Pubdate: Sun, 20 Sep 2009
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Page: 1A
Copyright: 2009 The Sacramento Bee
Contact:  http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Peter Hecht
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)

MEXICAN MARIJUANA GROWERS BOLDLY OPERATE IN CALIFORNIA

Amid dense scrub oak and manzanita high above the Coloma Valley in El 
Dorado County, the marijuana growers were stocked to subsist in the 
steep, unforgiving terrain.

They had seedlings, fertilizer and drip irrigation for thousands of 
high-grade plants. They had solar power, cookware and months of food. 
And they had a tiny, protective figurine: Jesus Malverde, the patron 
saint of Mexican drug traffickers.

With a month to go in the growing season, California is shattering 
records for pot seizures stemming from raids on illicit marijuana 
gardens. And authorities blame intricate Mexican drug networks that 
seek remote growing sites, supply and arm workers, and harvest and 
traffic the product.

They are tilling vast gardens in forests, on public lands and even 
close to tony suburban homes near Sacramento.

Authorities say the large gardens - law enforcement officials call 
them "grows" - supply high-potency pot that is trafficked across the country.

Authorities have found no direct link to the ruthless Mexican cartels 
blamed for 11,000 killings and a virtual civil war south of the 
border. But they are encountering heavily armed people willing to 
shoot it out to defend their cash crop.

"They used to just dump everything and run," said Lassen County 
Sheriff Steve Warren, who had two officers shot in June when workers 
at a pot garden opened fire as they approached.

"The change we're seeing now is they're holding their ground. We 
don't know if it's a cartel thing and people in another part of the 
world are saying you have to stand and fight. But they're doing it."

Plant seizures from outdoor marijuana grows, found in 40 of 58 
California counties last year, exceeded the next closest state - 
Washington - by eight times.

So far this year, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting - a 
California task force of nine state and federal agencies - has seized 
about 4 million plants, a 1.1 million increase over last year's record haul.

"I think they're growing more and we're finding more," said Michelle 
Gregory, special agent for the state attorney general's Bureau of 
Narcotics Enforcement. "We would like to say that we find 50 percent 
of the grows, but honestly we don't know how much we miss."

Authorities this year recovered 76 weapons and arrested 64 suspects, 
almost all of them Mexican citizens. Gregory said those detained 
included people who were smuggled acoss the border, laborers who were 
kidnapped to work the grows and others recruited and hired locally.

Authorities also have raided extensive indoor gardens run by Asian 
gangs and routinely encounter home-grown pot farmers. Yet they say 
Mexican networks by far dominate the outdoor grows, of which 70 
percent are on public lands.

Authorities have no evidence of Mexican-grown pot ending up in 
California's medical marijuana dispensaries.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Gordon Taylor said 
authorities "have not seen any direct link" to notorious cartels in 
Mexico, including the Sinaloa, Tijuana, Juarez and Gulf cartels, and 
other violent networks known as La Familia and Los Zetas.

"That doesn't mean the link isn't there. We just haven't seen it to 
date," said Taylor, who investigates marijuana grows in rugged 
terrain from the lower Central Valley to Oregon. "But there is no 
question that drug-trafficking organizations from Mexico, not 
necessarily tied to a cartel, are bringing up people, crossing into 
the United States illegally, and using them to grow marijuana in California."

Though authorities this year have eradicated marijuana crops worth up 
to $16 billion, most raids lead authorities to low-level laborers or 
supply-dropping "lunchmen" who seem to have little idea who the bosses are.

By the time an El Dorado County narcotics SWAT team, reached the 
freshly watered mountain pot garden above Coloma, the workers had 
fled, leaving only the figurine of Malverde and a mystery of whom 
they worked for.

The mustaschioed folklore character, a purported early 1900s bandit, 
was once seen as a mascot for the Sinaloa cartel. His image has been 
adopted by other traffickers and is revered at a shrine in the 
Pacific Coast city of Culiacan.

"It's not just cartel members. Many in the drug trade tend to idolize 
this supposed saint," Taylor said.

What is causing a more certain worry for authorities is an increasing 
stockpile of weapons among people who tend the hidden pot gardens.

"We do a lot of outdoor eradications," said Placer County Sheriff's 
Lt. Jeff Ausnow. "In every garden, every single encounter, we find weapons."

On June 16, officers for the Lassen County Sheriff's Department and 
Susanville police were investigating an illegal grow on Bureau of 
Land Management property when gunmen opened fire.

Lassen narcotics task force commander Sgt. David Martin was wounded 
in the hand, arm, shoulder and face by a single shot from an AK-47. 
Deputy David Woginrich was hit in the thigh. Officers returning fire 
killed the gunman.

Jose Alfredo Zepeda, 19, of East Palo Alto and Ferrias Arroyo, 62, of 
Morgan Hill were arrested in the shooting. Authorities said they 
believe the men were in California illegally.

Gunmen also fired on officers in Shasta County this year. And Lassen 
officers responded to a shooting among marijuana growers themselves.

The incidents stirred memories of the 2000 wounding of an 8-year-old 
boy and his father in El Dorado County.

They were shot after stumbling onto a 78-year-old gunman guarding a 
secret marijuana grow hidden on the El Dorado family's sprawling 
mountain property. A brother-in-law, allegedly tied to Mexican 
marijuana networks, also was convicted in the incident.

Since then, the number of pot seizures in California has increased twelvefold.

Drew Parenti, the FBI special agent in Sacramento and former program 
manager for the FBI's drug program in Mexico, said traffickers found 
that planting in the state's fertile woodlands was a far better 
option than smuggling product across the border.

Despite recent shootings, Parenti said the state is unlikely to see 
widespread violence because the drug networks here aren't deeply 
rooted, haven't corrupted law enforcement and don't battle over their 
share of the U.S. market.

"My personal view is that we will never, ever see the level of 
violence here that we see in Mexico," Parenti said. "The societal 
issues and political realities that exist there simply don't exist here."

Still, authorities are increasingly concerned about the burgeoning 
pot grows and armed tenders close to homes and nature trails.

In 2006, narcotics officers found 2,000 marijuana plants – apparently 
overseen by Southern California gang members working with Mexican 
drug networks – "only a stone's throw from million-dollar houses" in 
El Dorado Hills, said Taylor of DEA.

This year, El Dorado County investigators returned to the same site, 
on BLM property near Salmon Falls Road, and found a new thriving 
garden of 33,000 plants.

Taylor said high-grade pot, cut, dried and shipped from grows in 
California, has been tracked to Illinois, Colorado and the East Coast.

Closer to home, a federal court jury in Sacramento last month 
convicted three men of selling more than 320 pounds of pot to 
undercover officers in El Dorado County for $500,000.

Narcotics officers made small buys at the McDonald's in El Dorado 
Hills before pulling off the major transaction in the Safeway 
supermarket parking lot in Cameron Park.

Authorities say a leader in the operation, Sixto Padilla-Gomez, 
employed nine workers in a 6,000-plant garden near Ice House Road and 
U.S. 50. El Dorado County narcotics Sgt. Tim Becker said some 
laborers initially cooperated with investigators, but then went silent.

"Some of them said, 'My family (in Mexico) will die if I talk to 
you,'" Becker said.

Two years ago, authorities charged Arnoldo Herrera, 44, a Mexican 
citizen living in Merced, with heading a marijuana network with 
dozens of employees, including California residents and illegal 
laborers. More than 100,000 plants were seized in Humboldt, Butte, 
Plumas and Santa Clara counties.

The operation shuttled food and weapons to growing sites, and 
packaged and sold pot in 200-pound deliveries, according to the 
criminal complaint.

One of the huge grows was discovered after a Fresno State University 
graduate student was accosted by a man with a gun as he was hiking in 
the Plumas National Forest. He fled and called 911.

Even hardened drug investigators are stunned by what they come across.

Last month, a narcotics SWAT team raided by far the largest marijuana 
grow in Amador County history. Two lush pot fields, totaling 44,600 
plants, climbed steep slopes of the Eldorado National Forest. The 
mountainside was terraced and meticulously irrigated. A camp was 
stocked with a year's food supply.

"It was just phenomenal. They had made tables out of cut wood. They 
had been there for a while," said Jackie Long, a state special agent 
with the Amador County Combined Narcotics Enforcement Team.

But they scattered before officers arrived.

"We're dealing with a lot of shadow people," Long said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom