SAN FRANCISCO [CN] — If there’s money in growing cannabis, there’s also money in taking people’s cannabis.
A 14-person jury heard opening statements on Monday in the trial of Joseph Huffaker, a former Rohnert Park, California policeman indicted in 2021 on charges of impersonating federal agents to extort cash and cannabis from motorists along Highway 101.
“This is a case about a corruption of the batch. This is a case about Huffaker using his position for personal gain,” Abraham Fine of the United States Attorney’s Office told the jury.
Huffaker is accused of seizing large quantities of weed in his spare time without making arrests, reporting crimes or issuing receipts for the confiscated goods and then selling his ill-gotten seizures on the black market, from at least August 2016 to December 2017.
In the courtroom, the prosecution further characterized Huffaker as a “rogue cop” who began masquerading as a member of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives after his local drug enforcement team was shut down following the 2016 legalization of recreational marijuana use in California.
“What they were doing was not consistent with legitimate police work,” Fine said.
The defense decided not to make opening statements at this time, indicating through the judge that it may later, at the close of the government’s case.
However, Huffaker did try to shift the blame to his supposed co-conspirator, former Rohnert Park officer Jacy Tatum, during witness testimony, portraying him as the real driving force behind the scheme.
Tatum took the stand on the first day of trial, testifying that he and Huffaker had a close “professional and personal relationship,” although the day ended before he could testify to much more.
Tatum previously pleaded guilty to charges of extorting marijuana and obstructing justice back in 2021 in exchange for cooperating with federal investigators.
Tatum also faces charges of preparing a false police report and press release for a traffic stop on Dec. 5, 2017, to conceal his criminal activity after the press began reporting about it in February 2018.
“No doubt, Tatum is guilty of a lot of crimes. But this case is about what the defendant has done,” Fine said. “And the evidence will show that Huffaker committed a lot of those crimes too.”
The jury also heard from multiple witnesses in the case, including Huffaker’s former police chief, one of his supposed victims and California Highway Patrol officers who saw Huffaker and Tatum pulling over their supposed victims.
Before they were the center of a federal investigation, former police officers Tatum and Huffaker worked on a drug task force in Rohnert Park, a small city about an hour north of San Francisco, mostly stopping vehicles along a 40-mile stretch of Highway 101 in Sonoma County.
During his time leading the drug-busting team, Tatum won awards and reportedly seized over 4,000 pounds of marijuana, 20 firearms, a dozen vehicles and over $4 million.
Brian Masterson, former police chief of the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety, testified that his department had to buy multiple outdoor shipping containers just to store the cannabis they seized, partially because the smell started to waft through all three floors of the station.
But the drug interdiction program dried up in 2016 with the passage of Proposition 64 in California, which legalized adult recreational marijuana use. By January 2017, the program was disbanded completely.
“I think both Sgt. Tatum and Officer Huffaker were a bit disappointed,” Brian Masterson, former police chief of the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety, told the jury Monday.
After Masterson disbanded the drug-busting team, he said Tatum and Huffaker visited him to see if he would reconsider his decision, or perhaps be open to a federal partnership of some kind to continue enforcement.
“I told them 'absolutely not,'” Masterson said, adding it was “pretty clear” the voters approved the legalization of marijuana.
Prosecutors say Huffaker and Tatum would threaten to arrest drivers or seize more of their assets if they did not agree to let them take their cash, pot or other property.
During these traffic stops, Tatum and Huffaker would reportedly drive far north, outside their usual jurisdiction, to the Hopland-Cloverdale area in an unmarked vehicle, dressed in generic police tactical gear without badges or other markings.
In court, Tatum testified that although he mostly worked his scheme solo from 2015 to 2016, he later added Huffaker into the fold from 2017 onward.
In December 2017, the pair pulled over Barron Lutz, the owner of an upstart marijuana company called Humboldt Private Reserve, using an unmarked black SUV equipped with police lights. Lutz was carrying over 20 pounds of marijuana flower and four mason jars worth of hashish concentrate, worth over $20,000 in total.
Lutz testified Monday that he was taking the material down to the Bay Area for lab testing, as required by state law for his business, when the pair pulled him over, dressed in tactical vests and t-shirts.
He said he eventually showed the off-duty officers his cargo, and they gave him an ultimatum — they could confiscate the flower alone and let him go, or they could “take him to the station.”
“I didn’t know if I was being robbed or arrested. I felt confused,” Lutz told the jury.
But Lutz said something still felt “strange,” and he asked them for some documentation of the cannabis they seized. His question was rebuffed with a vague threat.
“They asked me if I wanted to make a large federal case of it, or if I’d prefer to be let go,” Lutz recalled. “I said I’d prefer to be let go.”
Attorneys for both sides declined a request for comment.
The trial is currently scheduled to last through July 18, 2025.
Huffaker worked for the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety from 2012 to 2019.
So far, settlements over the claimed extortion scheme have cost the city nearly $1.9 million in total.
This case was filed in the Northern District of California and heard at the Phillip Burton Federal Courthouse in San Francisco, California. U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney, a Bill Clinton appointee, presided over the case.
