Chris Bowyer, a lanky combat veteran turned cannabis security guard, is outside Herbal Cure, a south Denver marijuana shop and grow house tucked into a parking lot beside the highway with thousands of dollars worth of cannabis products. He has a .40-caliber pistol on his hip and a few extra magazines stored away, and he
Chris Bowyer, a lanky combat veteran turned cannabis security guard, is outside Herbal Cure, a south Denver marijuana shop and grow house tucked into a parking lot beside the highway with thousands of dollars worth of cannabis products. He has a .40-caliber pistol on his hip and a few extra magazines stored away, and he is talking about his work on the battlefield. Not the one in Iraq — the one in Colorado, where criminals seeking to breach marijuana businesses face veterans trying to stop them.
In Colorado, a curious marriage has formed between the booming retail cannabis industry — legal in the state since 2014, but not in the eyes of the federal government — and young war veterans, more than 200 of whom have taken jobs protecting marijuana businesses across the state. They spend their days and nights in urban marijuana shops and suburban warehouses and on rural farms, warding off the burglars who have become hallmarks of this cash-heavy, high-value business.
The department said it believes that the city’s marijuana businesses have been targeted by organized groups, though it has no evidence that the groups are linked to foreign cartels. Surveillance videos of some burglaries show thieves sawing through the roofs of businesses, tracking law enforcement with police scanners and tying up employees. Criminals have netted anything from a few marijuana-laced sodas to a quarter-million dollars in plants.
Iron Protection Group was formed in 2014 by Hunter Garth, Cory Aguillard and Caleb Patton, Marines who had served in Afghanistan but were disoriented in the civilian world. They wanted to find jobs for former fighters.
In some ways, it was a natural marriage, formalizing a relationship forged in Vietnam, where marijuana became a balm for soldiers seeking to calm the demons of deployment. Garth said that about half of his employees smoke marijuana, though he asks them to refrain from doing so eight hours before a shift.
