Dwayne Perry, a Cartesville home owner, woke up to a shocking turn of events last Wednesday, October 2. The retired citizen woke up to the loud blare of a police helicopter flying dangerously low over his house in Georgia and Bartow County deputies strapped to the gills outside his door with a K9 unit. The citizen was utterly confused and surrounded.
The police were responding to an alarm raised over what was suspected to be cannabis being grown in Pery's back yard. The helicopter had been combing the area for the cannabis plant when it came over the citizen's house. The helicopter was from the state governor's drug enforcement task force. When it came across the five leafed plant, it immediately reported to the control station.
Except that the plant was not cannabis, it was okra, a popular South American food.
A cannabis plant may have something between seven to thirteen leaflets per leaf, depending on the health of the plant. Usually they have seven to nine.
Dwayne Perry stated that his plants had five leaflets a leaf, therefore they were not cannabis and could not be mistaken for cannabis. A mistake like that should not happen. Even more so with the governor's drug enforcement task force. How does a drug enforcement task force not know how a cannabis plant looks like? Am I the only one seeing the irony here?
"It did have quite a number of characteristics that were similar to a cannabis plant," Georgia State Patrol Capt. Kermit Stokes stated in a press release. "If we disturbed them in any manner, that's not our intent. Our intent is to go out and do our job and do it to the best of our ability."
However, Perry is not convinced. He says that his reputation in the community has been damaged. He continued to state that he is getting calls from the residents about all the deputy vehicles that were outside his house.
"The more I thought about it, what could have happened? Anything could have happened," Perry said.
