Marinara or Marijuana?

Brooklyn cops bust roof top tomato grower.

Is this what they mean by reefer madness?

Cops responding to a report of a marijuana farm on the roof of a Brooklyn building didn’t find the wacky tobacky they were looking for — just tomato plants, police and witnesses said Wednesday.

Building superintendent Christian Delarosa, 34, said he discovered the potted plants when he went to check the roof for leaks after Wednesday’s rains.

“I don’t know much about plants. I’m not too good with that,” Delarosa said. “When I saw them, the first thing I thought was ‘Oh, my God.’ Right there I looked it up on my phone and they looked close to marijuana plants, but I thought I should call someone who knew about plants, so I called police.”

Experts don’t know how the cops could have confused the two.

“They’re not the same species; they’re not the same genus. I don’t even think they’re part of the same family,” said Mikeal Roose, chairman of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside. “It’s very hard for me to see that somebody could (confuse the two). If you put the leaves side by side, you wouldn’t be able to mistake them.”

Cops eventually got hip to the difference and closed the investigation, leaving the tomatoes alone.

The unidentified owner of the tomato stash won’t have to deal with the cops but he will have to deal with his super, who said he’d lock the door to the roof.

First they came for the raw milk, but I didn't care because I can't stand the stuff, but now they're coming for the tomatoes, and I like BLTs.  When I first saw this story, I wondered if the cops could tell the difference between Jelly Filled and Glazed.   I thought to myself, "this is material for another dumb cop post".  Cops should be able to recognize a pot plant when they see one.  Three cops together, one of them a supervisor should have been able to figure out the mystery in about five minutes.  Even if they had no idea what a living pot plant looked like, they could have googled one on a smart phone and got a picture to compare it to.

The problem isn't just dumb cops.  The real problem is dumb people, especially the dumb building superintendent.  He said he looked up marijuana plants on his phone.  Apparently he can't tell one plant from another, of course he lives in Brooklyn, and probably went to public school.  I'm expecting to much.

The said thing is, the story kinda makes sense.  That is what we have come to, turning in our neighbors to the cops for growing tomatoes.  We live in a nation of people not smart enough to know what's going on, who when they run into a situation they are unfamiliar with, think the solution is to call the cops. 

Update:
There is a blog put together by a guy looking for affordable NY City Apartments, called The Worst Room.  I guess you can't be too smart, if you're willing to pay more a month for a closet than I pay for a house.