A Game of Hide-and-Reap : Avocado Groves Used by Some Marijuana Growers to Camouflage Crop

Nestled in North County’s rolling hills, distinguished for their dark green carpet of avocado trees, is the county’s most lucrative cash crop.

These plants are sometimes protected by workers armed with guns and sometimes by booby-traps. They’re fed by a fertilizer-and-water mix illegally tapped from the irrigation lines of a landowner who is paying the bill. The aim of the growers is to get their crop to market before they’re discovered by lawmen.

It’s October, marijuana harvest time.

It’s a cat-and-mouse game played annually between law enforcement officers, who fly overhead in helicopters, and marijuana growers, who try to hide their illicit plants from detection until the crop matures--both physically and financially.

An Ever-Present Thorn

In a county once considered the methamphetamine capital of the nation because of the proliferation of clandestine, back-country chemical labs, and one in which more time and money are spent looking for cocaine, crack and heroin, marijuana cultivation remains the least spectacular but nonetheless ever-present and needling thorn in the side of the law.

It should come as no surprise that this popular drug of the ‘60s still thrives in an era of high-tech designer drugs that have grabbed more headlines and killed more people.

Growing marijuana is the least risky of the illegal drug trades to ply, narcotics agents say. The grower doesn’t use his own land. He doesn’t use his own water or fertilizer. He doesn’t have to be present. He can hire field laborers to manicure his crop. And, if the plants are discovered, he usually escapes the net.

Against that relatively small risk, consider the potential profit margin: A single, high-grade sinsemilla plant, the most potent of the marijuana plants, can be put in the ground as a seedling in the spring and grow by October to up to 13 feet tall--literally shooting up like a weed. By then it may be worth as much as $9,000--wholesale--after the leaves are dried, processed and reduced to 3 pounds of smokable material. By the time the marijuana is purchased on the street, its value has doubled or tripled.

Narcotics agents won’t estimate how much marijuana is being grown in San Diego County. But so far this year they have discovered and cut down about 14,000 plants--including at a recent raid that netted 3,300 plants ripe for harvest in a remote canyon of De Luz, east of Camp Pendleton on the San Diego-Riverside counties line.

Last year, agents eradicated nearly 32,000 plants in the county--worth about $200 million if they had reached market. That was a record year here for such busts, highlighted by the single seizure of more than 20,000 plants growing on the slopes of Palomar Mountain at the eastern end of the Pauma Valley.

The raids don’t hold the kind of glamour of a Miami Vice episode. They’re more gosh-and-by-golly occurrences, a combination of luck and skill in sighting the plants from the air, then gathering enough investigators together days or weeks later to finally move in.

“Given our limited resources, marijuana is far from a priority for us,” said Ron Garibotto, assistant agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s regional office in San Diego and director of the county’s multi-agency Narcotics Task Force. “We don’t have the teams of agents available to work marijuana on a full-time basis.”

The DEA contracts with the county Sheriff’s Department to fly helicopters over remote areas to look for marijuana plots. But, for one recent raid, “it took us three weeks to mount a large enough force to move in,” Garibotto said.

As many as 100 officers--from task force agents to local police backup to U. S. Border Patrol officers--are needed to raid a marijuana farm. Some go in by surprise and try to catch whoever may be tending the plants, while others surround the property and try to catch those who scamper for the hills.

Often, agents simply move in on an untended plot.

“We don’t have enough resources to go out to a site and camp there for days at a time, hoping that someone may come in to check their plants,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Pat Kerins, the department’s ranking representative on the Narcotics Task Force.

“Besides, chances are the person coming in will just be an illegal alien who was tending the plants for someone else,” he said. “They tell us they’re just taking care of the fields for some gringos who are paying them big bucks.”

Indeed, in a recent raid, three men, all documented Mexican laborers, were arrested on suspicion of growing the marijuana, but agents have yet to put their finger on the person behind the operation.

“I can see these three men growing, harvesting and processing the marijuana, but that was a lot of marijuana for them to distribute on their own,” Kerins said.

Usually, the field laborers won’t squeal on the person behind the operation, if, indeed, they know who it is, authorities said. Sometimes, all the worker can offer is a physical description of the boss, who occasionally shows up at the site to check on things.

From the law enforcement standpoint, then, the success comes only in keeping the seized marijuana off the streets.

Scattered on Periphery

The recent raid was the largest haul of marijuana this year, but was typical in other respects.

The 3,300 plants were scattered along the periphery of a 40-acre avocado grove, growing in clumps of several hundred here and there in the tall brush. The growers tapped into the landowner’s irrigation lines, which drip water and fertilizer at the base of the avocado trees, and installed their own hoses so the same nutrients could feed the illegal plants, which responded vigorously.

The marijuana was detected by sheriff’s deputies from the air. A later fly-over confirmed the finding. A search warrant was issued in Vista Municipal Court and the raid was mounted.

The man who managed that particular grove said he had his suspicions that something was amiss. The water pressure for the grove’s irrigation system was low, said Ben Drake, but he couldn’t locate where it had been tapped.

“They’ll ‘T’ into our lines and bury their own lines. On top of that, you’ve got five or six months of growth and leaves, and you don’t even see them,” Drake said. “Either you’re lucky because one of your irrigating people runs across it, or the task force finds the plants from the air, by chance.”

Workers Stumble Across It

The raid was the second involving a client of Drake’s in two weeks. In the previous one, 100 marijuana plants were discovered on another parcel managed by Drake near Fallbrook.

“It was being grown in an area between our ranch and a nursery. There was brush in between, where the marijuana was growing, and they tied into our water.”

It’s not uncommon for grove workers to stumble across marijuana. They are instructed to back off quickly and report it to their supervisors, several grove managers said.

Kyle Taylor said some of his grove workers encountered marijuana growers at gunpoint just two weeks ago, within the grove itself.

“The (marijuana) growers told our guys to get out of there--and they did, quick,” he said.

The workers reported the incident to Taylor’s company, which in turn notified the landowner.

“We told them they had a problem, and that we wouldn’t go back on the property until it’s rectified,” Taylor said. “We wash our hands of it. It’s up to the property owner to contact the Sheriff’s Department. I don’t know if it’s been reported yet or not. All I know is that we haven’t been back.”

Growing marijuana within a grove area itself is unusual because most groves are so routinely maintained that the chance for detection is greater.

“But some groves are up on hillsides, and, if they can find a secluded part of the grove that we don’t get to too often, they’ll try it,” Taylor said. “The avocado trees provide a good canopy, so it’s harder to see the marijuana from the air.”

These particular marijuana growers “know there’s no guarantee their crop will reach fruition, because it might be detected, but, if they can pull it off, they make big bucks,” he said.

“They’re getting a free ride. They use our land and our water. It’s like a scholarship.”

John Martin, another grove manager, said his workers have discovered marijuana “a couple of times,” just outside the groves he cares for.

High Water Bills

“The owner was complaining of high water bills, so we checked into it,” Martin said. “We finally found some hoses running off into the brush. The Sheriff’s Department has told us not to go into those areas because they might be booby-trapped, so we just cap off the water and notify the Sheriff’s Department.”

Though booby-traps are rare, narcotics agents have come across them--including, in one incident last year, nails connected to shotgun shells that might have exploded at eye level if set off by a trip wire. The trap was discovered by agents without incident.

Even when there are no traps, officers anticipate meeting armed resistence when they move in.

Deputy Bob Baker, who has worked for the Narcotics Task Force for seven years in North County, recalls the raid last year that netted more than 20,000 plants.

That marijuana farm was detected after someone complained about noise and gunfire at the bottom of Palomar Mountain. A deputy rode into a remote canyon to investigate and saw brilliant green plants growing on the side of the mountain--sticking out like a sore thumb once they came into view, because the area had been burned the previous year by a large grass fire, and most of the hillside was still barren.

The deputy called Baker, and the two went out again. Baker confirmed that the plants were marijuana, then looked on maps to determine who owned the land. The owner was a public agency--a local municipal water district.

When NTF agents staged their first raid, they discovered 11,000 plants and arrested four armed men. Some of the plants were less than a foot tall; others were 10 feet.

The growers were watering the plants with water collected in barrels at the bottom of a waterfall on the mountain. Pipes from the barrels sent the water farther downhill, where drip lines quenched the plants, Baker said.

Two weeks later, Baker got word from a water district employee that they may have missed some plants. Investigators returned.

“We went up on a ridge line a half-mile from the original spot, and we found another whole field of marijuana plants and another (guard) camp,” he said.

They sneaked up on a tent and caught two field hands off guard. One was cradling a shotgun as he slept, and the other tried to reach for his tennis shoes before he was pulled out of the tent by his hair. The shoes helped hide a fully loaded, 9 m.m. semiautomatic weapon.

The second raid netted another 10,000 or so plants, Baker said.

Lot of Time and Effort

Those two, as well as the other four defendants, were able to provide investigators with only a broad description of the man they worked for: someone in his 30s with blond hair and a blond mustache.

“Because of the fire that had gone there the previous year, and because all the miles and miles of pipes seemed new, we assume that was his first year in there growing marijuana,” Baker said. “He spent a lot of time and effort on that one. The plants were probably worth $60 million wholesale. But it didn’t pay off for him.”

The bust was believed to be the largest single seizure of marijuana plants that year in California, Baker said.

“Trying to find marijuana is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said. “Even though it’s a brilliant green, it’s hard to see unless the sun hits it just right.”

And there’s no sure place to go looking for the stuff. Marijuana has been found growing on federal Bureau of Land Management property, state parkland and in the Cleveland National Forest.

An Aug. 31 raid in Jamul was unusual because it led to the arrest of a San Diego State University professor on suspicion of growing 700 plants on his 50-acre ranch. Authorities alleged that the professor, Jack David Mooers, was both growing and selling the weed.

The plants were discovered from the air as sheriff’s deputies were investigating a methamphetamine lab in the same area, investigators said.

Most of the raids this year were of plants growing on private property in the De Luz region of North County, north of Fallbrook.

Not all marijuana is grown outdoors. Four years ago, 3,500 plants were discovered growing in an Escondido industrial warehouse. It was detected after San Diego Gas & Electric Co. discovered that a tenant had tapped into a power line unlawfully.

Investigators said at the time that it was the most sophisticated marijuana cultivation scheme ever uncovered in the county. It featured an intricate, automated system for soil-less cultivation with water recycling and electrically timed fans set up to simulate breezes and carry pollen.

Last month, investigators seized 195 plants and 200 pounds of harvested marijuana, valued at $1.4 million, from remote growing sheds in a valley 10 miles south of Alpine.

Still, most marijuana apparently is grown outdoors, where investigators’ ability to identify the operators is greatly thwarted. But there are drawbacks for the criminals: Animals eat the plants before the harvest.

Usually, chicken wire is placed around each plant to keep ground squirrels and other small animals away from its base. Deer, however, present a different problem, and at least one grower thought of a new solution, Baker said.

“It was a raid where we got 1,800 plants on the north side of Palomar Mountain. It was my first year with the NTF,” he said, “and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of what I saw. All along the perimeter of the field were tampons.

“An old tracker said the growers had put the scent of mountain lions on them, to keep the deer out of the area.”