Pubdate: Sat, 05 May 2012
Source: Visalia Times-Delta, The (CA)
Copyright: 2012 The Visalia Times-Delta
Contact: http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2759
Author: David Castellon

MEDICAL-MARIJUANA ABUSE: TULARE COUNTY AUTHORITIES TARGET GROWERS

To Sergio Ornelas, his quiet, rural neighborhood west of Goshen seemed
like the last place where a raid on a marijuana farm would occur.

But the 19-year-old had no idea more than 1,000 marijuana plants were
being grown behind the makeshift fence erected behind a house at the
end of his street until Tulare County sheriff's deputies arrived with
search warrants Tuesday morning.

Investigators reported finding five valid medical recommendations for
marijuana posted at the site, but the number listed on the
recommendations was far less than the number of plants found there,
said Sheriff's Lt. Richard Tom Sigley, who oversees the department's
narcotics division.

The plants were confiscated.

Grows like the one in Goshen - which authorities believe was a
criminal operation growing marijuana for sale under the guise of
raising the plants as medicine - are becoming increasingly common in
Tulare County and across California, authorities say.

And both criminal and legitimate growing operations often violate
Tulare County's extensive ordinance that details how and where
marijuana can be grown in the unincorporated county.

It includes prohibitions against raising the plants in residential
areas and land zoned for farming. In addition, the laundry list of
conditions includes that marijuana has to be grown in fully-enclosed
buildings with security, not outdoors or in areas with shaky plywood
fencing with plastic sheeting serving as a makeshift roof, as was the
case at the Goshen-area marijuana garden raided Tuesday.

Yet such marijuana grow sites are up and running, and not just in
Goshen.

Glenn MacIntyre, a Tulare County building inspector and code
enforcement officer, said in a recent interview that he and fellow
inspectors are seeing increasing numbers of the marijuana grow sites
being set up in rural neighborhoods, often with the 9-foot-high or
taller fencing surrounding them.

"You see them all over," he said, pointing to a couple of fenced-off
sites during a drive near Alpaugh.

In fact, they are becoming so prevalent that Tulare County officials
are preparing to intensify their efforts to go after marijuana growers
violating the county's medical-marijuana ordinance.

"We plan to do things differently this year, as opposed to last year,"
said Kathleen Bales-Lange, the Tulare County counsel.

Over the past two years, the county has filed five civil actions
seeking to get people to stop marijuana grows in the unincorporated
county that violate the county ordinance - which requires that such
grows can occur only in commercially zoned areas.

Plans to file several more civil actions have been authorized by the
county Board of Supervisors in closed session. Bales-Lange wouldn't
disclose the number of properties her office plans to target or when
the county will take action, but recent closed-session matters on the
supervisors' agendas included discussions with county lawyers on
"initiation of litigation" for 25 potential civil actions.

New gardens 'everywhere'

A big part of the reason more cases for code violations are being
filed is that in January, the county Resource Management Agency hired
a code enforcement officer to focus on inspecting grow sites to
determine if they violate the medical-marijuana ordinance and other
ordinances - such as putting up fencing that is too tall or not
constructed to the county's building codes around grow sites.

The inspector, Robert Brantley, a former Visalia and Tulare police
officer who also works as a criminal-justice instructor at College of
the Sequoias in Visalia, was not made available by RMA for an interview.

County officials say they mostly hear about the grow sites from people
who call the Sheriff's Department wondering if their neighbors may be
violating the law or stating concerns about their safety living or
working in proximity to marijuana.

"We're seeing them everywhere -- residential zones, ag zones, within
sensitive use areas" close to churches, day care centers and schools,
Bales-Lange said.

And in cases where law enforcement decides no criminal violations
occurred, "That's when they refer it to us," to conduct
code-compliance checks.

As for the county's planned actions, Bales-Lange said her office is in
the process of filing civil complaints. "I'm ready to kick butt now
. It's a matter of getting the paperwork together."

She wouldn't disclose the locations of the grow sites, noting, "I
don't want people dodging process servers."

But this time, the county is looking to put more teeth in its
abatement efforts, and a big part of that will depend on whether the
county Board of Supervisors approves on Tuesday an amendment to the
county's code enforcement procedures on medical-marijuana growing.

Under the changes, instead of just going to court to ask judges to
order growers who ignore abatement letters from the county to stop
growing marijuana, the county will also initiate administrative code
enforcement proceedings that could lead to a series of penalties that
include $100-a-day fines for each violation of the ordinance. "And we
consider each plant a violation," Bales-Lange said.

If a third-party moderator finds the growers in violation, they also
could also have to pay the county's costs for the proceedings and have
their existing permits on their properties revoked, among other things.

This process has been used in the past for other county codes, but if
the supervisors approved the changes, it will be a first for
medical-marijuana code violations, said Mike Spata, assistant director
of planning for the county Resource Management Agency.

Part of the changes the supervisors will consider is streamlining the
administrative code process so cases can be handled in a little more
than 40 days compared to the current 120-plus days, he said.

A threat to public safety

Bales-Lange said the supervisors can speed up the process in
situations where public safety is threatened, and the supervisors have
noted in several public meetings their concerns about violence that
has occurred at some marijuana grows in the county.

An RMA report to the supervisors notes that eight of the 20 homicides
in the unincorporated county last year occurred at grow sites,.

They've also expressed concerns that neighbors or other bystanders
could be hurt or killed in such conflicts.

"We are going to do administrative code enforcement as well as civil
litigation in Superior Court," Bales-Lange said.

It's not just the growers the county intends to target.

Often, the grow sites are on rented land, so abatement notices also
will be sent to the property owners warning that they could face the
same financial and administrative penalties if they don't get their
tenants to stop growing marijuana in violation of the county ordinance
or evict them.

In fact, the county is preparing pamphlets to explain the penalties
property owners could face, Spata said.

"A part of it is a lot of these owners are absentee landowners. They
don't know what their land is being used for. If they know it's taking
place, then they're partially responsible," Sigley said.

And the county may be getting some federal help. Bales-Lange said the
U.S. Attorney's Office for California's Eastern District has asked for
copies of the county's actions against the growers and property owners.

"The U.S. Attorney has started a program of enforcement of the San
Joaquin Valley, a criminal side and a civil forfeiture side," in which
land and other assets for violating the Federal Substance Control Act
can be seized.

As such, lienholders on properties where the medical-marijuana code is
being violated also will be notified of the county's abatement orders.

"The lienholders usually have an interest in protecting their assets,"
Bales-Lange explained. "Perhaps they will encourage the illegal user
to get that illegal property off their property."

In October, federal officials announced plans to crack down on
marijuana distributors using California's 1996 law that permitted
using and growing marijuana for medical purposes as cover for illegal
drug activities.

Federal officials cited an "explosion" of marijuana production in
California, stating that large growing operations that used to be more
prevalent in remote, foothill areas were moving in large numbers to
the Valley floor.

And federal prosecutors accused many growers and dispensaries of
marketing marijuana for recreational use, rather than for the medical
treatment, as the state law intended.

"These businesses often claim to be operating under the cover of state
law, but in fact are abusing it," U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said in a
news conference last year.

Sigley said some of the plants being grown here at sites with valid
and phony medical recommendations are ending up as part of the street
drug trade in Utah, Illinois, Arizona and other states.

He added that here in the South Valley, it's common for law
enforcement officers to see copies of the same medical recommendations
posted at multiple sites, and the plants can number in the hundreds or
more a thousand -- well beyond the numbers listed on the
recommendations.

"I've yet to see a legitimate marijuana grow with medical necessity,
per se," Sigley said.

"And the reason I don't see those is because the ones doing it legally
and for medical necessity; they aren't the ones planting 99 plants in
their backyard. Because if they need it for medical necessity, they
can get by with two plants annually."
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MAP posted-by: Matt