Source: San Francisco Examiner
Sunday, July 6, 1997 Page A 13
©1997 San Francisco Examiner
Pot spies in the sky irk locals
Mountain residents say antimarijuana helicopter patrols ruining their lives
Lisa M. Krieger
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
The sounds of summer waft over the Santa Cruz Mountains: The
rustling of golden grass. The trickling of a
droughtshrunken stream. The flitting of birds in
underbrush.
And now, the loud thumpthumpthump of a military
helicopter, flying so low that dust swirls, laundry falls
off clotheslines and animals run for cover.
The chopper is searching for the bright green leaves of
marijuana plants, a summer eradication campaign launched by
Santa Cruz County and funded by the state and federal
governments' war on drugs, the Campaign Against Marijuana
Production (CAMP).
"It's noisy, it's scary, there's dust flying it's
ridiculous and very frustrating," said Valerie Corral, who
grows medical marijuana on her 100acre farm hidden deep in
the accordion pleats of these rugged mountains. Twice last
week, a green National Guard helicopter patrolled her
property, skimming the redwood treetops.
The rural residents of Santa Cruz County have launched a
countercompaign. Privacy is fundamental to these mountain
people, many of whom escaped here from the urban
environments of San Francisco and San Jose.
Angered by the surveillance, they won an agreement last
month from the Sheriff's Department to scale back the number
of flight hours and reduce repeated flights over urban
corridors.
An antihelicopter coalition includes groups as diverse as
the Rural Bonnie Doon Homeowners Association, the San
Lorenzo Valley Women's Club, Santa Cruz Women's Commission,
the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the local chapter of
the American Civil Liberties Union, the Santa Cruz Hemp
Council and the Women's Alliance for Medical Marijuana,
which has reached a truce with the Sheriff's Department over
growing plants for personal therapeutic use.
The agreement "doesn't go nearly far enough," said Andrea
Tischler of ADIOS (Adios to Drug Informants, Overflights and
Surveillance) CAMP. "The helicopters will still be sweeping
down from our mountains and hovering overhead, the same as
before.
"American citizens have a right to enjoy their summer free
from lowflying, spying helicopters," she said. "Flying
fewer hours is totally irrelevant. The terrorism in the sky
is still with us.
"We want it to stop entirely and completely," she said.
Spending millions against pot
The sweep is part of a larger marijuana eradication effort
in California. Santa Cruz is one of 12 counties getting a
total of $2.7 million this year to eradicate the crop. Also
getting funds are Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino,
Monterey, Placer, San Bernardino, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sonoma
and Trinity counties.
For more than a decade, this rugged coastal county has been
a major center for commercial cultivation and distribution
of marijuana, according to SheriffCoroner Mark Tracy.
Marijuana is the county's primary cash crop, the California
Department of Justice says. The average price for an ounce
of local weed is $400; a pound, $5,000.
A recent county survey found that 6 percent of sixthgrade
Santa Cruz schoolchildren had tried marijuana, and that
about 20 percent of eighthgraders had smoked it the past
month, which the survey said was twice the national average.
Some marijuana growers and dealers are convicted felons who
illegally possess firearms, Tracy asserted. A few sell other
drugs as well, such as methamphetamines, psilocybin
mushrooms and cocaine.
Marijuana cultivation also causes extensive environmental
damage because growers dam creeks and streams, clearcut
fields and steal water, he said. During raids, he said,
"various types of rodenticides, insecticides and fertilizers
were found among the larger marijuana gardens."
Thousands of plants seized
Faced with a growing population and tight local budget, the
county sought state and federal help to go after dealers and
growers of marijuana.
This summer's $218,000 grant, part of a threeyear grant,
originates with the federal government's CAMP program, then
is distributed to counties by Gov. Wilson's Office of
Criminal Justice Planning.
It pays for two sheriff's deputies and one parttime deputy
district attorney. The county gets another $35,000 this year
from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. The funds must be
spent on marijuana eradication, not prevention or treatment.
The money has paid off: Last year, Santa Cruz County's
marijuana enforcement team eradicated a county record of
17,746 marijuana plants and arrested 202 people. They also
seized $32,200, a parcel of property, six vehicles and 53
firearms, including a MAK90 assault rifle. The county
ranked fourth among 58 California counties in the number of
plants seized last year.
In a single nineday stretch at the peak of last autumn's
harvest season, CAMP lent 10 law enforcement personnel and
45 hours of helicopter time to the county, eradicating 7,000
marijuana plants and arresting 26 people.
In one incident, sheriff's deputies and CAMP personnel hiked
into a remote marijuana garden and concealed themselves in
the dense foliage. The grower eventually arrived at the site
and was arrested while he tended to his plants. A total of
284 plants were seized.
In another case, deputies located 1,369 marijuana plants
growing in a remote canyon on the North Coast, 6 to 8 feet
tall and only days away from harvesting.
"The use of helicopters is essential to the marijuana
enforcement program," said Santa Cruz sheriff's Deputy Tim
Allen. "It is almost useless to patrol here by foot. It is
too rural, too mountainous. There is no way we can do it."
A place for independent people
But the mountains, wild and untrammeled, have never taken
kindly to visitors.
Squeezed between San Francisco to the north, Santa Cruz to
the west and Silicon Valley to the east, this grand chain of
mountains is a sweep of time as well as distance, spawned by
colliding continents, buckled into peaks, and ground down by
millions of years of wind, ocean and rain.
It is a place to lose yourself: Dirt roads pursue circuitous
routes, along canyon bottoms and river flats, up ridge tops,
and along the tawny brown slopes of longabandoned fields.
Small and isolated communities flourish in its creases and
folds. Some are outposts of the endangered California
hippie. Others are artifacts of an older way of life,
settled by those who logged redwoods, hunted deer or built
quaint turnofthecentury resorts.
"There is an attitude that we are all criminals because we
live in the country," said Alison Harlow, who lives in the
heavily patrolled San Lorenzo Valley. "This entire
surveillance violates our constitutional rights. Their goal
is to get rid of marijuana, no matter whose rights might get
trampled."
During a public hearing at the Board of Supervisors last
month, an artist said she was distracted from her work.
Another citizen said the noise exacerbated her
posttraumatic stress disorder. Some, sick with AIDS or
cancer, said the helicopters patrolled gardens that were
legal under Proposition 215, the new medical marijuana law.
Others said the lowflying machines frightened their horses,
llamas and emus.
"They get so close that they knock things over," said
Harlow. "Once, when we were out in our tomato garden, they
were so close I could see them filming us with a video
camera. Our dog got scared and ran into the house,
trembling. We were buzzed three times yesterday."
While the county can't afford to pave roads, enforce
childsupport orders or catch drunken drivers, a helicopter
surveillance campaign is a huge waste of money, opponents
said.
The Sheriff's Department stands by its enforcement efforts.
"I do not want this county turned into a major marijuana
cultivation center," sheriff's Deputy Allen said. "Marijuana
is on the books as being illegal. If people don't like that,
they should change it."
The right to peace and quiet is far more important, mountain
residents say.
"We are united in our resolve to end the invasive and
constitutionally forbidden use of military helicopters to
harass and spy on rural residents," said Theodora Kerry of
the Santa Cruz Hemp Council. "We are not going away until
they go away."