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A customer leaves the Star Bud marijuana dispensary in Festus through a repaired and reinforced entry door on Friday, Sept. 2, 2022. Burglars damaged the door last Monday morning and forced the dispensary to close for four days. Police say the unsuccessful hit was one in a recent rash of burglaries at medical marijuana dispensaries.
FESTUS — Criminals have tossed concrete blocks, used crowbars and rammed cars into doors at licensed cannabis shops throughout the St. Louis region in recent weeks.
A relatively new industry in Missouri, medical marijuana dispensaries are being tested by criminals trying to break inside before dawn.
Other than causing thousands of dollars in property damage, the criminals in most cases have scored zero in bounty for themselves. Most haven’t gotten past the front doors or lobby areas, police say.
One St. Louis store was missing jars of marijuana. Another had boxes of merchandise swiped. But none of the thieves, authorities insist, reached the vaults that protect the cache of marijuana, other cannabis products and money.
Police fear thieves might begin robbing shops in the daytime when customers are around.
“If they can’t get in with a burglary, they’re going to be emboldened, walk in and hold the place up,” said Festus police Chief Tim Lewis. “They’re going to stick the gun in the guy’s face and say, ‘Open the safe.’”
Marijuana dispensaries in other states have seen armed robberies — and worse. In March, a suspect shot and killed an employee at a cannabis store in Tacoma, Washington; an ID-checker shot and killed a robber in Covington, Washington; and Seattle police shot and killed a suspect in an exchange of gunfire following a robbery at a dispensary.
Lewis worries that what’s happening at some Washington state dispensaries will come to Missouri.
“If I had to guess, that will happen here,” Lewis said. “There’s going to be a shootout.”
Joe Patterson, a former St. Louis County police detective who now works as a security consultant in the medical cannabis industry, is also concerned that Missouri will see armed robberies.
“It happens at banks. It happens at liquor stores. It happens at pawn shops,” Patterson said. “For these guys to be immune, or think it’s not going to happen here ... it’s foolish.”
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services regulates the medical marijuana program. A department spokeswoman told the Post-Dispatch at the end of August that the state had seen 37 incidents of burglary or attempted burglary at medical marijuana dispensaries since January.
Police, however, said the crime is underreported. The count in the St. Louis region alone is 20 or so since July.
In November 2018, Missouri voters passed an amendment to the state constitution and became the 32nd state to legalize the medical use of marijuana for qualifying patients. Missouri’s first medical marijuana dispensaries opened in the St. Louis area in October 2020.
Lewis said he can’t believe it took this long for the burglaries to begin.
“I thought they would’ve gotten broken into as soon as they opened up,” he said.
The recent predawn burglaries across metro St. Louis began in late July and ratcheted up in August, with two or three on some days. On Aug. 29, burglars tried to break into a dispensary in Festus at 4 a.m., then two other groups with a nearly identical method targeted dispensaries in St. Louis at 4:24 a.m. on South Euclid Avenue and 4:29 a.m. on Delmar Boulevard.
The crimes typically happen between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. Some of the criminals use stolen cars. Some wear gloves, masks and hoods. They are gone in minutes. They have worked in teams of three to nine men at a time. Police haven’t released detailed descriptions of the burglars.
No one has been hurt here, but the criminals fired shots in at least one case. That was in St. Louis, at 3:45 a.m. on Aug. 25. Two men at an auto shop saw suspects backing a car into the front door of a dispensary next door, Luxury Leaf at 1463 South Vandeventer Avenue. The suspects fired gunshots at the witnesses. The shots missed the men but hit their cars.
Other burglars have been armed too. One bandit in Berkeley stood outside the Greenlight dispensary on Brown Road around 1:30 a.m. July 25 with what looked on surveillance video to be an AR-style semiautomatic rifle, said Berkeley Chief Art Jackson. The criminals left before police arrived.
Jackson said he is concerned that the burglaries will evolve from smash-and-grabs in the middle of the night.
“You have armed young people and you have armed police officers when (police) show up on the scene and they’re still in the store,” Jackson said. “So that’s a big concern, also.”
St. Louis police spokeswoman Evita Caldwell said 10 dispensaries in the city were burglarized between June 27 and Aug. 29. St. Louis County police Sgt. Tracy Panus reported three in mid-August and one in late July investigated by that department’s detectives.
A dispensary in Hazelwood was damaged last week, and police there said they were chasing some strong leads. A shop in Berkeley has been hit twice. Stores targeted in St. Louis and St. Louis County include Cookies, Greenlight Dispensary, Good Day Farm, SWADE Dispensary, Terrabis, Luxury Leaf, Fifteen Primo Cannabis and Organic Remedies.
Lewis said Festus is working with police from other departments.
“We’re working with everyone from Warrenton to Edwardsville,” he said.
Christopher Chesley got an alert from his alarm company around 4 a.m. Monday. His medical marijuana dispensary, Star Buds, was being burglarized.
He called Festus police as he watched his cellphone, monitoring a live feed from surveillance cameras inside and around his shop, 1168 West Gannon Drive, which opened last year.
Six or seven young men arrived by car. They hurled a concrete block into the double-paned front door. They rushed into the lobby and, for about 45 seconds, tried to break into another door. They used a crowbar but couldn’t get in.
They piled into cars and drove behind the store, ramming one of the vehicles into the back door.
A bud tender at Star Bud marijuana dispensary bags up an order for a customer on Friday, Sept. 2, 2022, shortly after the Festus store reopened.
Chesley gave updates to dispatchers about what he was seeing. The approaching Festus police sirens must have scared off the criminals because they scattered, he said.
The suspects escaped because police couldn’t chase them — burglary isn’t a violent felony and doesn’t fit the department’s criteria for a pursuit, the police chief said.
Coincidentally, eight hours before the burglary, Chesley had upgraded security at his shop by installing reinforced doors. He did it after hearing about the rash of other burglaries in the region. The staff already works behind bulletproof glass and a security wall.
“We reinforced all our security,” Chesley said. “What we do is, we slow them down.”
Some of the industry’s most secure measures include adding wire mesh on walls and ballistic mesh behind glass and installing high-definition security cameras with views of every foot of the building.
Patterson, the ex-detective, now runs a cannabis security management firm, Patterson and Associates. He said he designs security features, trains the operators and conducts security audits at roughly two dozen medical marijuana dispensaries in Missouri.
Patterson said Missouri has some of the strictest security requirements in the country, such as requiring certain camera angles and resolution of the surveillance cameras.
“There are a lot of former military guys and former cops like me who entered the industry because some of these operators didn’t have that security background,” Patterson said. “They didn’t really know how to do this in the most cost-effective, efficient manner. You know, how do you balance locking a facility down like Fort Knox without it becoming unwelcoming to the patient or the client.”
Chesley closed his shop for four days to make repairs, and the replacement door is expected to arrive soon. He estimates the repairs and added security measures are costing upward of $7,000. He added 8-foot-long concrete traffic barriers at the front and rear doors.
“Our fear was, because they didn’t get anything, that they would come back with more force,” Chesley said.
Shake off your afternoon slump with the oft-shared and offbeat news of the day, hand-brewed by our online news editors.
Kim Bell is a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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A customer leaves the Star Bud marijuana dispensary in Festus through a repaired and reinforced entry door on Friday, Sept. 2, 2022. Burglars damaged the door last Monday morning and forced the dispensary to close for four days. Police say the unsuccessful hit was one in a recent rash of burglaries at medical marijuana dispensaries.
A bud tender at Star Bud marijuana dispensary bags up an order for a customer on Friday, Sept. 2, 2022, shortly after the Festus store reopened.
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