"Uneducated" and "illegal": Allen police face scathing federal lawsuit over smoke shop raids
NORTH TEXAS — Two months after the raids on several smoke shops in Allen, one store employee is fighting back with a federal lawsuit.
Sabhie Khan, 70, is a manager at Allen Smoke & Vape. He was one of six people arrested at nine shops on Aug. 27. Allen Police Chief Steve Dye said the stores were caught marketing and selling products with illegal levels of THC, a compound derived from marijuana.
Since 2019, Texas has allowed products with up to 0.3% THC to be sold legally as hemp. Dye said labs found the shops had products with levels over 15%, and in one case as high as 78%.
Khan is now suing the city of Allen, several law enforcement agencies, and three labs.
According to the lawsuit, Khan is a "hard-working, honest businessman" who was "treated like the kingpin of a drug cartel, despite hemp being legal." The filing also points out that Khan has no pending charge for the second-degree felony that was the basis of his arrest. An Allen PD spokesman told the I-Team that the criminal cases against all six people are still pending and have yet to be filed with the district attorney's office.
Khan's attorney, David Sergi, disputes the testing methods of the labs used by Allen PD and is asking a judge to force the department to return the seized inventory and allow Khan the ability to operate "without interference" from police.
Sergi called Allen PD a "headline-seeking police department" that used "illegal, overbroad warrants" to seize legal products. The lawsuit's harshest comments are reserved for Dye, though. "It's unclear if Dye is operating outside the law due to misunderstanding or because he has appointed himself as the local, uneducated THC czar."
Dye has made it clear he hopes to spur change in state laws regarding THC at the upcoming legislative session.
Neither Allen PD nor the Collin County Sheriff's Office, which is also named in the suit, had a comment.