Pubdate: Thu, 18 Aug 2005
Source: Arizona Daily Sun (AZ)
Copyright: 2005 Arizona Daily Sun
Contact:  http://www.azdailysun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1906
Author: Cyndy Cole
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

FOREST OFFICERS FACE UPHILL BATTLE AGAINST POT FARMS

If northern Arizona's illicit drug trends mirror California's, Forest 
Service personnel are going to have an increasingly difficult time busting 
the majority of those who operate large pot farms in remote forests.

Drug growing operations here have become more sophisticated with the 
addition of cellular phones and a seemingly unlimited number of workers to 
guard and nurture them, Forest Service Special Agent Bill Mickle said.

Yet the ranks of the people designated to fight the war on drugs in the 
forests has not grown as quickly.

Mickle is the only Forest Service special agent in northern Arizona and one 
of three in the state. He was part of the investigation leading to Monday's 
raid of a large-scale pot farm located in Calf Pen Canyon of the Fossil 
Springs Wilderness on the Coconino National Forest. Officials believe it 
could be one of the largest pot farm operations in the country.

It feels like it's been weeks since he got a full night of sleep, he said.

He works 14 hour days sometimes in summer, the peak time for drug busts, 
but is also responsible for investigating everything from suspected arson 
to theft of ruins to homicides in the forest.

"There's no doubt we're understaffed and underfunded," he said. "But we 
definitely work hard."

He and six other Forest Service law enforcement officers police the entire 
1.8 million acres of the Coconino National Forest. That's one man or woman 
to patrol every 2,846 square miles of forest.

As a rule of thumb, law enforcement officials figure that for every pot 
plant they find, there are nine more they have yet to discover or destroy.

They have little time to do patrols, acting more on calls for help or 
reports of crimes, Mickle said.

On a national scale, the Coconino is a large forest with about the same 
number of law enforcement officials for its size as elsewhere in the 
country: one officer for every 733,000 visitors.

But where other forests count an average of 9 percent of everything they do 
as cracking down on illegal drug operations, Coconino Forest probably 
commits at least twice as much time to drug enforcement, Mickle estimated.

Mickle's budget for training, equipment, travel and most else: $5,300.

"Our budget's small," he said. "We don't have a drug enforcement budget."

Last year 716,001 marijuana plants were eradicated in 155 national forests, 
according to Forest Service data, with the most in California forests. 
Fifty-eight methamphetamine labs were found in national forests in that time.

By comparison, Mickle remembers uprooting about 100 marijuana plants in the 
Coconino over the same year. Several groves were discovered after the crops 
had been harvested.

The number of plants destroyed in this forest could be much higher this 
year as a result of Monday's major pot bust north of Strawberry.

Here, like elsewhere in the country, law enforcement officers are seeing 
more commercial pot crops run by immigrants from other countries as opposed 
to what used to be small farms in the forest planted for individual use.

Meanwhile, pot farmers are developing varieties of fast-growing marijuana 
that can be harvested twice in a summer, instead of once, and another type 
that can survive in the snow.

But if pot growers start to stand their ground when approached by police, 
as they have in California, Mickle's job could become much more dangerous.

Last year, one deputy was shot at in the Coconino.

Various forests in California have had crops that were booby-trapped in 
ways last seen in the jungles during the Vietnam War, with sharp upright 
poles hidden below ground waiting for unsuspecting feet.

Some drug growers have fired at law enforcement officers when discovered 
and killed hikers.

Police have found police scanners and radios used to pick up police 
dialogue in California drug camps.

Like so many other things Californian, Mickle suspects it's only a matter 
of time until the same fervor for guarding hidden pot crops becomes an 
issue for law officers here.
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