Mexican drug gangs take root in S. Oregon

Report - Drug trafficking groups, fed by huge marijuana gardens, jump 44 percent last year

Thursday, September 28, 2006
BRYAN DENSON

The Oregonian

Armed Mexican drug gangs have made Southern Oregon's mountains their garden, cultivating tens of thousands of high-grade marijuana plants and -- as harvest time approaches -- setting the stage for potential violence.

In recent growing seasons, the gangs have put illegal immigrants to work as gardeners in remote patches of Jackson, Josephine and Douglas counties, a verdant region known globally for its high-grade cannabis, according to police agencies now pulling up the illegal plants.

The growth in Mexican drug gangs in Oregon helped to drive a 44 percent increase in identified drug trafficking organizations between 2004 and 2005, according to the state Department of Justice's first comprehensive report on organized crime in Oregon.

The report notes that Oregon has been spared the kind of Mafia organizations and rampant public corruption reported elsewhere in the nation. But the state is thick with homegrown gangs -- including bikers, street thugs and convicts -- and criminal networks with tentacles in Asia and former republics of the Soviet Union, the 43-page document says.

The attorney general's report notes that criminal drug gangs cross many jurisdictions, forcing underfunded police agencies and a diminishing number of multi-agency task forces to be creative in finding and prosecuting leaders.

"Traditional law enforcement techniques don't always work to stop organized crime," said Steven Briggs, chief counsel of the attorney general's criminal justice division. "Because if you arrest an individual, the organization will continue to commit crime."

More than 120 drug gangs have been identified in the state, 46 of them with roots in Mexico, according to the report, obtained by The Oregonian and set for public release today.

The increase in Mexican drug gangs came as no surprise to sheriff's departments across southwestern Oregon, which find themselves hip deep in prosecutions of low-level growers getting ready to harvest plants for their bosses before the first frost.

"Historically there's been an enormous flow of methamphetamine that's largely controlled by Mexican cartels," said Douglas County Sheriff Chris Brown. "But the proliferation of the marijuana grows is really kind of a new trend for us. We first detected those in Oregon just a few years ago. Now we're finding more and more each year."

Bay Area recruits

Illegal immigrants, some of them "mopes" recruited off the streets of California's Bay Area, have been paid as much as $10,000 to tend the June-to-October crops and serve as armed sentries, said Detective Sgt. Ken Selig, commander of the Josephine Interagency Narcotics Team, known as JOINT.

Recruits are typically dropped off in remote woods managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Equipped with picks, shovels and other provisions, they work a bit like indentured servants.

"We're not seeing the high-level (gang) members," said Brian Anderson, Josephine County's undersheriff. "We're seeing the workers. Those are the ones we're arresting. And they all appear to be illegal (immigrants). We are finding weapons -- guns and rifles -- in the gardens."

The transient gardeners sling weapons over their shoulders to guard plots against would-be thieves known as pirates, detectives say. In some cases, said Selig, they have been told that failure to guard the gardens could result in harm to their families back home.

Police tramped through makeshift camps in Jackson and Josephine counties this summer, confiscating such weapons as SKS military rifles, Tec-22 semiautomatic pistols and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Shootouts, which once punctuated the doings of organized pot growers in Northern California, have not yet reached Oregon's woods. But police say the criminal gangs behind the Southern Oregon grows probably are related to their counterparts farther down Interstate 5.

Worries about deer season

Shots have been fired in Oregon when hikers or motorists strayed too close to the Mexican marijuana fields, according to law enforcement officials. And some observers worry about what will happen on opening day of the deer season this Saturday, when droves of rifle-toting hunters hit the woods and stumble onto well-guarded plantations.

The marijuana fields have often been elaborate and well-hidden. Police say the growers typically plant near creeks, sometimes rigging PVC pipes into the water for crude irrigation systems. They also cut down vegetation, in some cases spray painting the stumps of trees to camouflage them from detection by police flying overhead.

Mexican drug gangs account for as little as 5 percent of the pot growers busted in the southern end of Oregon in recent years, according to Brown. But they produce most of the marijuana grown in the region, he said, because of the size of their grows.

"They're huge," said Brown, whose jurisdiction sprawls over more than 5,000 square miles, more than three times the size of Rhode Island. Mexican gangs have set up camps around grows of 2,000 to more than 20,000 plants, he said.

Earlier this month, county and federal authorities spent three days pulling up 16 immense marijuana gardens in the Applegate area in Jackson County, a 33,000-plant haul worth an estimated $120 million. Five Mexican nationals were arrested after the seizure. The Jackson County Sheriff's Office reported this week that it has confiscated nearly 45,000 plants this year, 99 percent of which came from Mexican grows.

"We ran into more of their gardens than we did in the past," said Lt. Rich Fogarty, who heads criminal investigations for the sheriff's office. "This year appears to be a banner year for their grows."

Bryan Denson: 503-294-7614; bryandenson@news.oregonian.com



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