Brooklyn cops mess up pot lab operation bust, lose suspect to suicide.

OK, as I understand this one: the cops suspected that there was a marijuana grow lab in a Brooklyn maraschino cherry company, but couldn’t get proof.  So they used an EPA complaint to get into the place, and then did the Hey! Do I smell POT? maneuver.  After a few hours of this, the owner of the place politely excused himself, went into his private bathroom, and shot himself in the head.

Man, there’s something in there for everybody to get angry about, huh? The pro-pot people are going to be upset about the fact that the grow lab had to be illegal in the first place. The libertarians and small-government folks can focus on the use of a convenient piece of government paper to get the cops somewhere they can go do what they REALLY wanted to do.  And here’s a point for the people who aren’t fretting over the first two: why the heck didn’t the cops secure the area and/or the owner properly? Once it was clear that the man was going to be arrested, the police should have made sure that he didn’t have, you know, access to a firearm and an opportunity to use it. Because ‘suicide in a bathroom’ isn’t the most horrible ending to that particular story.  It’s not even close.

Not the NYPD’s finest moment, that.