Pubdate: Mon,  9 Jan 2006
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2006 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.mercurynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Don Thompson, Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

COPS SEEK PATTERNS LINKING POT FARMS

Attack On Large-Scale Growers In West

SACRAMENTO - Police raiding massive marijuana farms 300 miles apart
are discovering that the same brands of fertilizer, pesticides and
shovels are often used to grow tens of thousands of high-grade pot
plants.

Government analysts are using such seemingly innocuous information,
plugged into a shared database by drug agents in four Western states,
to search for patterns linking diverse operations across the West and
into Mexico.

``There's definitely a quartermaster system in operation'' as
large-scale growers learn to take advantage of economies of scale to
cut costs and maximize profits, said Jim Day, law enforcement
coordinator for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Sacramento.

U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott lobbied for federal money to set up
the intelligence-sharing units in 2004 to go after the brains and
financing behind increasingly sophisticated marijuana-growing
operations. He had become frustrated that prosecutions in his Northern
California district often stopped with poor Mexican immigrants
illegally imported to guard the giant pot farms.

``They taught me in the Army, when you win the intelligence battle,
you win the battle. That's what we're trying to do here with marijuana
eradication,'' said Scott, who doubles as an Army Reserve lieutenant
colonel. ``The goal is to identify the lieutenants and the captains
and the heads of these organizations.''

A Sacramento-based ``fusion center'' tracks information based not on
geography, but by tying together all the information on particular
drug operations that routinely span state and national borders, said
Tommy LaNier, who directs the San Diego-based National Marijuana Initiative.

``What we want to do is link all the cases that are tied back to these
major targets that we've identified,'' LaNier said. ``We've got a lot
of work to do, but we're making a dent.''

Before the summer's growing season begins, the program will expand to
include rural mountainous California counties that often have
difficulty trading information that could help snare criminals.

That sort of coordinated attack is increasingly crucial as drug
cartels replace small-time marijuana growers in California's Emerald
Triangle counties of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity, and shove aside
biker gangs cooking methamphetamine in the San Joaquin Valley.

``This is not mom and pop stuff,'' said Bill Ruzzamenti, who heads a
Central Valley drug task force. ``We're investigating one group that I
am convinced is growing a million plants in several different states.
It just boggles the mind.''

The intelligence units that pull together tidbits from California,
Oregon, Washington and Idaho are credited with helping break up two
major growing operations in California's Central Valley in the last
year.

Oscar Rosales of Fresno is accused of heading an operation that
smuggled high-grade marijuana from California and low-quality pot from
Mexico to buyers across the nation. Forty-two people were charged in
that case.

A second investigation brought 64 arrests in an operation that
allegedly distributed marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine from the
Mexican border to Oregon.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin