It was almost 10 p.m. in late February 2022 when four armed robbers, all in their late teens and early twenties, stormed the Craft Cannabis Marijuana Dispensary on Andresen Road, holding two shop employees at gunpoint and stealing about $1,600 in cash plus cannabis-related products.
According to police records, the employees were ordered to the ground and continually threatened throughout the robbery. And before running to their car and escaping into the night, the robbers made the employees stuff a trash bag with merchandise.
Sadly, this was not a lone occurrence. The shop at 8603 N.E. Andresen Road in Vancouver was robbed at gunpoint twice last year. Sticky’s Pot Shop at 9411 N.E. Highway 99 in Hazel Dell was also robbed at gunpoint last fall. And a cannabis retail employee in Tacoma was killed in a robbery in March 2022.
Robberies at cannabis shops in Clark County spiked last year, with four reported by the Vancouver Police Department in 2022. There was only one in 2021 and three in 2020.
The robberies were worse last year than in the first seven years of marijuana legalization, according to Craft Cannabis co-owner Adam Hamide. Though, he added that the incidents have seemed to calm down.
Be the first to comment