As Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety Officer Joseph Huffaker approached the car, Freeman said he rolled down his window and asked why he’d been pulled over.

Freeman said Huffaker told him his vehicle had “touched the white line” on the side of the road.

“I had not, so I looked at him, and I said, ‘No I didn't,’ ” Freeman said. “And he grinned and smiled at me and did not respond. At that moment I knew I'd been had. I knew that this was not a normal traffic stop.”

Then Huffaker asked if he had any marijuana in his car, Freeman said.

“Yes, I do,” Freeman remembered saying. He also carried a large battered black leather briefcase filled with documentation -- what he calls his “compliance briefcase” -- and he said he provided the officer with a grower’s permit issued by the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, contact information for The Higher Path dispensary with which he had an agreement to both grow and transport marijuana, and his compliance lawyer’s information.

Essentially, Freeman was trying to be as legitimate as he could be.

Freeman said that as he and Huffaker talked, another Rohnert Park officer, Sgt. Jacy Tatum, stood off to the side, barely speaking except to ask Freeman at one point about the strains of marijuana he was carrying.

The two officers would go on to seize that marijuana, and Freeman hasn’t seen it since.

Freeman’s account of his run-in with Rohnert Park police echoes those of eight other drivers who say a group of officers from the city conducted pretextual traffic stops -- those that enable authorities to detain suspects for investigation of other matters -- with the goal of unlawfully seizing marijuana and cash. Four people allowed us to share their stories publicly, while five others would tell us about their encounters only if we agreed not to name them, saying they feared police retaliation.

Their stories suggest a pattern of questionable and potentially illegal stops and seizures over the past three years by officers from a small city along a major marijuana transportation corridor.

'When I say highway robbery, I really mean it.' Izaak Schwaiger,

Attorney, former prosecutor

The city of Rohnert Park said in a statement that its police officers “joined other law enforcement agencies in drug interdiction efforts” along Highway 101 seeking drugs including “methamphetamines, opioids, cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana.” But the city says it ceased “most interdiction efforts” related to marijuana in 2017.

There is a financial benefit to the city for this work. Through a legal process called asset forfeiture, both the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety and the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office get to keep a cut of seized cash suspected to be the proceeds of a crime.

A report issued by the California Attorney General shows that from 2015 to 2016, the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety received more than $1 million in seized cash. The Sonoma County District Attorney received $188,419 of the money from assets seized.

Tatum was responsible for much of that asset forfeiture windfall to his local department. In 2015, the mayor publicly recognized him for his drug prevention work. Tatum thanked the City Council for allowing him the opportunity to “fight the war on drugs.”

But Tatum has another reputation: A growing chorus of defense attorneys say he’s a rogue cop. He’s being sued for unlawfully taking a man’s cash, and he has a documented history of dishonesty on the witness stand.

“When I say highway robbery, I really mean it,” Sonoma County defense attorney Izaak Schwaiger said. “Officer Tatum has been involved in dozens of questionable traffic stops both above and below the Mendocino-Sonoma County line, where he has seized marijuana farmers’ product and/or their cash and given them no receipt and no criminal charges were ever brought.”

Now Tatum and his partner, Joseph Huffaker, are under investigation by the city of Rohnert Park. They are both on leave, according to their attorney.

Allegations of a Cover-Up

Rohnert Park began an administrative investigation around April of this year after independent reporter Kym Kemp published a series of articles about another suspect traffic stop and marijuana seizure.

Texas resident Zeke Flatten said he was driving south on Highway 101 last December, when an unmarked black Ford Police Interceptor pulled him over just north of the Mendocino County line, about 50 miles north of Rohnert Park.

Flatten, like Freeman, was also in a rental car and said he, too, was not speeding or violating any traffic laws. He pulled over and showed the officer his driver’s license and the rental agreement for his car.

The officers did not identify what agency they were with, Flatten said, and he noticed they were not wearing departmental police badges or identifying name tags.

“At that point I really felt something was wrong,” Flatten said.

Flatten said he had 3 pounds of marijuana in his car from a farm in Humboldt County and he was taking it to a laboratory in Santa Rosa for testing. He said he was working on developing a number of cannabis products he hoped to bring to market after California’s law allowing recreational use for adults kicked in.

Flatten also offered to show the officers his doctor’s prescription for medical cannabis, but he said they weren’t interested.

The officers said they were working for the ATF -- the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- according to Flatten. He said they took his marijuana and left him on the side of the road, all in just a few minutes. They did not issue him a citation or arrest him.

Flatten reported the Dec. 5 incident to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department, the Mendocino County district attorney, the Mendocino County grand jury and the FBI. Kemp spoke with an ATF spokesperson who said the agency wasn’t involved in Flatten’s traffic stop.

“Mr. Flatten did contact the FBI and the information he provided, we were not able to corroborate it as reported,” FBI spokesperson Prentice Danner said.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department said it wasn’t their case and pointed to a press release from Rohnert Park police written on Feb. 13, 2018, not long after Flatten’s stop. The statement, written by Tatum and Cmdr. Jeff Taylor, touted a large “black market” marijuana bust on Highway 101 during the month of December.

Rohnert Park produced an incident report of the Dec. 5 stop of Flatten, also written by Tatum, that diverges in many places from Flatten’s account.

The redacted report doesn’t include any names. It describes a traffic stop involving a white Mercedes-Benz with no license plates. Yet Flatten said he drove a Kia rental car with California license plates. The report says that 30 pounds of marijuana and several hundred containers of hash were seized from the person driving the Mercedes. Flatten maintains he had 3 pounds of marijuana with him.

Records show that Officer Huffaker did book 30 pounds of seized marijuana into evidence, but not until Dec. 18, 2017, nearly two weeks later. The several hundred containers of hash are not mentioned in the evidence log.

Flatten doesn’t believe Tatum was among the two officers who stopped him, although he does think Rohnert Park Officer Huffaker was one of the officers who pulled him over.

The report says a CHP officer and trainee assisted on Flatten’s stop. But a CHP spokesman wrote in an email, “There is no dispatch record of us assisting with this incident and no one recalls it.”

Flatten said he thinks Tatum crafted this report after the fact to cover up an illegal stop and seizure by police officers.

“I felt very strongly that I was robbed by legitimate police officers,” Flatten said.

Finally, the report said the case was referred to the Sonoma County district attorney for prosecution. The Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office has no record that Rohnert Park ever referred a case against Flatten. There are no charges against him.

The city of Rohnert Park would not respond to questions about this incident, but it is investigating. Attorney Justin Buffington, who is representing Tatum and Huffaker, confirmed the officers are on leave pending an administrative investigation related to Flatten. He stressed that the city’s probe is not a criminal investigation.

Tatum and Huffaker did not wish to comment for this story, according to Buffington.

Seizing Cash

This is not the first time Rohnert Park police officers have faced allegations of unlawful seizure. A gambler from Las Vegas named Lucas Serafine alleges in a lawsuit against the City of Rohnert Park that Tatum and Rohnert Park police Officer Nick Miller unlawfully seized more than $120,000 from him on March 10, 2016.

Serafine was also in a rental car traveling on Highway 101 near Cloverdale with a friend when he said the two officers pulled him over for allegedly driving too fast in the rain.

Serafine said he was headed to a high-stakes poker game at the Bear River Casino in Humboldt County and that the large amount of cash in the car was cash from a lawsuit he settled with the California Department of Corrections, and a workers' compensation claim.

The officers suspected Serafine’s money was related to drug purchase or sales, according to court documents, and seized it.

“He [Tatum] looks me in the eyes, pointing his finger pushing on my chest as he does it," Serafine remembered Tatum saying before he and Officer Miller drove away, “‘I took $1.2 million off the road this year. Nobody shows up for it and neither will you’.”

A review of incident reports provided by Rohnert Park in response to a public records request back up the statement. KQED reviewed 23 incident reports on traffic stops involving Tatum. The city continues to provide more reports on a rolling basis.

Between late 2013 and the end of 2016, Tatum was involved in stops that resulted in the confiscation of well over $1 million in cash, according to the incident reports released so far.

The department saw a 182 percent increase in funds from asset forfeitures between 2015 and 2016. According to data reported to the California Attorney General’s Office, Rohnert Park police netted $756,062 in 2016, an increase of nearly half a million dollars from the year before.

In Serafine’s case, $121,920 was logged into evidence and turned over to the district attorney for asset forfeiture proceedings.

On June 28, 2016, Serafine's lawyer sent a letter to Rohnert Park contesting the amount of money seized, but Serafine says he did not get a response. Serafine said he actually had $132,000.