Crime & Safety

County Sheriff Seizes 10,000 Pot Plants

State park grow in Gilroy cultivated by Mexican cartel, authorities say.


—By Bay City News Service

Teams of state and local law enforcement officers this week began clearing about 10,000 marijuana plants believed grown by a Mexican drug cartel within Henry Coe State Park in southern Santa Clara County east of Gilroy.

Some 40 officers in three teams met at 4 a.m. and hiked for several hours in foothills to a remote slope in Coon Creek Canyon to reach the plants, Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office spokesman Sgt. Kurtis Stenderup said.

The teams, including sheriff's deputies and SWAT personnel and officers from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, did not find any suspects at the grove of plants but recovered two rifles, Stenderup said.

The officers worked into the afternoon of Wednesday July 10 to uproot and cut the pot plants and load 500 pounds at a time into a net lifted by a rope and flown one by one by a California Highway Patrol helicopter to a staging area in the park with about 20 other officers.

The plants were removed from the net and placed into an oversized trailer used to carry them away for disposal, Stenderup said.

The copter pilot also airlifted debris from the marijuana gardens, such as hundreds of feet of black water hoses used by growers to feed the plants from a creek in the park and a pond at a nearby private ranch, Stenderup said.

Sheriff Laurie Smith, at the staging area in the park about seven miles east of state Highway 152, said each of the 10,000 plants could have translated to as much as $3,000 to $5,000 in street sales.

"We think it is the Mexican cartels that are doing it," Smith said. "There's a huge profit. The people who are tending the gardens are not the ones who are profiting from it."

Those working on large marijuana gardens at remotes sites like the one in Henry Coe tend to live there the entire grow season, from planting around January to harvesting in August or September, Smith said.

Aside from growing the drug with the intent to distribute it for sale, the grow's operators harmed the park's environment by damming the creek and using harsh pesticides not allowed in the United States, Smith said.

"They are completely disrupting the habitat, they are taking water out of the streams," Smith said.

Even though no arrests were made, Smith deemed the day's operation a success.

"We're eradicating the plants, we're taking out the growing equipment, we're taking out the garbage, we're returning the streams," Smith said.

"We can't do anything about the pesticides probably that have been used, and that has long-term consequences," Smith said.

Last year, sheriff's deputies and fish and game officers made 22 arrests during cultivation busts and have arrested 19 people so far this year, Stenderup said.

This year's arrests were made at four grows on public land and three on private property, Stenderup said.

Removing the plants, which sometimes grow to the thickness of a Christmas tree, and cleaning out the gardens can be a difficult chore, sheriff's Detective Sgt. Aaron Simonson said.

Growers will plant the marijuana on a hillside, as steep as a 45-degree angle, so the plants get the morning sun instead of the hotter afternoon light, said Simonson, who has worked with the teams.

"It's not like it's flat territory," Simonson said.

After clearing the plants, the next job is to remove the water lines that sometimes run for miles to water sources, Simonson said.

Illegal grow operations almost always involve firearms and so threaten the safety of people in parks and elsewhere who wander into them, Smith said.

"If you're ever hiking, backpacking, walking on trails in the any of the parks and on private property and you see evidence of hoses or water -- leave, these people are serious," Smith said.

"There have been murders, there have been serious injuries to the growers, to the public," she said.

The eradication effort was the culmination of an investigation that started in June after a rancher reported hearing gunshots near his property that borders the state park, Stenderup said.

The sheriff's office spotted the growing plants from an aerial surveillance of the forested park by helicopter, Stenderup said.

"It's a different color green," he said.

The grow was in the same spot in the far eastern side of Henry Coe park where authorities seized thousands of marijuana plants last year, Smith said.

"We try to arrest people at these grows because what we want to do is find out who they're working for, we actually want to try to stop it because otherwise it's year after year of eradication, and the environmental damage," Smith said.

"But I suspect they will be back," Smith said. "They have to have a location where there's a ready water source. Marijuana takes a lot of water. And I think that's why we see the same places over and over again."

The county has a contract with a dump where the loads of cannabis will be trucked to and buried, Smith said.

Copyright © 2013 by Bay City News, Inc. -- Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.


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