Pubdate: Sun, 25 Sep 2005
Source: Morning Sentinel (ME)
Copyright: 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc
Contact:  http://www.onlinesentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1474
Author: Alan Crowell, Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

AUTHORITIES PRESENT ANATOMY OF A DRUG INVESTIGATION

SKOWHEGAN -- Sitting in a basement office surrounded by drug 
paraphernalia collected in hundreds of drug investigations, Lt. Carl 
Gottardi II said marijuana eradication season isn't what it used to be.

Gone are the days when investigators flying in helicopters could spot 
small plantations of hemp and follow a wellDworn path from the plants 
to a nearby house where the growers lived, said Gottardi, a 24Dyear 
veteran of drug investigations at the Somerset County Sheriff's Department.

Driven partly by pressure from police, marijuana growers, even in 
rural Somerset County, are increasingly moving indoors to high-tech 
operations in basements or barns. Growers themselves are less likely 
to be local and more likely to be using a home specifically as a base 
for their drug operations.

That means fewer and often better quality plants -- information and 
materials including special seeds and fertilizers to improve the 
quality of crops are available over the Internet -- and it also often 
means longer and more difficult investigations to gather information 
on drug suspects.

"These people who are in it for a lot of money, they have a lot of 
money invested and they go to great lengths to protect it," said Gottardi.

The investigation into a Connecticut man due to appear in Skowhegan 
District Court for a probable cause hearing in November is one 
example of the cat-and-mouse game marijuana investigations have often become.

Jason Campbell, 36, of Prospect, Conn. was charged with aggravated 
drug trafficking, marijuana cultivation and furnishing drugs after 
police, including Lt. Gottardi, executed a search warrant at the 
Campbell's Norridgewock home in May.

The affidavit attached to that warrant details an investigation that 
apparently started in May with a routine traffic stop in Fairfield 
and which led police to a Norridgewock home on Route 139 owned by 
Campbell, who has a record of drug convictions. Police believe the 
home was the location of an indoor grow operation, although when they 
later searched the home, the only plants they found were outside.

According to the affidavit, the investigation into Campbell started 
when police stopped a 19-year-old Connecticut man named Garret Couch 
on May 6. In Couch's vehicle, police found a container of a type 
often used to transport drugs. The container was empty but Couch told 
an officer that he lived in Campbell's home in Norridgewock.

On May 12, Couch was killed in a crash in Madison. In the car in 
which Couch died, police found a marijuana pipe and an undeveloped 
roll of camera film.

When a relative of Couch's developed the film, they found pictures of 
an indoor marijuana grow operation, according to the affidavit, which 
is signed by Lt. Gottardi.

Bills for electricity, obtained from Central Maine Power Co., 
indicated that electricity use at the house varied from a low of 640 
kilowatt-hours to 4,400 kilowatt-hours. High levels of electricity 
use are often associated with indoor marijuana growing, according to 
the affidavit.

With that information as well as the discovery of marijuana plants 
growing near an allDterrain vehicle trail behind the home, police 
obtained a search warrant and executed it on May 26.

They found no marijuana plants inside the home, although there were 23 outside.

Gottardi said police found evidence that was consistent with an 
indoor marijuana growing operation, including plant fertilizer and 
marijuana residue. The basement, however, appeared to have been 
recently thoroughly cleaned, although it smelled of marijuana, said Gottardi.

Campbell's attorney, Paul Sumberg, said the affidavit strings 
together unrelated events that police use to arrive at the wrong 
conclusion about his client.

"Most of the affidavit is inaccurate," said Sumberg.

Sumberg described his client as a Connecticut businessman who enjoys 
coming to Maine during the winter months for skiing and other winter 
recreation.

When police executed the search warrant they found no indoor grow 
operation because there had been no indoor grow operation, said Sumberg.

He said it is not clear who owned the plants found outside the home, 
but they may have belonged to a man who looked after the home for 
Campbell during the summer.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman