cannabisnews.com: Search For Pot Growers Intensifies





Search For Pot Growers Intensifies
Posted by FoM on March 20, 2000 at 16:04:46 PT
By John C. K. Fisher, Post Staff Reporter
Source: Kentucky Post
With another year on the books of destroying more than $1 billion worth of marijuana, Kentucky State Police say they are making inroads into controlling the state's largest illegal cash crop.The Governor's Marijuana Task Force will start gearing up in May for its annual outdoor marijuana eradication effort.
State police report seizing 516,890 outdoor plants in 1999, worth an estimated $1.3 billion, from Kentucky farms, hillsides, forests and yards. The new figures place the 1999 tally slightly ahead of the 1998 tally of 439,080 plants, worth an estimated $1.1 billion.Despite the success in destroying plants, however, the growers still elude police by planting on public lands or by trespassing on private property to plant. Police helicopters find the fields - but investigators often can't determine whose marijuana they've found.''Eradication isn't enough. We want to make arrests, too,'' said State Police Lt. Shelby Lawson, who is the coordinator of the Governor's Marijuana Task Force.The task force includes members of state and local police and sheriffs; the Kentucky National Guard; the Civil Air Patrol and the U.S. Forest Service. The task force uses informants, drug-sniffing dogs and helicopters to determine where large and small marijuana fields are.Lawson said authorities don't have any new equipment or strategies this year but have begun concentrating on tying the marijuana fields to whomever is actually growing the plant. Although state police charged 460 people with marijuana cultivation last year, Lawson said many more aren't caught.For example, in July 1999, the Owen County Sheriff's office found more than a 1,000 marijuana plants - estimated to be worth about $1.5 million - near Brush Creek Road. However, authorities have never been able to find out who cultivated the plants.''Believe me, we'd like to find out who put it there,'' Owen Deputy Sheriff Larry Osborne says. Also, in July 1999, more than 1,300 outdoor marijuana plants were found in Grant County. That haul was estimated at $1.3 million, but again, the property owners were never charged and no arrests were made.''We never got anywhere with it,'' Grant Commonwealth Attorney Jim Crawford said.''If you are a smart marijuana grower, you grow it on someone else's property.''Lawson said probably every county in Kentucky has at least one spot or patch where marijuana is grown. However, the bulk of state police efforts are concentrated in south central and south eastern Kentucky.''It has a lot to do with the terrain. There are just a lot of places to conceal marijuana plants there,'' Lawson said.Northern Kentucky - particularly Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties - has fewer outdoor marijuana patches ''because it's a sprawling suburban area,'' Lawson said.Police in Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties say they run across a field of outdoor marijuana plants from time to time, but the problem doesn't seem to be escalating.Boone County Sheriff Mike Helmig, whose agency routinely burned thousands of marijuana plants a year during the 1980s, said he has found more people are growing the weed indoors to avoid detection.''This month, we have made six arrests for two indoor grows,'' Helmig said.''We have found that people like to grow from one to a dozen plants in their apartments.''We have found some for personal use, but we have also found some for trafficking.''Campbell County Police Chief David Sandfoss said outdoor marijuana plants would usually be found in dense areas along the Ohio or Licking Rivers or in rural areas in his county.But he said his officers haven't reported seeing an unusual number of marijuana plants this year or last.''We did have a good amount that was seized about four years ago in the Camp Springs area,'' Sandfoss said.Kenton County Police Detective Chris Haddle said his officers see an occasional marijuana patch.But most of the weed that his officers find are in conjunction with an arrest on another matter, such as drunken driving, Haddle said.''Kentucky State Police will do a big sweep and we will find a patch in the southern end of the county, but nothing that turns into 200 plants,'' Haddle said.''The most experience we have is for people's personal use.'' Battling Marijuana: Kentucky State Police Lt. Shelby Lawson, who heads the Governor's Marijuana Task Force, takes a three-pronged approach to eradicating the $1-billion-a-year illegal weed:Burn as much as possible the outdoor crop that is cultivated on state, federal and private property;Arrest those who are growing the marijuana, whether for themselves or for distribution;Confiscate property or money that is used in the drug trade and convert the proceeds to buy more police equipment and weapons to use against illegal marijuana growers.Published: March 20, 2000 Copyright 1999 The Kentucky Post, an E.W. Scripps Newspaper. CannabisNews Articles On Kentucky & Pot Growing:http://www.google.com/search?q=cannabisnews+kentucky http://www.google.com/search?q=cannabisnews+pot+growing
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