Are Austin Police Using Electricity Bills To Conduct Warrantless Searches For Weed?

I Was the State, a blog by a North Texas criminal defense lawyer, recently posted some information from the NORML listserv about allegations concerning warrantless searches allegedly being conducted by the Austin Police Department.

According to the information from the listserv, APD has been given access to computer files of Austin Energy and is conducting raids on homes with what they classify as high electricity usage in attempts to find Austinites growing marijuana

This story is unverified, but we’re reposting it in hopes we can flesh out whether or not this is true:

I live in Austin Texas and the police have signed an agreement with the local utility company Austin Energy. They now have their own account login that they use without getting a subpoena. The narcotics department is using this to data mine the utility records for high utility usage. This in my opinion is a warrant less search. This is enough for them to get search warrants for those residents looking for marijuana indoor grows. They have performed dozens of raids based on this and are ramping up and expanding their task force due to the massive amounts of properties and $$$ seized in the raids. They are now getting the DEA involved which is splitting a slice of the pie because they have a lot less oversight and the overwhelming negative odds of winning at the Fed level.

If this does turn out to be true, the city of Austin, APD, and Austin Energy better go ahead and open their purse strings and get ready to pay out millions and millions of dollars to folks who were wrongfully searched and, quite possibly, even to people who were searched that were growing marijuana.

How anything like this is constitutional under the state or federal constitution is unheard of to me.

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