Pa. police academy recruit arrested with 11 pounds of marijuana

A recruit set to begin training at a Montgomery County police academy today was instead jailed after authorities allegedly found 11 pounds of pot and over $15,000 during a raid of his mobile home early yesterday morning, The Reading Eagle reported.

Brandon Geiger, 26, allegedly refused to answer the front door of his Longswamp Township trailer around 6:30 a.m. after a knock from an officer with the Berks County SWAT, which is staffed by several local police departments.

As the team forced the entrance open, Geiger ran out a side door with a large dog food bag and a backpack, the paper reported. After a detective took him into custody, investigators allegedly found eight pounds of marijuana in the dog food bag and three pounds of the stuff – along with drug packaging materials – in the backpack.

A subsequent search of the man’s trailer turned up a .45-caliber handgun, a bulletproof vest, five cell phones, $15,302 in cash – $902 of which was in a wallet on the kitchen counter, 19 silver dollar coins and 20 one-ounce bars of silver kept in a
bathroom safe, according to the paper.

Geiger is charged with possession of marijuana with the intent to deliver and drug paraphernalia offenses. He was jailed in lieu of $100,000 bail after an arraignment in Reading Central Court during which he told the judge he recently left his job as a landscaper to prepare for his entrance into the police academy, according to the paper.

A woman and two children in the trailer’s living room at the time of the bust were reportedly unharmed.

Authorities told the Reading-Eagle that prior to the raid, detectives with the Berks County Drug Task Force conducted an investigation revealing that Geiger carried a gun, so once they obtained a
search warrant, they enlisted the help of SWAT to take him into custody.