DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – Detroit’s only “psychedelic church” once manufactured and sold magic mushrooms and marijuana—until it was raided by the Detroit Police Department and shut down in September.

“Exercising one’s religious freedom does not give them license to break the law,” said Detroit Corporation Counsel Conrad Mallet.

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Soul Tribes International Ministries (STIM), which owns the “sacrament center” located at Bushnell Congregational Church, recently filed to have its case moved to federal court after the City of Detroit brought a restraining order and nuisance claim against the organization’s leader, Shaman Shu.

“We have a right to our sacrament. We have a right to our belief system,” Shu told the Detroit Metro Times earlier this year. “We’re a small indigenous belief system that believes we can heal the world with these techniques and our plants. You become a member of our church, just like you would any church, temple, or mosque. We’re no different.”

Shu, also known as Robert Shumake, was a co-writer of Detroit’s Proposal E, which decriminalized possession and therapeutic use of certain psychoactive plants, including magic mushrooms. Appropriate licenses are still required for manufacturers and vendors.

STIM alleged in its lawsuit that Detroit police have “never raided any other house of worship with assault rifles, with the intent to unlawfully and without due process confiscate its sacrament.”

“While the fentanyl, opiate, and meth epidemics continue to grow and expand at exponential and alarming rates, and the death count continues to mount, the Church is unable to ascertain how mounting such an offensive against its church, whose sacrament [magic mushrooms] has been scientifically shown to effectively treat addiction and other conditions which plague the mental health crisis,” Shu said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. “The monetary and spiritual/religious damages suffered in this case by the Church, its membership, and the wider Detroit Metro Community, while in many regards incalculable, are likely well over $1 billion.”

Since STIM filed to move its lawsuit to federal court, Detroit officials have kept the group’s building under lock and key and have prohibited Shu from entering the premises.

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Earlier this week, STIM representatives discovered that vandals had broken into the building and stolen copper off the roof and valves from the toilets. Shu said the vandals left the water running and flooded parts of the building with three feet of water.

Detroit police allowed Shu to clean up some of the damage, which STIM said amounts to $500,000 in value.

“Whether he understood it or not, Mr. Shumake’s decision to remove the padlock and enter this building was in violation of a standing court order,” Mallett wrote in a statement. “We will vigorously defend against the outrageous claims against the city being made by Soul Tribes Ministries in the appropriate venue, which will be in court, whether that is state or federal.”