|
|
|
Cops Bust 3-Mile Pot Garden Worth $195 Million |
|
|
|
By Tom Schultz
|
|
Tuesday, July 10 2007 |
Authorities seized 61,000 marijuana plants with an estimated street value of $195 million from a garden covering a "three mile area" east of the Twitchell Resrvoir along Highway 166, officials said Monday.
It was one of the largest such operations in recent Santa Barbara County history, more than doubling 2006 totals. The discovery resulted in three arrests. The plants were spotted from a helicopter during a routine patrol, officials said.
 POT BUST: The eradication ocurred Friday. Courtesy photo.
The discovery resulted in three arrests, and police repeated the black market dollar value twice — reporting it first as "$195,000,000" and again in parenthesis as "one hundred ninety five million" — to reiterate the figure was not a typo.
"This seizure represents one of the largest marijuana seizures in recent history for Santa Barbara County," Santa Barbara Sheriff's Sgt. Erik Raney, a department spokesman, said in a statement. "Totals for 2006 marijuana seizures in Santa Barbara County were less than half as much."
The plants were spotted from a helicopter during a routine patrol, he said.
The eradication ocurred Friday at nine separate grow areas within a short distance from the waterway, which was used to supply water through "an elaborate system of gravity fed irrigation," Raney said.
"The plant sizes ranged from one to eight feet," he said. "By the appearance of the camps, the elaborate set up of the operation and the amount of trash and debris found in the area, it appears that the area has been used to grow marijuana for several seasons. Evidence located in the garden revealed the plants were being tended to by Mexican nationals. No weapons were found, but ammunition was located in one of the camps, indicating the suspects were likely armed."
On Sunday, officials reportedly returned to the site to retrieve equipment and check the area for additional marijuana fields.
At 7:30 a.m., they found three individuals in the area, Raney said, adding all were arrested on charges unrelated to the cultivation operation, though their particiapation was suspected. San Luis Obispo County personnel participated in the sting.
Fransisco Hinojosa, 35, was charged with driving without a license and obstructing justice, Raney said.
Rafael L. Zavala, 26, and Pedro Alvarez, 33, were charged with providing false information to a peace officer, Raney said.
All three men reportedly were placed on immigration holds. Raney said Zavala and Hinojosa had been previously deported and may face felony immigration charges for illegal re-entry into the country.
"Large-scale marijuana cultivation is a serious and increasingly widespread problem on public and private lands in California," Raney said. "The growers are usually armed, sometimes with automatic weapons and high-power rifles." |
|
|
