Pubdate: Mon, 29 Aug 2005
Source: Salinas Californian, The (CA)
Copyright: 2005 The Salinas Californian
Contact:  http://www.californianonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3900
Note: Priority is given to letters from Monterey County residents
Author: Kimberly Chase, The Salinas Californian
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)

Wilderness Trek Yields Pot

Deputies Find Growers' Campsite, Destroy About $6.7m In Plants

Last Of Two Parts

LOS PADRES NATIONAL FOREST - The Monterey County sheriff's deputies are 
still sleepy as they sharpen their machetes in the parking lot of the Black 
Bear Diner in Carmel.

But their mood is optimistic: They're getting ready to remove millions of 
dollars worth of marijuana from an illegal garden in the Los Padres 
National Forest south of Gorda on the Pacific Coast.

The seven deputies and detectives preparing for the mission this past 
Thursday are part of the County of Monterey Marijuana Eradication

Team and the Sheriff's Office's Narcotics Division, led by investigative 
Sgt. Doug Dahmen.

They conduct about 20 eradication missions each year, removing thousands of 
plants from marijuana fields on both private property and on the county's 
large swaths of public land.

With each mature stalk at an estimated street value of $5,000, the 
eradications collect harvests potentially worth millions. A mission Aug. 
18, for example, gathered almost $37.5 million worth of the drug.

Bagels finished and coffee in hand, the deputies pile into three large 
pickups and make the two-hour drive down Highway 1. At a narrow shoulder 
overlooking the coast, they meet a law enforcement officer from the U.S. 
Forest Service who directs them to the marijuana garden. Based on estimates 
from a helicopter flyover, they expect to find about 150 plants. But she 
tells them the number is closer to 1,500.

"We may need to get a helicopter in here," says Deputy Joe Moses, unsure 
whether the group can carry out all of the plants.

But it's too late to request a California Highway Patrol helicopter from 
Paso Robles because it has been committed to another mission. The officers 
realize they'll have to bring the marijuana out on foot.

Looking at several photos of larger gardens, Moses says that deputies 
locate the plots during flyovers by looking for any gaps in the tree 
coverage that reveal the lighter-colored marijuana leaves.

"You develop a good eye for it, but mainly it's the color," he says.

But many gardens, like this one, are well concealed beneath the trees, 
which caused the low estimate.

"If the helicopter isn't flying just right, then you'll miss it," Moses says.

Ready to roll

Several hundred yards down the highway, the deputies park at a turnaround 
overlooking a sharp drop down to the ocean. There, they gear up with water 
packs, food, radios, binoculars and flashlights and wind duct tape around 
the bottoms of their camouflage pants to keep out ticks.

Though they don't expect to find anyone on site, they carry .40-caliber 
handguns with extra ammunition. They know the operations can turn violent. 
For example, during an Aug. 5 raid on a marijuana garden in Santa Clara 
County, a 25-year-old Department of Fish and Game warden was shot through 
both legs, and a suspect was killed.

Patrol Capt. Ray Gould of the U.S. Forest Service, who already has secured 
the garden, meets the COMMET team at the turnaround and leads them into the 
woods across Highway 1.

At first, they follow a narrow trail, but they lose it early on and climb 
about 1,500 feet through redwoods, wild mint patches and thickets of poison 
oak.

After about half an hour they reach the garden's base camp, where two more 
forest service officers await them. The pair has done a "sneak-and-peek" 
trip up to the camp that morning to see if anyone is there.

"You just move real slow and stealthily," Gould says, describing the 
scouting process.

But the officers might have scared off the garden's keeper: They hear a 
noise above the tent and aren't sure if it is an animal or a person.

Growers leave campsite

Sheltered from view by a lush bay tree, the camp is dark and dirty. 
Supplies including cans of Spam, mayonnaise, tortillas and a two-liter 
bottle of salsa are crowded into a green four-person tent that smells of 
hashish. A bag of onions hang open on a tree beside a propane stove with 
three large tanks. To the side, a half-inch drip line empties into a flower 
box arranged for washing.

The deputies go through several black trash bags looking for evidence, 
especially items that might carry fingerprints.

They explain that these guards probably had stayed at the campsite once or 
twice a week since March. This contrasts with the style of large Mexican 
drug cartels, which hire workers to live at the gardens for the entire 
growth season, coming out only to replenish supplies or to remove the final 
harvest. The cartels also typically thin out the trees more than had been 
done at this site, which results in plants up to 15 feet tall, but most of 
these were under 5 feet.

Notes in Spanish left at the site make Dahmen suspect it was run by South 
or Central Americans, but not by a large cartel.

Huddling at the campsite, the law enforcement officers plan how to approach 
the harvest at hand. They agree to work in pairs.

"We'll all walk to the top and just fan out and walk down," Gould says.

Feds count each plant

He instructs the deputies to count the root bulbs of the plants even if 
they've been cut and to keep track of how many they pull up. COMMET's 
federal grant funding depends on how many plants they eradicate, so an 
accurate tally is critical.

 From the camp, the deputies follow the black water pipe up the hill 
through the brush. It is arranged with branches joined by T-shaped joints 
to water the entire garden, which stretches over 2 to 3 acres of the forest 
floor, with the bottom of the line at the campsite.

Gould discovers two bags of fertilizer under a tree, and Dahmen picks up a 
roll of rusted chicken wire.

"This is just some of the debris they leave in the national forest," he says.

Once they've uprooted, counted and tied up the plants with string, the 
group meets back at the dismantled camp, and several deputies find a more 
comfortable seat atop bundles of 100 to 200 stalks. They count 1,915 plants 
and estimate the total value at $6.7 million if the crop had fully matured.

But this has been only a small step toward eradicating all of the marijuana 
gardens in Monterey County, and Gould notes that taking out 20 gardens per 
year still leaves much of the marijuana harvest untouched.

"I would imagine that's not even half," he says.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman