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Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 4:36 am Post subject: Police pot raid yields pot valued at $18 Million
Police pot raid yields more than 6,000 plants
Multiagency task force swoops down on San Gabriel Canyon; no arrests made
By Dan Abendschein, Staff Writer
ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST - A multiagency pot raid in San Gabriel Canyon on Friday yielded more than 6,000 marijuana plants, authorities said.
County sheriff's deputies, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Forest Service and a state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement agency called the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) all participated in the raid.
Three helicopters from the agencies airlifted CAMP officers into remote canyons after doing surveillance all over the mountains.
The officers chopped down plants and hauled them back on the helicopters with immense tarps.
The raids were part of a planned operation to search in the mountains, rather than based on specific information about growers, said CAMP officer John Jameson.
He said the value of the plants seized was about $2,000 to $3,000 a plant, about $18 million total.
No arrests were made as growers camped out at the sites likely fled after preliminary reconnaissance flights last week, said CAMP Warden Matthew Shanly.
"A lot of the plants were dried up, and some had been harvested, so they probably knew we were coming," said Shanly.
Officer Jameson said that even though most remote grow sites were manned, it is unusual to make an arrest during the course of a raid.
"They see the helicopters and they disappear into the hills," said Jameson. "One raid, on our first flight we saw a huge tarp with marijuana plants all over it, and by the time we had guys up there, the whole thing had disappeared."
Jameson also said the number of plants seized in the raid was relatively small. A large raid might yield as many as 30,000 to 40,000 plants, he said.
The amount of pot seized by the agency is increasing each year, officials said. Last year it destroyed 1.7 million plants worth about $6.7billion on the street, according to figures on the agency's web site.
This year, said information analyst Victor Maurizzio, the agency has already seized 2.3million plants and though the agency's seasonal raids will wrap up next month, there are still more growing sites to go after.
Jameson, a former Riverside County sheriff's officer, said that when he first started doing outdoor marijuana busts in Riverside in 1986, 1,000 plants was considered a big raid.
"Back then you'd have people growing out in the hills behind their property, running hoses all the way up there," said Jameson.
Outdoor grow farms are run mostly by Mexican drug cartels who recruit laborers at the Mexican border and throughout California to run the camps, said an officer who would only identify himself as "Gunny."
The laborers hike in and receive food drops. They remain in place all summer, "Gunny" said.
Jameson said that many of the laborers receive what they consider to be huge paychecks to do the growing. Those who are caught often don't speak English or know anything about the area they are in.
"We arrested one man up in the Fresno area," said Jameson. "He thought that he was in Arizona."
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