Oakland (Special to ZennieReport.com) – Samson Liu is an Oakland Police Officer who was the focus of a CNN investigation into an illegal grow house located in Antioch. According to the CNN report (“The pot farm next door: Black market weed operations inundate California suburb, cops say”) making the Internet rounds, the story goes like this:
Just after dawn on a recent spring morning, police dressed in tactical gear and armed with a search warrant pounded on the front door of an upscale home in a quiet suburban neighborhood an hour outside San Francisco.
When no one answered, the officers with California’s Department of Cannabis Control, which polices the legal sale of marijuana in the state, took a battering ram to the steel-reinforced door. When the door didn’t budge, they used a power saw to cut their way through a fortified back entrance and into the spacious five-bedroom property.
Inside, investigators found precisely what they were looking for: evidence of yet another black-market marijuana operation hidden in plain sight amid the cookie-cutter homes of suburbia.
They removed 80 pounds of weed from the pricey two-story home in Antioch, California. With curious neighbors looking on, they repeated the spectacle twice more on the same block that morning in late April. The raids filled a dump truck with about $1 million worth of illicit weed cultivated by unlicensed growers. Although cars were parked in the driveways, no people were found in any of the homes and no arrests were made.
Law enforcement officials said they’ve seen evidence that the activity in Antioch amounts to organized crime, citing the sophistication of the operations and apparent coordination of some of the people involved. But they declined to elaborate, citing ongoing investigations.
A review of search warrant affidavits, online property records and interviews with neighbors of some of the raided homes showed that the vast majority were owned or occupied by people with Chinese names, in a city where Asians make up about 15% of the population.
The home that Cannabis Control agents had to power-saw their way into belongs to Samson Liu, a police officer in nearby Oakland, California, CNN found. Cannabis Control declined to say whether Liu lived in the home or had tenants, citing an ongoing investigation.
Liu’s home not only contained what police said was 80 pounds of illegal marijuana trimmings stashed away in piles of garbage bags, officials said it was also extensively modified for the sole purpose of cultivation: The doors were fortified; the windows were boarded up. A heavy-duty generator sat in the laundry room to maximize power. Silver industrial air ducts snaked in and out of rooms for ventilation.
Who Is Samson Liu The $281,000 Oakland Police Officer And Illegal Grow House Owner?
So who is Samson Liu, the Oakland Police Officer and Illegal Grow House Owner? Well, according to Transparent California’s page on him, Officer Liu joined the Oakland Police Department in 2020, and has a regular salary of $126,335.00, overtime pay of 36,372.64, other compensation of $38,923.14, benefits of 79,373. 86, for a total take home of $281,004.64. Other records report that Officer Liu graduated from the Oakland Police Academy in 2015.
According to KTVU, here, Samson Liu was placed on administrative leave April 30, and Oakland Police said that it was an “ongoing personnel matter”.
As for Samson Liu’s performance as an Oakland Police Officer, the Brady List website database of complaints against police officers, judges, and prosecutors revealed no information on him to this date.
And Government Salaries reports:
Samson Liu in 2022 was employed at Oakland and had an annual salary of $310,603 according to public records. This salary was 97 percent higher than the average and 116 percent higher than the median salary in Oakland.
Oakland records show Samson Liu held two jobs from 2014 to 2023. From 2019 to 2023 Samson Liu held job of Police Officer.
In year 2022 Samson Liu’s salary was 55 percent higher than average Police Officer salary in the state of California.
The matter of Samson Liu and his illegal grow house is an ongoing matter so this post will be updated. One has to wonder if he is in partnership with other Oakland Police Officers?