Pubdate: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 Source: Red Bluff Daily News (CA) Copyright: 2002 Red Bluff Daily News Contact: http://redbluffdailynews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1079 Author: Van William Washburn 'CAMP' WOULD HAVE RAIDED POT GARDENS FOR FREE Editor: Tehama County is tops in pot plant seizures with 54,504 seized, according to a recent Associated Press news article. This figure is substantially different than the 89,008 plants claimed by Sheriff Parker. Being ever curious, a few quick phone calls led to the Department of Justice and a nice lady named Sonja, the director of Campaign Against Marijuana Planting. She revealed that 54,504 was the number of plants seized with CAMP assistance and did not include the number of plants that the Sheriff's Department may have pulled on its own. End of story? Shockingly, a few more questions revealed that there were things much worse going on in our county than a discrepancy in pot totals. The Q and A went as follows. Sonja, does the state charge the county anything to pull marijuana? No. The CAMP program was put into place specifically because the cost of marijuana eradication placed too large a financial burden on county law enforcement. Did Sheriff Parker become aware of this policy too late in the season to have CAMP pull the other 34,504 plants seized this year? No. Tehama County has been signed up for this program for a number of years, but they don't always call us for help. Last year they never called us at all. There were 42,000 plants pulled that year and CAMP was never called? That's right. Is it possible that CAMP was just too busy to come and help when Sheriff Parker called? No. If we were busy the day that he called the most he would have had to wait would be a day or two. Incredible. The citizens of our county have paid for the cost of eradicating more than 76,000 plants that we could have had done for free if Sheriff Parker had just made a phone call. He can't even use the excuse that CAMP wasn't available that day and he had to act right away. In September, the Daily News reported that Parker said his department knows of at least 10 additional gardens and will continue to pursue them as time permits. Does this sound like pulling pot was too high of a priority to wait a day or two? Unfortunately the county auditor's records do not segregate the funds spent on marijuana eradication from the rest of the Sheriff Os Department expenditures. The auditor's records however, do show that during the fiscal year in which the 42,000 plants were pulled without CAMP assistance, that the Sheriff's Department paid out almost half a million dollars in overtime alone. That, and the fact that Sheriff Parker uses the detectives, the department's highest paid employees, for these pot forays leads one to suspect that the tally needlessly paid by us, the taxpayers, is in the realm of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Can anyone come up with one justifiable reason why Sheriff Parker spent our money on something that he knew full well we could have gotten for free? Van William Washburn Gerber - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart