Skip to content

Inside Richmond City Hall. File photo by Tawanda Kanhema.

Court documents point to ‘pay to play’ scheme between marijuana dispensaries and City Council

on November 16, 2016

A new set of documents filed in an ongoing court case suggest that the heads of Richmond’s three medical marijuana dispensaries may have paid City Councilmembers to back legislation favorable to the dispensaries.

The documents, which were filed with the Contra Costa Superior Court on Nov. 3 and Nov. 9, are part of a lawsuit brought by Richmond Compassionate Care Collective (RCCC) against the dispensaries, their owners, and others that the collective—a dispensary that has tried to open shop in the city for six years without success—alleges conspired to monopolize the local medical marijuana trade.

The documents, which include a series of declarations made under oath and compiled by plaintiff RCCC’s attorney in late October and the attorney for the defense in early November, give conflicting accounts of the ways in which local dispensary heads interacted with Richmond politicians, police officers and prominent community members. Plaintiffs allege backdoor dealings, greased palms and illegal payments, while the defense denies implications of bribery, saying the accusations are false and made by individuals seeking revenge.

In one of the documents, a sworn statement given to an RCCC attorney on Oct. 24, Richmond Police Sergeant Michael Rood recalled an April 2015 conversation with his colleague Detective Erik Oliver and Rebecca Vasquez, the president and executive director of Holistic Healing Collective dispensary. During this conversation, Rood said, Vasquez and an associate repeatedly bragged that they “pay the City Council to get what they want.”

At the time, Rood and Oliver were both officers in RPD’s Regulatory Unit, which oversees the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries. Declarations filed by defense attorneys suggest that Rood, whom the documents say was implicated in the case involving the woman formerly known as Celeste Guap, was later “disciplined, demoted and removed” from the unit. But records from the Richmond City Manager’s office state that as of Nov. 15, Rood is still on the city’s payroll as a sergeant. (In sworn statements submitted to the court, both Rood and Oliver stated they no longer work on the unit but did not provide reasons for their reassignments.)

According to Rood’s declaration, Vasquez said she “paid $8,000 to City Councilmembers to make certain” that an amendment to a city ordinance that would limit the available number of permits given to dispensaries “would pass.”

“I interpreted this to mean an illegal payment or a bribe to City Councilmembers,” Rood said in the statement. He added that Vasquez “did not ever try to claim that the payment was a campaign contribution.”

In an interview last week, Vasquez’s lawyer denied that Vasquez made such statements and dismissed the claims as “hearsay.” The lawyer said that Vasquez was unavailable for comment.

Other sworn statements included among the plaintiff’s documents, from RPD detective Oliver and former Holistic Healing Collective employee Nicole Hilts, specifically named sitting City Councilmembers Jael Myrick and Jovanka Beckles as recipients of questionable payments from dispensary owners.

In interviews last week, both Councilmembers emphatically denied the claims.

“I’m very offended that there is something like this that is on the record and is not true at all,” Beckles said.

Myrick too said the charges are false and that, while Richmond dispensary owners have contributed to his political campaigns, he has never received the off-the-books payouts described in the documents.

“I have never, ever taken cash contributions from any of these dispensaries,” he said.

Campaign finance filings show that in 2016, Myrick, who was reelected to City Council last week, has received about $10,000 from medical marijuana dispensaries or their proprietors—including $2,500 from Vasquez.

Campaign finance reports also show that Beckles received $500 from Vasquez in 2014.

But the court documents suggest a pattern of questionable payments to the City Council—where prominent “community organizers” decide the fate of new businesses. An Oct. 24 declaration from RCCC attorney Brad Hirsch said that one of those organizers, Antwon Cloird, told Hirsch, “you gots to pay to play.”

In the Oct. 24 declaration, Brad Hirsch described a July 2015 meeting with Jerrold Hatchett and Antwon Cloird, two Richmond community members who, he said, have “influence on the Richmond City Council.” According to Hirsch’s statement, Cloird, who is named in the lawsuit, and Hatchett (who is not) told Hirsch that if RCCC did not “pay Hatchett and Defendant Cloird to facilitate Plaintiff RCCC’s entry into the Richmond marketplace,” Cloird would again organize community opposition to the dispensary.

“Defendant Cloird advised that Hatchett would handle the political people, meaning City Councilmembers, and that he would handle the community people,” Hirsch said in the declaration.

Cloird, his attorney and Hatchett did not respond to requests for comment.

One week after the meeting with Cloird and Hatchett, Hirsch said he paid the men $15,000, according to the Oct. 24 declaration.

The documents suggest that this was not the first—or the only—time money flowed from a dispensary to a Richmond City Councilmember.

Holistic Healing Collective employee Hilts said in an Oct. 31 declaration that her boss, Vasquez, “often bragged” about her “connections” in the city. Hilts said in her sworn statement that on several occasions she saw one of Vasquez’s associates, Lisa Hirschhorn, “pick up money from Rebecca Vasquez which Lisa Hirschhorn commented was ‘for the City Council.’”

Hirschhorn, along with Vasquez, is also named in the lawsuit. Hirschhorn’s attorney did not respond to request for comment.

Hilts, who worked in Vasquez’s shop as a “budtender,” said in the declaration that anyone entering the dispensary needed to first show a medical cannabis card, then get buzzed in. But, Hilts said, when Councilmembers Myrick and Beckles came to the shop, she never saw a card.

Instead, Hilts said in her statement, Beckles and Myrick collected envelopes.

“Due to the size of the envelopes and the thickness of the item contained inside the envelope, I believed that the envelopes contained cash,” Hilts said in her declaration. “I do not believe that the envelopes contained cannabis because the cannabis is wrapped differently.”

Beckles said that she has only been to Holistic Healing Collective twice, both times for an event.

“I know for a fact that I didn’t get an envelope with cash,” Beckles said. “I have never, ever been in there to collect any kind of envelope.”

Myrick said that he has stopped by the dispensary and picked up envelopes, but that those envelopes contained checks made out to his campaign, which he later disclosed in a filing. They were legal political contributions, he said, not envelopes containing cash.

The court documents also say Vasquez left cash for Councilmembers elsewhere.

According to the Oct. 26 declaration of her former business partner, Darron Price, Vasquez in conjunction with the proprietors of Richmond’s other two dispensaries, working together under the moniker “the Group,” left money at “the hotdog stand across the street from the Richmond City Hall for unnamed City Councilmembers.”

“On one occasion, Rebecca Vasquez told me that she left $2,500 for an unnamed City Councilmember,” Price said in his declaration.

Natalia Thurston, attorney for Vasquez and Holistic Healing Collective, said each of these declarations was made by a person with “improper” and “ulterior” motives. The documents filed by lawyers for the defense—including Thurston—in response to the declarations filed by RCCC’s attorney further detail those motives.

In her own declaration, made under oath on Nov. 7 and filed by attorneys for the defense, Vasquez denied making any payments to City Councilmembers that were not reported campaign contributions.

“Neither I, nor to my knowledge, any other board member, officer, employee or agent of [Holistic Healing Collective] has given any money to Richmond City Council members except for campaign contributions that have been reported as such,” she said.

Vasquez also said in her statement that Rood sent her “numerous inappropriate and sexually suggestive text messages” while working on the Regulatory Unit and making weekly in-person visits to her dispensary. She responded to him, she said, out of fear that if she did not he would retaliate against her business’s permit.

Vasquez said that Rood was “disciplined, demoted and removed from the Regulatory Unit” in June 2016 “for his improper sexual activity with” the woman formerly known as Celeste Guap. An RPD spokesperson said that Rood and RPD detective Oliver are still city employees but declined to provide further detail or comment on Rood’s involvement with Guap.

“The officers are still employed with the city and they’re not available for any comment regarding any ongoing civil lawsuits,” the spokesperson, Lieutenant Felix Tan, said.

City Manager Bill Lindsay, whose office oversees city departments including the police force, also declined to comment, citing state laws that prevent him from doing so.

“State law prohibits the city of Richmond from disclosing disciplinary actions or personnel records of police officers,” he said.

In her declaration, Vasquez also challenged the declarations of Price and Hilt, stating that they are two former associates acting in retaliation against her.

“All of these allegations are hearsay without any substantive evidence to back them up and they’re all being made with an improper motive to cause harm to Rebecca [Vasquez],” said Vasquez’s attorney.

In a declaration made under oath on Nov. 9, Hirschhorn also denied paying City Councilmembers. “I have never bribed or attempted to bribe any City Council members or any other federal, state or local government officials,” she said.

Hirschhorn too said that the attacks against her were “motivated by revenge.” In her declaration, she said that she had a relationship with Oliver that ended after about five years.

“At one point, I rebuffed Oliver’s sexual advances,” she said. “Ever since, Oliver has been furious with me, and has attempted to punish me.”

The RPD spokesperson declined to comment on Hirschhorn’s claim.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Nov. 17, at which point the court will decide whether it will move forward with the case or side with a motion to strike filed by the defendants.

16 Comments

  1. John Geluardi on November 16, 2016 at 12:42 pm

    Excellent story. Well written, well reported and of high value to the Richmond community. Congrats to the Richmond Confidential and reporter Reis Thebault.



  2. Kim Tran Phuc on November 16, 2016 at 5:33 pm

    On 11/8/16 RCCC’s ex parte application for an order shortening time on its motion for leave to open discovery (introduce new evidence including accusations of bribery) to continue the hearing on the anti-Slapp motion was denied.
    meaning the judge ruled against these accusations and will not consider it to be entered into this case.

    Meaning although you have the freedom of press
    What your reporting is “hear say” and is not a part of the actual court case. These “accusations” “allege” very serious accusations where innocent people and their trust in the community is compromised by your lack of due diligence and your impatient need to run a story based on trying to drum up a scandal. Mr. Thebault had you waited until tomorrow 11/17/16 after the Judge made his ruling and then reported the facts including his decision and the original accusation of violation of the cartwright act and showed the community the actual evidence brought infront of the court including the text messages and threats made from the plaintiffs, and the police offficers sexual text messages and reported more thoroughly including the numerous community input over the past 3 years showing that RCCC intimated, paid for and their negative impact to each of the locations they attempted to move to (including areas that were not located in C-3 zones, North Richmond locations, etc
    Then you might have retracted 90% of this story.
    You chose to run with several accusations that are not a part of this case and the court won’t even allow it to be introduced.
    What you are “reporting” is now considered liabious.
    I hope the defendants and honorable council members mentioned in this article file complaints and hold you accountable for this. This is called defamation of character.
    How could you hold us the community hostage with such frivolous and liabious claims? The media is supposed to report the facts not the worse case scenario and try to introduce another scandal to our community.



  3. Damama on November 16, 2016 at 6:04 pm

    I wanted to relay something that happened to me that involves Jael Myrick and money. He was holding a fundraiser that I had wanted to attend, but was unable to. He came by my house to drop off some campaign signs, and I gave him five $20 bills for a ticket to the benefit. He handed one of the twenties back to me, saying he wasn’t allowed to receive that much in cash.

    Does this sound like a man who would accept a bribe?



    • Whatever... on November 16, 2016 at 8:28 pm

      Damama – Contributions of $100 or more must be reported on candidates form 460 filings. Mr. Myrick very likely gave you back $20 so that he didn’t have to report your $80 contribution. You can confirm this by looking up his form 460 filings (well past November) and confirming whether or not he claimed your $80 contribution.



      • lisa hire on November 18, 2016 at 10:39 am

        What you describe doesn’t suggest ethical behavior. He was trying to avoid reporting.



        • Don Gosney on November 21, 2016 at 9:54 pm

          Beg to differ here but a candidate is forbidden from taking more than $99 in cash. It has nothing to do with reporting–they simply aren’t allowed to accept that much cash. LESS than $100 is okay.



    • John Spartan on November 17, 2016 at 1:46 am

      Does not prove anything… $20 VS. thousands of dollars he was being bribed with.



  4. John Spartan on November 17, 2016 at 1:45 am

    Myrick first says he never took money from Marijuana Dispensaries but then admits to taking “campaign contributions” so did you or didn’t you? Sounds like Myrick has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar!! Buckles opened her mouth so obviously telling a lie!

    Sounds like sour grapes law suit and he should have just greased city council like the other dispensaries!

    Vasquez making strong accusations which just make her sound guilty, very Hillary like with don’t look at me look at these bad men! But being involved with Guap, who knows.

    Lindsay you have officially lost all control of your city!



  5. damama on November 21, 2016 at 3:39 pm

    This is all because one woman bragged that he has city officials in her pocket. There is no proof and no one else corroborates her story. But those who don’t like the specific politicians are having a field day speculating.

    We can condemn people based on allegations, or we can wait until they are investigated to determine their veracity. I stand on the side of truth, whether it gives me the results I want or not. I guess others here would prefer to believe what they want to believe.



    • Kim Tran Phuc on November 22, 2016 at 10:01 pm

      The judge ruled that non of this can be considered and included in the lawsuit
      The reporter was not reporting truthful in this report
      The judge has dismissed all these. Accusations of bribery
      I’m trying to speak to the editor to have this side added and Ammended.
      This is a case of a sore loser who just didn’t want to play but the rules and in the american fashion sues and sees what sticks.
      In Richmond we are a community and are close and although we may not agree you respect the other persons opinion and keep it moving
      And come together at the community events and support each other
      This reporter was careless and is not reporting the actual case involved



      • John Spartan on November 30, 2016 at 1:52 am

        It may not be considered in the current law suit but can still be investigated separately to see if any council members are guilty of taking bribes. Let’s have the council members publish all emails and text communication anyone of them had with any of the dispensaries.



        • Joe on December 2, 2016 at 11:37 pm

          The FBI already investigated these accusations and all were cleared in any wrong doing John Spartan
          There were no bribes
          the people who are suing and making these allegations attempted to Bribe and NO ONE took it.
          It’s all in the court documents and declarations



          • John Spartan on December 7, 2016 at 3:44 am

            Joe, sorry to let you know that FBI has never looked into this. You have bad, very bad info.



  6. Damama on November 23, 2016 at 12:38 pm

    Thank you, Kim – I missed that above.



    • John Spartan on December 7, 2016 at 3:46 am

      Kim telling half truths and not the entire truth. She is spouting her own rhetoric trying to spin the truth.



      • Joe Cokes on December 12, 2016 at 5:35 pm

        Look at the court documents and declarations
        It clearly shows an FBI investigation that FAILED.
        No bribes were committed except for the attorney who represented the people trying to sue. Brad Hirsch admitted to trying to bribe and also admitted to being a informant for the FBI investigation
        They admitted to bribing community members to sway public support for their applications of location and extention times and also during an FBI investigation they attempted to bribe numerous persons and that failed and the “sting operation” FAILED
        So read the actual court documents and declaractions and see the truth.
        Don’t deny something you haven’t fully looked into.
        If I can see this info just like this reporter than you also can “John Spartan” or whatever your real name is sir.. D.Price perhaps?



Richmond Confidential welcomes comments from our readers, but we ask users to keep all discussion civil and on-topic. Comments post automatically without review from our staff, but we reserve the right to delete material that is libelous, a personal attack, or spam. We request that commenters consistently use the same login name. Comments from the same user posted under multiple aliases may be deleted. Richmond Confidential assumes no liability for comments posted to the site and no endorsement is implied; commenters are solely responsible for their own content.

Card image cap
logo
Richmond Confidential

Richmond Confidential is an online news service produced by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism for, and about, the people of Richmond, California. Our goal is to produce professional and engaging journalism that is useful for the citizens of the city.

Please send news tips to richconstaff@gmail.com.

Latest Posts

Scroll To Top