Bishop - Pot farms raided in Southern Inyo

Inyo County Sheriff’s Deputies Brian Howards and Franklin Landaverde stand next to a mature marijuana plant on Haiwee Road seized during a raid of four gardens in Inyo and Mono counties, Wednesday and Thursday. Photo by Mike Bodine

Inyo County is popular, indeed.
Tourism is up, the fishing’s great and Mexican cartels have, once again, chosen the local mountains and public lands to grow marijuana.
And, once again, for the second time in two years, the weed was found and destroyed by law enforcement. The plant total from four garden raids that started Wednesday was 14,405, with an estimated street value of more than $50 million. The raids concluded a two-month investigation by the Inyo Narcotics Enforcement Team.
Inyo County Sheriff Bill Lutze said Thursday following the last of the raids, “It was a very successful operation. Someone lost a lot of sleep the last two nights over their losses.” And no there are no reports of any injuries or accidents.
Yet, no suspects were apprehended either.
At one grow site, breakfast was still warm at the camp when officers arrived during the early morning hours Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 16-17, but no one was at the camp.
Lutze explained these operations are highly organized and growers know that the sound of helicopters means cops aren’t far behind, and they escape. Lutze said he still doesn’t know how they get out or where they go.
What is certain, is that these large-scale marijuana orchards under the direction of Mexican druglords are founded on blackmail and kidnapping, scar the landscape with toxic fertilizers and poaching, and the proceeds fund even more profitable ventures like slavery.
A representative from the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, or CAMP, a state agency that specializes in finding and removing marijuana, said, “This is not about whether or not marijuana is harmful or bad for you,” he said. “It’s about these Mexican cartels that use these crops to fund their methamphetamine (speed) and human trafficking operations.”
He explained that huge profits are to be made by these low-overhead operation. Many growers spend up to 10 months in a tent in the backcountry, dumping their trash, diverting and polluting water ways, poaching game and setting traps.
And, inevitably where there’s easy money to be made, there’s violence.

Lutze explained that some of these growers are forced into the occupation to pay off a debt to a “coyote” who had transported them across the border from Mexico to the U.S. Lutze said the new growers may be coerced with blackmail, with the cartels and coyotes threatening the growers and their families with violence if they do not produce.

Local law enforcement were assisted by CAMP, U.S. Customs, INF, LADWP and CHP, which used its helicopter to transport ground crews into grow sites like the one near George Creek. Photo by Mike Bodine

The CAMP representative said that CAMP helicopters have taken gunfire from growers several times this year in California. But, he explained, this is usually just a ploy by the growers since they know that once guns have been fired, an eradication operation is forced to step back, reorganize and re-evaluate the situation. This buys the grower some time to escape.
And where the growers go or how they escape, the CAMP representative said, “Who knows what they do?”
Theories about tunnels, secret caves or even trans-Sierra routes were tossed around at the command posts Wednesday, but no one except the growers themselves knows for sure.
The CAMP representative said that 2009 has been a record year for eradication, with more than four million pot plants pulled in the state. “But 50 percent of the product is still out there.”
The eradication operations locally happened near George Creek south of Independence, one off of Haiwee Road south of Olancha, one at Thibaut north of Independence and one near Crooked Creek in the White Mountains.
These gardens were found as part of the annual marijuana garden search that starts when the grow season begins in spring. The plants get harder and harder to hide as they grow, and, Lutze explained, the distinct green hue of the plant is unlike anything else growing, which makes it easy to spot from the air.
The multi-agency task force included members of Inyo and Mono County sheriff’s departments, Bishop and Mammoth Lakes police departments, the California Highway Patrol, the Inyo National Forest, Bureau of Land Management, CAMP, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Inyo County Road Department and U.S. Customs. These ground teams were assisted by a CHP helicopter and two CAMP helicopters: one for transportation and one as a “gunship” equipped with a sniper.
The operations started early in the morning hours both days, usually with an advanced ground team hiking into the area before helicopters moved in the bulk of the ground crews.
At the Haiwee garden, the advanced crews reported coming across a camp that had been occupied by at least 10 growers, with breakfast still warm, but no suspects to be found.
The CAMP helicopter pulled out six loads of marijuana from the Haiwee garden. Some of the incredibly stinky, magenta-flowered plants were more than eight feet tall.
Prisoners from Inyo County Jail were used to move the dumpster-sized piles of marijuana into a county truck for their transportation to and burial at a secure location.
At the George Creek garden, the camps had been abandoned and some of the marijuana already processed – the buds trimmed and dried and readied for smoking – by the growers. Due to the lack of any grand amounts of the smokable drug, officers simply removed the buds, or the potent psychoactive flowers of the plant, hacked down the remainder of the plants and left them in place.
Lutze joked that after the massive eradication in George Creek in 2007, the area received some unusually large traffic as people hiked up to see if there were any plants that the cops overlooked.
Lutze also explained the way a garden seizure is given a monetary value. He said there are many factors involved, such as the quality of the weed, but the price is also based on average street value. He added that a pound of dried weed from this garden may sell for $2,000, but it is sold to another dealer who doubles the price and sells it to another dealer who doubles the price, and so on, until the average street value approaches more than $5,000 a pound.
This is a heady profit considering the product is just a plant: a noxious weed that needs nothing more than water, sunlight and a secret place to grow.
While the plant may not be that immediately harmful, the people who grow it are incredibly dangerous.
“People should be on the lookout year-round for potential growers,” Lutze said. He explained that even during the winter months, growers are out looking or establishing sites for the next grow season.
He is also asking anyone who sees anything out of the ordinary, such as plastic hosing, shovels or campsites in a strange place in the backcountry, to leave the area as soon as possible and contact law enforcement with as many details as possible.