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. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom