Listen to OU Chancellor Dale Sky Jones recount the raid in her own words, describing the day as a perfect juxtaposition of federal prohibition’s failure to meet the needs of communities.
Before dawn on April 2, 2012, dozens of federal agents simultaneously raided Oaksterdam’s five legal, permitted businesses and the apartment of Richard Lee, Oaksterdam University founder and the state’s most prominent advocate for the legalization and regulation of cannabis. Hundreds of citizens flooding the street, shutting down Broadway, shouting at DEA agents and Federal Marshals as they carried away all the legal cannabis, curricula, and resources.
In the middle of the raid, the morning suddenly got deadly as reports of an active shooter at Oikos University a few miles away, becoming the worst school shooting in Oakland’s history to which Oakland Police were unable to respond fully. The affidavit triggering the raid (that forcibly retired Richard Lee) remains sealed, and the Obama Administration has never revealed the purpose of their investigation nor brought any charges.
