Lakewood man arrested in metro pot-shop burglary

AURORA – A Lakewood man is in the Arapahoe County jail this weekend, accused of breaking into a marijuana dispensary.

Robert Cordova, 50, was nabbed about 2:30 a.m. inside the Herbal Options dispensary in unincorporated Arapahoe County, according to Sheriff Grayson Robinson. Cordova is being held on suspicion of felony burglary and misdemeanor criminal mischief.

According to reports, the suspect was arrested after passersby saw at least one person inside the dispensary and alerted deputies.

Investigators believe someone broke into an office adjacent to the dispensary, and then broke through the drywall partition separating the two suites.

When officers arrived, they found the suspect had barricaded himself inside the dispensary. After a standoff, Cordova crawled back through the hole in the wall and into the adjacent office where waiting deputies took him into custody.

Several marijuana businesses in the metro area – including Lakewood – have been burglarized or robbed and a number of patients have been the victims of crimes that occurred outside dispensaries. Arapahoe County and a number of other municipalities have imposed a moratorium on new dispensaries. Lakewood City Council is discussing regulating dispensaries. The proposal is on City Council’s Monday night consent agenda, but will not be decided for at least two more weeks.

Lakewood and a number of other area towns and cities are considering regulating the dispensaries and the state legislature will address that issue and others in considering a number of changes in Colorado’s Medical Marijuana laws after s significant increase in the number of patients on the state’s MMJ Registry was recorded in the past couple of years, according to the Colorado Department of Health and Environment, which maintains the program.

Colorado voters in November of 2000 approved an amendment to the state’s Constitution – Amendment 20 – authorizing the medical use of marijuana for certain debilitating conditions.