Marijuana Raid Biggest This Year for Sheriff's Office

[XLE420]

Two busts of marijuana-growing operations in the Santa Cruz Mountains this week have authorities on track to surpass last year's anticultivation efforts.

Deputies discovered 6,800 plants 3 to 6 feet tall, the largest find this year, terraced into a steep hillside near the Soquel Demonstration Forest on Thursday, Sgt. Steve Carney with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office said.

That brings this year's total confiscation by the Sheriff's Office to more than 14,000 marijuana plants; the outdoor growing season continues for more than three months, Carney said.

Last year, 14,500 plants were confiscated.

The four irrigated plots located Thursday were about a 20 minute hike from the trailhead of a popular 4.7-mile hiking and mountain biking route off of Highland Way in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

"It's a pretty rugged trail, but it wasn't so far off the beaten path," Carney said.

A tip led deputies to the site, which also included two camps stocked with food, he said. Deputies did not find people or weapons, Carney said.

The bust follows the discovery of about 650 plants off of Highway 35 in Castle Rock State Park earlier in the week. Those plants were growing near the site of a clandestine marijuana crop of 6,625 plants deputies uprooted a month ago.

"We actually just missed this one," Carney said.

The 1- to 2-foot plants discovered in June spread across more than an acre of parkland. They were several months from harvest and worth about $250,000, deputies reported. A loaded shotgun and ammunition also were found at a campsite in the area, deputies reported.

Also in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies located a third marijuana-growing operation Monday.

Deputies reported a garden of 1,483 plants nestled in the mountains near Sanborn County Park between Saratoga and Skyline Boulevard.

Growers had cleared an area of the park, put up a fence to keep animals out and lived in a tent near the garden, deputies reported.

The offenders left before deputies arrived, and no arrests have been made.


Newshawk: SX420 - 420 Magazine
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel
Author: Jennifer Squires
Copyright: 2006 Santa Cruz Sentinel
Contact: jsquires@santacruzsentinel.com
Website: Santa Cruz Sentinel - Online Edition

 

[Jri5002]

nooooooooo

 

[DankCloset]

retards gotta place there shit better.

 

[OldSkoool]

Total sorrow. Story took me back to the ripe years of SC in the 70's. My wife, and I were visiting her sister in SC. Tired of the mexican dirt shit in southern cal, I told her ahead of time that I wanted to score some good smoke. The first night we were there, guys would drop by, packing samples of their board-of-fare, tasty bud selections. Shop till ya drop I say. Santa Cruz was, and still is one of the coolest spots in the country.

 

[LdyTokeGoodSmok]

I heard about the bust on the news...Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

 

[RangerDanger]

The news report said the piggies found the garden because of "a tip".
Well lessee.
A hiker? Maybe, but most hikers are either ambivilent about marijuana cultivation, or would have ripped some off, or just ignored it. In my years of hiking I have come across gardens before a number of times; I just backtracked and went another way.
Coulda been a passing aircraft that told the pigs I guess.
But here's the most likely scenario:
A large grow involves multiple people.
6,800 plants involves at least 20 people, probably a lot more. It takes a lot of people to dig holes/work the soil, plant seeds, water, fertilize, inspect the plants for pests, and harvest. In fact, drying that many plants would have taken at least 1 large warehouse, manicuring would have involved over 100 people working around the clock.
Anyway, the more people involvd the more risks there are.
A lot of people working together in any endevour means personality conflicts.
I knew of 6 people a few years back that deceided that they'd combine their efforts from small individual gardens and work on 1 BIG garden (over 700 plants). They had been friends for years.
I was friends with one of the guys and almost right off the bat he started complaining about a couple of guys who arrived late/left early/didn't show up when they were starting the grow. And people started pairing off, personality-wise.
There were disagreements about how to grow until it finally got broken up into 3 seperate area's, each using a different technique.
The last straw came when guy A started fooling around with guy B's girlfriend.
Guy A's wife found out and turned the grow in.
No one got busted but they each lost lots of $$$ (potting soil, etc,) and lots of labor.
That's one of the danger's of having a lot of people involved. I don't care how tight a group is, there's gonna be conflicts. And that means trouble, big trouble especially if the group is involved in an illegal enterprise.