BUTTE — A local cannabis store has its doors open and is offering a $10,000 reward for the information leading to the arrest of the two people involved an armed robbery.
"I had my back turned, there was nobody else in the store at the time, and two individuals came in. And the first thing they asked me to do was open the till for them," says Noah Strickfaden, an employee at Greenhouse Dispensary in Butte.
Strickfaden was just starting his shift at the cannabis dispensary at 6:25 p.m. on January 30 when two men in masks entered the shop with a gun.
"My initial instinct was a little bit of a — to resist but at the same time I know that that’s, you know, not the safe situation to do in this case," says Strickfaden.
Strickfaden stepped aside and the robbers grabbed the cash from the till and a mason jar filled with cannabis products with an estimated worth of $3,000.
"Personally there wasn't some person that I picked up that I was like, 'Oh, I know this individual myself.' However, this is a small town. We live in Butte, Montana, and that doesn't mean that some individual wouldn't at least recognize a face or a voice," says Strickfaden.
The sale of marijuana is not legal on the federal level, which makes it a cash-heavy industry.
But Matt Boyle of Collective Elevation, a cannabis dispensary across town from Greenhouse, says the amount of cash on hand at a dispensary may not be a large sum.
"This business isn’t quite as cash-heavy as it used to be; there have been some various laws that have changed that, you know, allow these businesses to go into banks and you know, a lot of us are making daily bank deposits," says Boyle.
Still, dispensary owners and workers like Strickfaden would like to see more flexibility from the banking industry.
"Things like these could be avoided in the future if we could start pushing laws past to allow debit card or credit card usage in any dispensary," says Strickfaden.
Butte police are investigating the robbery. Anyone with information is asked to call them at 406-497-1120.
The investigation is ongoing, and more information will be released as it becomes available.
