KSAT
SAN ANTONIO – A couple initially charged with marijuana possession in late January said San Antonio police officers used excessive force and wrongfully arrested them for possessing a legal THC product.
Charges filed on Jan. 30 against Fabian Ochoa, 27, and his fiancée Tiffany Rosales, 26, were dismissed about three hours after they were taken into custody in their own driveway, booking records show
Footage of the couple’s arrest, captured by Rosales on her cell phone camera, shows Ochoa and then Rosales being handcuffed as they question an officer.
“I told him ‘We just went to the smoke shop, I got THCa.’ He didn’t want to test it, he didn’t want to call a supervisor. He didn’t want to do a lot of things,” Ochoa said.
Officers attempted to pull over Ochoa’s vehicle around 6:45 p.m. after seeing him fail to use a turn signal. Ochoa then pulled into his driveway and ignored an officer’s commands to stay in his vehicle, an SAPD incident report shows.
The officer later wrote that he “smelled the odors of marijuana emitting from inside the vehicle and also observed clouds of smoke coming from inside of the vehicle.”
The officer wrote that he recovered several baggies containing “a green leaf-like substance which was known to be marijuana” as well as a canister containing the substance.
The substance, according to the couple, was legally purchased THCa (tetrahydrocannabinolic acid), a non-psychoactive cannabinoid that looks and smells like marijuana.
THCa is legal as long as delta-9 THC concentration levels stay below .3%, according to state law.
Rosales provided KSAT with a picture of one of the baggies in question.
“It had the serial number and the batch and it even said THCa/CBD on there,” Ochoa said
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