Police swarmed onto a Georgia man’s property after spotting what they thought was marijuana from a police helicopter, CNN reported Tuesday.
But what they saw wasn’t a cannabis plant. It was an okra bush.
Dwayne Perry told CNN affiliate WSB that police officers with the governor’s drug suppression task force showed up at his Cartersville, Georgia home “strapped to the gills” with a K-9 unit in tow.
Georgia State Patrol Capt. Kermit Stokes, whose agency oversees the drug task force, told WSB that the plants in Perry’s okra garden had a number of characteristics similar to a cannabis plant. Perry argued that his okra bush has five leaves, rather than the seven leaves a cannabis plant typically has.
Stokes apologized to Perry and to the news station for the mix-up.
“If we disturbed them in any manner, that’s not our intent. Our intent is to go out and do our job and do it to the best of our ability,” he said.
