Pubdate: Thu, 15 Jul 2010
Source: Mail Tribune, The (Medford, OR)
Copyright: 2010 The Mail Tribune
Contact:  http://www.mailtribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/642
Note: Only prints LTEs from within it's circulation area, 200 word count limit
Author: Anita Burke

COUNTIES TAKE AIM AT POT MENACE

Seven Southern Oregon Counties Get Federal Grant to Unite Efforts

Seven Southern Oregon counties have teamed up to fight marijuana 
growers likely linked to Mexican cartels.

Sheriff's departments in Jackson, Josephine, Coos, Curry, Douglas, 
Klamath and Lake counties came together to form Southern Oregon 
Multi-Agency Marijuana Eradication and Reclamation, or SOMMER, this 
year, said Andrea Carlson, a spokeswoman for the Jackson County 
office. The team has received a $202,000 federal grant to find, 
investigate, remove and clean up massive marijuana gardens in forests 
across the region this summer.

"When one county is active in eradicating plants, then the cartels 
push into neighboring areas," Carlson said.

After a big eradication push in 2007 -- yanking out 53,899 plants -- 
Jackson County found no growing operations in 2008, but then saw 
30,971 plants removed in 2009. Douglas County found nearly 10,000 pot 
plants in 2008.

"The big numbers kind of flip-flop," Carlson said, noting that the 
growers seem to focus on one county, then another in hopes of 
avoiding detection.

The multi-agency partnership will enable departments to "get a grasp 
across the region on a huge amount of land," she said.

Public land across the West but especially in Oregon, California and 
Washington -- among the biggest producers in the nation -- 
increasingly is used for marijuana production, according to the 
Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program, the Drug 
Enforcement Administration operation that funded SOMMER.

The 2010 National Drug Threat Assessment released in February by the 
U.S. Department of Justice's National Drug Intelligence Center 
reported that the number of plants removed from public land soared 
more than 300 percent from 2004 to 2008, primarily at pot gardens of 
Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. The organizations, which also 
bring marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin into the country 
from Mexico, favor public land because its remoteness can limit 
detection and it can't be seized or traced back to an owner the way 
private property can, the report said.

A separate 2008 National Drug Intelligence Center report on 
cartel-related drug-trafficking organizations said the Federation 
cartel was active in Klamath Falls and undetermined cartels were 
working in Medford and Roseburg. The most recently available report 
compiled information from federal, state and local authorities 
between January 2006 and April 2008.

While Southern Oregon hasn't had wildfires linked to growers' camps 
or conflicts when hikers, hunters or other legitimate forest users 
come upon gardens, officials worry about the possible risk.

Officials here also worry that cartels could become more powerful and 
dangerous, as they reportedly have in California and Arizona.

To demonstrate the damage pot-growing operations leave in the woods, 
the Jackson County Sheriff's Department offered a tour of a 3-acre 
garden cleared of more than 2,000 plants in September 2009. Two men 
were arrested, but yards of flexible black pipe snake across the 
hillside to carry water from Indian Creek to the growing site remain, 
as do scattered heaps of trash. Pans, a lawn mower battery, several 
cell phone chargers, smashed cans and other rubble spill down the 
hill from a flat area where a tent once sat.

Removing the plants, collecting evidence and cleaning up the trash 
even from a relatively small garden such as this one, located a 
short, steep hike from Carberry Creek Road, requires hundreds of 
man-hours and can cost $10,000, authorities estimated.

That's another big reason why the new collaborative effort is so 
important, Josephine County Sheriff Gil Gilbertson said.

"We don't have the money to fight this," he said.

His department earmarks about $90,000 annually for marijuana 
enforcement and eradication, focusing on prosecuting a handful of 
growers each year.

"Working together, we can do this economically and strategically," 
Gilbertson said.

He said Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters came up with the idea of 
a multi-agency regional marijuana-eradication team and was able to 
secure money, based in part on the numbers of plants removed in 
recent years. The seven counties pulled out more than 55,000 pot 
plants in 2009, with nearly 31,000 of them coming from Jackson County.

Neighboring counties eagerly signed on, having already seen the 
success of a regional search and rescue team at handling potentially 
costly problems that spread across a wide area, Gilbertson said.

"We want to stand together," he said.

SOMMER will work closely with Brim Aviation, which provides 
helicopters for aerial surveillance and lifting out plants, the 
National Guard, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land 
Management, officials said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom