Pubdate: Sat, 19 Apr 2014
Source: Visalia Times-Delta, The (CA)
Copyright: 2014 The Visalia Times-Delta
Contact: http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2759
Author: David Castellon

MARIJUANA GROWERS BEING DRIVEN FROM THE VALLEY FLOOR MAY BE HEADING
TO SIERRA FOOTHILLS

In an agricultural area like Tulare County, the start of a growing
season usually is a good thing.

But late April kicks off a busy time for the Tulare County Sheriff's
Tactical Enforcement Personnel team, as this is the start of the
season for marijuana growers here in the Valley.

Last year, members of the STEP team confiscated 239,929 marijuana
plants on the Valley floor as well as on federal lands, about a
20-percent increase over the previous year.

The 161 sites where deputies seized marijuana included multi-acre
operations behind rows of plywood fencing, inside greenhouses on
agricultural land and remote areas of federal forest land in the
Sierra foothills.

During the April 1 Tulare County Board of Supervisors meeting,
Supervisor Allen Ishida praised the Sheriff's Department and other
county agencies for their parts in going after marijuana growers
violating narcotics laws and the county's medical marijuana ordinance,
which spells out where the plants can be grown for medicinal purposes
and the condition under which they have to be grown.

But that push is having an unexpected consequence, Ishida said; the
success in going after violators here - along with aggressive
enforcement in neighboring Fresno County - may be prompting illegal
pot growers to set up new grow sites in Sequoia National Park, the
Sequoia National Forest and other federal lands in the Sierra.

"I think we're going to see this move again to the public lands,"
Ishida said during the board meeting.

A request for help

Because of this, the four Tulare County supervisors who went to
Washington, D.C., last week included in their lobbying meetings with
U.S. Forest Service officials, legislators and legislative aids,
requests for more money to go after illegal marijuana growers on
federal land.

Such operations on federal land is nothing new.

John Heil, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman, said they started showing
up in California's national forests in the early 2000s and hit their
peak in 2009. That year, more than 3.5 million plants were confiscated
on national forest lands in the state, about seven times more that the
amount confiscated seven years earlier.

Staring in 2010, the number of illegal grow sites on federal land
started declining, law enforcement officials said.

That year, Tulare County Sheriff's deputies helped with raids on at
least nine illegal marijuana groves on federal land in Tulare County,
a considerable drop from 80 in the prior year, said Sheriff's Lt. Tom
Sigley.

About that same time, he said, law enforcement here saw a rise in
marijuana being grown on the Valley floor, with most of the people
operating them claiming that they were growing the plants legally
under the provisions of California's Compassionate Care Act.

The 2006 law allows the use and cultivation of marijuana for medicinal
purposes in the state.

So far, the movement of marijuana growers from the Valley floor to
federal land isn't substantial. Last year, 16 grow sites were raided
on public lands in Tulare County, up from 11 in 2012, Sigley said.

At those sites, authorities confiscated nearly half of all the
marijuana confiscated in the county last year.

But authorities and elected officials here don't want to see these
illegal operations shift from the Valley floor to the foothills - they
want to squeeze them out entirely.

Jean Rousseau, Tulare County's Chief administrative officer, said the
agencies that work on targeting these growers - including the Forest
Service, National Park Service, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management -
need money to prevent marijuana sites from proliferating again in the
foothills.

For example, he said, the Forest Service's law-enforcement budget has
been cut by 15 percent because of federal budget cuts and to make up
for the agency's costs to fight major wildfires.

"When we talked to legislators, we let them know we are concerned
about the enforcement," said Rousseau, adding that the county
representatives also suggested adopting policies so law-enforcement
budgets for the federal lands aren't tapped to make up for the costs
of fighting fires.

More money is needed at the local level, too, Sigley said, noting that
the federal dollars awarded to the county to help go after foothills
marijuana growers have been cut.

I n fiscal 2010-11 through 2012-14, the county received more than
$500,000 each year from federal programs to help pay for the Sheriff's
Department's abatement work with federal agencies in in the Sierra
foothills.

This fiscal year, which ends June 30, the county received $395,353,
part of it to pay overtime costs for members of the STEP team and
other deputies.

Dispute over a federal cap

But $22,320.93 had to be given back because of a federal cap on how
much overtime any one person can receive, and a one-time grant
totaling $125,353 will not be available next year, county officials
report.

County officials said part of last week's lobbying efforts included
trying to convince lawmakers to eliminate or raise the overtime
reimbursement cap, at least for small law enforcement agencies,
because the Tulare County Sheriff's Department has a relatively small
number of people involved in the abatement efforts.

As a result, by September, many of the STEP and other deputies hit the
cap and the county has to pay their overtime costs, Sigley said.

"The general responses were, 'We'll look into it,' " said Rousseau,
who attended those meetings. "I got the sense they're going to try."

It used to be that the bulk of illegal marijuana growing operations
occurred in Tulare County's foothills, but after the Compassionate
Care Act became law, the growers started moving to the Valley floor.

Sigley and other sheriff's officials say a large number of these
growing operations are covers for groups supplying marijuana for
illegal street sales, with some tied to Mexican drug cartels.

Investigators have traced some of the marijuana grows here to Southern
California, Chicago, Boston and other cities, Sigley said.

Targeting high-threat sites

Sigley said he has yet to see a marijuana grow site operating within
the bounds of the county's medical marijuana ordinance or as a legal
enterprise, but he noted that his department has prioritized
investigating and shutting down those operations that appear to
present the most risk to public safety.

"If it's a legitimate grow, you are not going to walk the perimeter of
it with an AK-47," he said.

"I would say they're mostly illicit," Rousseau said, recounting the
time Sheriff's deputies took him on a helicopter ride to see marijuana
grow sites.

"You fly over groves where you have people with guns smiling and
waving at you. Its disconcerting," he said.

The sheer number and openness of some grow sites have raised concerns
- - particularly in rural, unincorporated parts of the county - among
neighbors who worry over the potential that people could get hurt or
killed.

A change in tactics

Last year, the Sheriff's Department investigated three homicides and
nine home invasions with suspected ties to marijuana.

In 2012, county officials started changing their tactics to go after
grow sites, by more aggressively targeting people violating the
medical marijuana ordinance with threats of fines if they didn't stop
and remove the plants.

That included sending letters to property owners - many of whom didn't
know their tenants were growing marijuana - and informing them that
they could be fined or lose their properties if they didn't put a stop
to the growing operations, particularly if criminal activity was discovered.

Between Jan. 30 and Wednesday of this week, the county Resource
Management Agency has completed abatement actions on 754 sites in the
county, most done without the county having to step in and remove the
marijuana plants.

"That's a 97-percent closure rate," said Mike Spata, assistant
director of planning for the county's Resource Management Agency.
Twenty-two cases filed by the county still are unresolved.

"We believe we are successful because there is a genuine commitment on
a task force basis to see to it that measurable results are achieved,"
he said, noting that RMA has been working with the Sheriff's
Department and the county Counsel's Office on the enforcement efforts.

Despite this success, the number of grow sites isn't declining. Sigley
said that recent Sheriff's Department flights over the north end of
Tulare County revealed about 250 active grow sites. Numbers for the
rest of the county weren't immediately available.

"I don't have any statistics the volume is going down but it's
stabilizing," Spata said.

And Tulare County could soon take further action to make it harder to
grow marijuana in the county by following in the steps of Fresno
County, which last month altered its ordinance to ban all growing of
medicinal marijuana in unincorporated areas there.

Fresno County also initiated high fines for property owners who don't
comply with abatement notices - $1,000 per plant, plus $100 per plant
for each day a property remains in violation.

"Our attorney's are looking into whether we can do that," Rousseau
said. "We are clearly interested in what they are doing. It is more
severe than what we're doing.

"If what they do is legal, there is a chance we may do it in Tulare
County."
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D