Pubdate: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 Source: Sacramento Bee (CA) Copyright: 2006 The Sacramento Bee Contact: http://www.sacbee.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376 Author: Kim Minugh, Bee Staff Writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California) Note: Does not publish letters from outside its circulation area. POT RAID ENDS RECORD SEASON FOR YOLO COUNTY Camouflage-clad narcotics officers used machetes to carve nearly 2,000 marijuana plants out of a steep Rumsey Canyon hillside Tuesday, completing a record-breaking season for outdoor pot seizures in Yolo County. After Tuesday's raid -- the Yolo Narcotic Enforcement Team's sixth of the season and likely its last -- the total number of pot plants burned by county narcotics officers this summer billowed to 25,000. The officers in just one day had seized the same number of plants team members confiscated in all of last year's roughly five-month marijuana growing season. One look at -- and sniff of -- the weeds hauled out of the Rumsey Canyon by helicopter could explain why reconnaissance of the area has been so fruitful this year. "This right here is exactly what (growers are) looking for in their growths," said YONET Commander Roy Giorgi, admiring impressive flowers on a towering marijuana plant. "You couldn't find a better-looking bud." The admiration was short-lived. The 2,000 plants -- each 8 to 10 feet tall and heavy with buds -- were burned at a local fire department by YONET officials, who were careful to stay upwind of the aromatic blaze. In one fire, team members destroyed drugs that could have fetched as much as $15 million on the streets. Officials said levels of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in California's pot plants reach 25 percent -- "one-hit marijuana," Giorgi called it. This year, almost 1.5 million marijuana plants have been seized in California by members of the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, surpassing last year's total of 1.1 million. That year had been a record-breaking one as well. Though Giorgi attributes Yolo's sudden jump this year to a more aggressive approach by his team, the state's growing number of seizures likely stems from an increased number of pot farms budding across the state, said Ovonual Berkley, an assistant regional officer in charge of CAMP's Regional 5, which includes Sacramento and Yolo counties. CAMP -- a multi-jurisdictional task force that assists local agencies in pot eradication by providing air- and manpower -- began in 1983 when recreationers were being run off public land by armed marijuana farmers, Berkley said. That problem has resurfaced in full force in the past four to five years, Berkley said, as highly organized Mexican drug cartels set up shop on public lands across the state. About 70 percent of farms raided this year were on public land, according to the Department of Justice. Berkley said profits get reinvested in more marijuana farms, as well as the production of other drugs. "I think they're all interrelated," said Berkley, who has worked with CAMP for 20 years and law enforcement for 45. Though acknowledging that some people might use marijuana recreationally without great harm, Berkley said he feels good about the work he and other narcotic officials do. "Every plant that I cut and we haul and dispose of, it's a plant that's not going out on the street," he said. "That's my contribution to society." Attorney General Bill Lockyer on Tuesday applauded the efforts to eradicate pot in the Sacramento Valley, which he said has been "blanketed" with the weed. "Our agents will keep pulling it up wherever they find it, whether in fields or subdivisions," Lockyer said in a news release. "I appreciate the hard work of these tenacious law enforcement agents." Agents indeed were tenacious Tuesday, hiking nearly two miles into the Rumsey Canyon -- a two-hour trek through heavy brush on a steep hillside that ended with hacking down 2,000 plants on more steep hillside. There, the mature plants were interspersed between manzanita bushes and juvenile oak trees -- a tactic growers use to camouflage the illicit plants. A tangle of black irrigation tubes comprised a drip system fed by a dammed creek. Two abandoned campsites offered a glimpse into the lives of the unseen farmers who carefully tended the weed: a propane tank, empty chicken packages, discarded "animalitos" cookie bags, a tube of Colgate toothpaste. Giorgi, YONET commander, said narcotic officers have learned through interviews with workers arrested in other raids that the men, often Mexican farmers, are paid $15,000 to $25,000 for overseeing the growths, provided the crops are not seized. With the bulk of marijuana harvesting season over, Giorgi said YONET members will return to enforcement activities other than outdoor marijuana eradication -- which, in condensed terms, probably takes up only about two weeks of the team's time. But Giorgi said he expects to return to familiar stomping grounds next year, when new crops of marijuana have sprouted. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek