Since 2018, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office has been banning the operation of drugstores.
But this has not stopped.
For this reason, the city and the Los Angeles Police Department have set up a special task force to crack down on the operation of illegal drugstores.
This building and this building used to be the illegal drugstores of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office.
Now it's completely closed.
Not only that, the Sheriff's Office has closed nine illegal drugstores in the past six months.
Selling not only marijuana, but other types of narcotics, including MDMA.
Also possessing guns on premises.
There was never a legal dispensary in the city of Compton.
There's not just marijuana in these dispensaries, there's other drugs.
But as well as these businesses are attracting violence, murders, robberies, fights.
And they're just, again, a nuisance to our neighborhood.
The local government has filed a lawsuit against 30 drugstore-related business owners, landlords, banks, and lenders.
And has asked for a fine of more than US$22 million for one of these unlicensed business owners and landlords.
Some of the challenges are, I guess, the numerous illegal dispensaries in the city.
We closed down one, another one reopens either the same day or a little bit later on.
They're funded by wealthy people sometimes because it's a lucrative business.
The mayor said that there are about 80 drugstores in the city of Compton that are still open.
So they encourage the community to actively report and protect safety.
Li Jiayin, Julian, and Los Angeles reporting.
