment cards haven't used the magnetic stripe for ages. At least in Europe. Then again, in Europe I never felt the need of making my home gun proof...

Do they not have the stripe as a fall back? We use chips here too, but I periodically still have to use the stripe when a chip reader fails repeatedly.

I haven't used one in about 10 years. It used to be chip, now it's all contactless.

Yeah, it is chip for the most part and some contactless (and some shit holes only do contactless through their phone app), but crappy chip equipment and card issues means I have to use the stripe about every quarter or so.

Who needs credit cards when I'm rich enough to build an above-ground bulletproof bunker powered by supercooled 5-tesla magnets

If you can afford the machines and the associated power usage, yes. Though the magnets inside are what you really want and would be easier to set in place than the whole machine.

Radiologist here. There are multiple safety zones (four to be precise) around the machine and extensive screening procedures are required to access the inner zones. The magnet of an MRI is always on and extremely strong. However, you need to be pretty close for it to pull a gun from your hands. Like, less than a few meters. That would be zone 4. He should never have been that close.

The button he pressed is called a quench. It's for life threatening emergencies only. Think "patient trapped between the machine and a metal object." It vents the liquid helium used to keep it superconductive and basically destroys the machine. There is a way to wind the machine down without destroying it in situations that aren't life threatening, but it takes over 24 hours.

Are the cops routinely getting copies of electric bills?

I was so hoping this happened in a city named Keystone.