Pubdate: Sun, 26 Nov 2006
Source: Courier-Journal, The (Louisville, KY)
Copyright: 2006 The Courier-Journal
Contact:  http://www.courier-journal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/97
Note: Only publishes local LTEs

POT ERADICATION UP THIS YEAR

Spotters Spent More Time in Air

Extra time in the air by spotters helped authorities destroy more 
marijuana growing outdoors in Kentucky this year than in more than a decade.

Police cut and burned 557,276 plants this year, up nearly 50,000 from 
2005 and the most since 1995. Arrests also were up: 475 in 2006 
compared with 452 in 2005.

If each destroyed plant had produced one pound of pot with an 
estimated worth of $2,000, that would mean $1 billion was prevented 
from entering the illegal drug market.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration brought in several 
helicopters and an airplane for six weeks during the summer, creating 
more opportunity for spotters to find pot patches, said Lt. Ed 
Shemelya, head of the marijuana-eradication program for Kentucky State Police.

"Anybody in this business will tell you the more eyes you get in the 
sky, the more dope you'll find," Shemelya said.

It's been 20 years since state police and the Kentucky National Guard 
carried out their first coordinated effort to destroy cultivated 
marijuana. The story since has been what Shemelya calls a 
"cat-and-mouse game" in which each side has gotten more sophisticated 
and changed tactics.

The initial effort in 1986 was a one-day sweep, essentially a media 
event to publicize eradication efforts.

Now Kentucky's eradication -- cited as one of the top efforts in the 
nation -- runs year round with a task force that involves more 
police, troops and agencies, including local officers, state police, 
the National Guard, the DEA and the U.S. Forest Service.

The technology also has improved. At one time when a spotter saw a 
marijuana patch from the air, police would calculate the location by 
hand; now National Guard helicopters used for spotting have computers 
that plot the location of pot patches with the click of a cursor, 
Shemelya said.

Growers responded to increased scrutiny through the years by 
improving techniques and doing more to hide their crops, including 
reducing the size of their plots and spreading them out among the 
woods and hills.

Twenty years ago, police sometimes found hundreds of plants together, 
but in the past few years, the average number of plants in a plot has 
been in the 60s or below.

One anomaly this year was that the average number of plants per plot 
jumped to 83.

Growers may have put out larger patches because they thought the 
National Guard wouldn't be as active in hunting for pot as a result 
of deployments to the war in Iraq, Shemelya said.

That wasn't the case, Shemelya said. The number of Guard personnel 
involved in the marijuana-cutting program was about the same as always.

The guard has adequate troops to support law enforcement or respond 
to disasters at home even with troops overseas, said spokesman Col. 
Phil Miller.

Police also found far more booby traps at pot patches this year than 
they had for several years. In 2005 there were two, but police found 
20 this year.

In one case, a grower had driven dozens of nails through a piece of 
wood and put it in a pit with the nails sticking up. An officer was 
hurt when he stepped into the hidden pit, Shemelya said.

At another plot, police found inert pipe bombs that didn't contain 
any explosives to scare people away. It isn't clear sometimes whether 
booby traps are directed at police or people trying to steal marijuana.

Kentucky long has ranked as one of the top outdoor pot producers in 
the nation for a number of reasons, including its conducive climate, 
lots of places to hide patches and experienced growers.

In 2005, the state ranked second behind California in the number of 
plants eradicated, according to the DEA.
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MAP posted-by: Elaine