Marriott Courtyard San Diego Mission Valley guest Andrew James Harris “got into a friendly conversation with a woman and two men relaxing in the hot tub.” He asked them why they were at the hotel, and they told him “[t]heir crack lab had blown up.”
So they were joking. And he didn’t realize it. He told them he’s in the drug business too. And the three guests he was talking to “were off-duty sheriff’s deputies from Marin County who were in San Diego for a two-week specialized narcotics training.”
One of the detectives in the hot tub said in an interview Wednesday that it was especially surprising that Harris fell for the crack lab joke. Crack labs can’t blow up.
Pool and Hot Tub at the San Diego Mission Valley Marriott Courtyard, credit: Marriott
The following evening Harris walked outside and found the three officers in the hot tub again along with six more officers who were part of the training. He went back inside and brought them “an eight-ball of cocaine in a hat.”
The first female officer from the hot tub the night before told him since she was in her bikini she really had no place to put it and could they connect up later?
They met up at a restaurant the next day to do a deal and later in a Starbucks parking lot. The officers then bought again weeks later at a Home Depot parking lot. Those were used to justify a search warrant.
At the Dylan Point Loma Apartments, investigators found 180 grams of cocaine, 30 grams of Ecstasy, 90 tabs of LSD, 3 grams of psychedelic mushrooms and several bottles and vials of what are believed to be anabolic steroids, according to the affidavit.
A digital scale, $2,600 cash, hundreds of tiny plastic baggies printed with designs and a Savage Model 10, 6.5 mm bolt-action rifle with ammunition were also discovered, the records state.
If you live outside the law, don’t volunteer it to strangers you meet in the hot tub at a Marriott Courtyard.
Well OF COURSE they were from Marin County! (Or is everyone else too young to remember all the jokes from the ’60s and ’70s involving Marin Co., hot tubs, and peacock feathers . . . ?)
“If you live outside the law, don’t volunteer it to strangers you meet in the hot tub at a Marriott Courtyard.”
Actually, if you are a coke dealer, or particularly if you deal opioids, by all means please do go ahead and bust yourself. You’d be doing the world a favor, just like Harris did.
Wow. That takes a special kind of stupid.
Actually crack labs do blow up. The resulting fire usually burns the room and most times the structure that contains the room. I know for a fact. The county I live in, is the meth capital of the Midwest. The amount of homes with fire damage here is huge! When I moved, there were more houses with fire damage in my area, than I saw my whole life on the east coast. You would see a house that looked perfectly fine curb wise and you would go around the back and it would be gone. Running joke with fire depts. is that they see more drug criminals than the DEA. You see these people want the house to burn to the ground so there is no evidence. At least they think that way….
@JohnB
Crack and Meth are processed in different ways. Meth labs are dangerous and can explode because the key ingredients are toxic and highly flammable.
Well, jails aren’t full because criminals are smart. I wonder who got the Marriott points from this stay.
That’s some kind of training they go to.
Should be who, trying to sound smart makes you sound stupid asf.
Is there a photo of the officer in her bikini?
I think Credit’s mom was on crack while she carried him.