Captive Labor

[palmspringsbum]

Captive Labor
Part one of two on Oregon's first human-trafficking prosecution.
BY ANGELA VALDEZ


<table class=posttable align=left width=135><tr><td><img class=postimg src=bin/lopez-montanez-ramon.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap><font size=1>Ramon Lopez-Montanez is the target of Oregon's first federal prosecution on charges of human trafficking.</font></td></tr></table>Mayra Martina Hernandez-Vargas began her odyssey from urban Mexico to rural Oregon five years ago, at age 15.

One day in February 2001, a man walked into the Guadalajara coffee shop where she worked and invited her to a party. Hernandez-Vargas got permission from her grandmother and climbed into the man's car.

According to a recent FBI affidavit, the man, Ramon Lopez-Montanez, then drove his young passenger to a brothel guarded by another man armed with a handgun. Several teenage girls were being held inside, forced to yield to paying customers and the four Lopez-Montanez brothers who profited from the operation. The brothers raped and beat Hernandez-Vargas, but never forced her into prostitution, according to the affidavit.

She stayed in their custody for five years, traveling to Los Angeles, Northern California and, finally, the small Oregon town of Otis, where she says she tended to Lopez-Montanez's marijuana growing operation.

Ramon Lopez-Montanez, 39, now faces charges of forced labor, manufacturing marijuana and possessing a false government document, in what is Oregon's first human-trafficking prosecution.

The case bolsters evidence that the local trade in humans documented by WW last year (see "Esclavitud en Portland," Dec. 7, 2005) is increasingly as entwined with the drug trade as with prostitution, which is more often associated with forced labor.

"Drug traffickers are innovative," says Multnomah County Sheriff's Deputy Dan Rendon, who oversees a local task force on human trafficking.

Hernandez-Vargas told the FBI she spent a year in the brothel in Guadalajara. She watched other girls get raped, she said, and witnessed the murder of a girl named Monica. Lopez-Montanez threatened to kill Hernandez-Vargas' brothers and mother, she said, if she attempted to flee.

In February 2002, one of Ramon's brothers, Cesar, took Hernandez-Vargas on a commercial flight to Tijuana, where they met a couple who drove Hernandez-Vargas over the border.

She stayed locked in a room in a house near Los Angeles for three days before a third Lopez-Montanez brother, Sergio, arrived and drove her to a home near Mount Shasta in Northern California. There she tended to a 100-plant marijuana growing operation. Again, threats were made against her family.

Three months later, Sergio returned with the first brother, Ramon, according to the affidavit, who said she "was now his property," and reminded her not to forget what she had seen in Mexico. In mid-May, the threesome packed up and drove north, coming to rest at a prefab home on North Boulder Creek Road in Otis, an unincorporated town near Lincoln City.

Ramon told Hernandez-Vargas that she would stay in the house and tend to the 80 plants in three bedrooms, which yielded six pounds of marijuana every 90 days.

She wrote checks for the rent, the water bill and the $300-a-month power bill. She learned how to diminish the smell of growing weed, and was eventually entrusted with a truck she used to buy groceries. If anyone asked, she was instructed to say Lopez-Montanez was her husband, and that his name was Sebastian Contreras.

Over the next three years, Hernandez-Vargas grew close enough to her captor and his brothers to learn about other Oregon locations where they grew and sold marijuana, and to meet other women entangled with the operation, including Lopez-Montanez's American wife.

Hernandez-Vargas told the FBI that she didn't flee because she feared her family would be harmed or she would be deported. She said she was beaten and even stabbed, claims supported by a later examination that found knife wounds on her body.

Hernandez-Vargas, who spoke little English and kept to herself, rarely captured neighbors' attention. Martha Cooksey, who lived down the street, said Hernandez-Vargas never betrayed a hint of fear when Cooksey had to chase her stepmother's dog onto the property where Hernandez-Vargas lived. Cooksey described her as helpful, polite and a "very pleasant young woman."

It seems likely that Hernandez-Vargas would have remained unnoticed in Otis indefinitely had it not been for a curious neighbor.

The neighbor, whom the FBI does not identify, began wondering about the young woman across the street, who had no job or family. He suspected she "was in effect being held prisoner" and befriended her enough to coax the story out. He called the FBI in November 2005.

Rendon, who assisted with the resulting investigation, says Hernandez-Vargas was brave to talk to the FBI.

"What she did, she's taken her life into her hands," he says. "She's not out of danger yet, not by a long shot."


<hr class=postrule>

Originally Published on 6/14/2006

Find this story at www.wweek.com/editorial/3232/7657

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The Mexican Connection
In the second of two parts, the FBI goes to great lengths to make Oregon's first case against human trafficking.
BY ANGELA VALDEZ


<img class=postimg src=bin/map-usa-mexico-outline.jpg align=left>On May 5, two female FBI agents approached a farmhouse in Salem carrying a bottle of sparkling water, a potted plant and a greeting card from the local chamber of commerce.

When a Mexican woman answered the door, the agents introduced themselves as members of the local Welcome Wagon. The woman, who identified herself only as Ana, spoke little English and seemed eager for her visitors to leave.

Special Agent Michael Holeman, who was overseeing the investigation, later wrote in an affidavit that he believed the woman was "being held against her will and forced to grow marijuana."

He had reasons for his suspicions.

In November 2005, another Mexican woman named Mayra Martina Hernandez-Vargas had told the FBI that the owner of the farmhouse, Ramon Lopez-Montanez, had kidnapped her in Mexico, subjected her to physical and sexual abuse and brought her to Lincoln County, Ore., where he forced her to tend to one of his marijuana-growing operations.

By the time the undercover "Welcome Wagon" arrived on the farmhouse doorstep, Lopez-Montanez, who lived elsewhere, had become the object of a sophisticated investigation that has culminated in what federal officials say is Oregon's first prosecution for human trafficking (see "Captive Labor," WW, June 14, 2006).

Months earlier, an agent had planted a global-positioning tracker on Lopez-Montanez's 1998 Dodge truck, allowing the FBI to track his movements between various homes where he was suspected of growing marijuana crops and big-box store parking lots where he may have sold the harvests.

In a helicopter equipped with infrared technology, an agent had identified hot spots indicating a possible indoor growing operation at the Salem farmhouse Lopez-Montanez bought for $300,000 the previous fall.

The FBI had collected unusually high meter readings from the electric company and confirmed that Rusticos de Mexico, an Oregon business registered in the name of Lopez-Montanez and his American wife, Dana Montanez, had neither a brick-and-mortar headquarters nor a working telephone.

Meanwhile, his original accuser, Hernandez-Vargas, had moved out of the home in Otis, Ore., where she said she'd been held for three years.

According to neighbors, 20-year-old Hernandez-Vargas had moved across the street with the "concerned neighbor" who originally contacted the FBI about her plight. Neighbor Martha Cooksey says the couple (neither of whom could be reached for comment) is now married. Immigration officials have granted Hernandez-Vargas the right to stay in this country legally, and given her a work permit, medical services, counseling and $1,500 cash.

Less than three weeks after the May 5 Welcome Wagon visit, the FBI and local police executed search warrants in Salem and Otis on May 23, arresting Lopez-Montanez and two alleged co-conspirators, and seizing guns, marijuana and growing equipment.

Although the arrest marks Oregon's first human-trafficking prosecution, 248 defendants have been targeted nationwide since the enactment in 2000 of a federal law that extends additional protections to victims who are willing to testify. In recent months, Oregon's U.S. Attorney's office also has been encouraging local prosecutors to look out for potential cases.

Nonetheless, there is widespread debate over the size of the problem. The federal government estimates between 14,500 and 17,500 trafficking victims are brought into this country each year. A recent Justice Department report, however, cautions that those numbers may be inflated.

Emerging details about the mini-cartel allegedly run by Lopez-Montanez and his brothers say a lot about the ambiguous situation of immigrants who do the grunt work in Oregon's drug industry.

Ana Aguilar-Torres, who greeted undercover agents May 5 at the Salem farmhouse, was also arrested May 23. While agents believe she was also a victim, Aguilar-Torres told the FBI she was in love with Lopez-Montanez, who paid her $2,000 a month to tend his crops. She has since been charged with conspiracy to distribute and manufacture marijuana and possession of a firearm by an illegal alien.

Salem Police Sgt. Pat Garrett says the low-level drug dealers he meets often fall into a gray area between slavery and something less explicit.

"What we do see a lot of is, people get recruited and they voluntarily agree to do it, kind of [like] an indentured servant," Garrett says.

The problems start, he says, when they decide they want to get out of it, but "they come from the same town as the guy who recruited them, and they're afraid for their family."

The bosses' implied message, Garrett says, goes something like this: "We're not going to go after you, but we can certainly harm your family members in Mexico."

"That's the kind of threat they use to keep people in line," he says. "It's a known thing."

Police may soon encounter more illegal immigrants stuck along the spectrum of victimization in the drug business; marijuana cultivation, already a cash crop in Oregon, is growing, according to drug enforcement agencies.

In 2005, Oregon ranked seventh in the nation for marijuana plants seized, below top-ranked California and sixth-ranked Washington. Federal marijuana seizures here have increased more than 300-fold in recent years, rising from 19.5 kilograms in 2002 to 7,146.4 kilograms in 2005.

Ken McGee, the DEA's assistant special agent in charge for Oregon, says he's not entirely sure why the numbers have grown so fast. Asked if increased enforcement plays a role, McGee would only say his budget has not decreased in recent years.

He points to Mexican cartels and the state's low penalties for those convicted of selling weed. He puts the most blame on Oregon's legalization of medical marijuana in 1999, under which more than 16,000 patients and caretakers have the right to grow their own. In fact, Lopez-Montanez's wife carries a state-issued medical marijuana card.

Garrett says Mexican cartels are moving into Oregon at a faster pace, although their presence is nothing new. They have refined methods of outdoor cultivation, he says, building high-tech irrigation systems to grow thousands of plants on public forest land. In downtown Salem on weekend nights, Garrett says he has spotted suspected drug bosses in snakeskin boots and white cowboy hats lined up outside clubs blaring mariachi music.

Lopez-Montanez, who the FBI says grew hundreds, not thousands, of plants, does not fit the bill of a high roller. He appeared in court with scraggly salt-and-pepper hair and glasses.

Neighbor Steven Miller describes Lopez-Montanez as "clean, neat and very polite." He has a teenage son and daughter, Miller says, and behaves like a normal working-class dad. When the FBI arrived, according to an affidavit, the 13-year-old son said aloud, "Daddy has never worked."

Lopez-Montanez, now jailed in federal prison in Sheridan, has entered pleas of not guilty.


<hr>

Originally Published on 6/21/2006

Find this story at www.wweek.com/editorial/3233/7682

[palmspringsbum]

Wildlife the victim of growing Bay Area marijuana business

Tom Stienstra
The San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, August 27, 2006


The helicopter hovered over the Coyote Creek Canyon at the south end of Henry Coe State Park. Inside, Mike Ferry, the park's supervising ranger, scanned the terrain below with binoculars, searching for groves of marijuana.

"This is where we found the big one, 8,000 plants in two groves," Ferry said. "At $5,000 a plant, that could be worth $40 million on the street. Take it to the East Coast, you double or triple the value."

Ferry, an affable man and wildlife expert, grimaced as he described raiding the illegal sites.

"At these gardens, we've found dead animals and birds, ammonia sulfate, pesticides and herbicides, ponds and creeks lined with plastics, and garbage all over the place," he said. "The environmental damage is huge."

The public has been warned about the potential danger of wandering into an illegal marijuana garden at parks and national forests. But it is fish, wildlife and habitat that are being butchered, Ferry said.

"They start killing them, birds, deer, whatever comes in," Ferry said. The outlaws kill them, he said, to keep wildlife from eating the crop.

Timing is now critical because illegal marijuana gardens are near harvest, which occurs in California from Labor Day weekend through early October.

Ferry runs Coe, California's largest state park, located south of Mount Hamilton and a favorite site for the illegal gardens. He also worked for CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) for three months last year, so he has seen hundreds of operations up close and personal.

"We find ammo at every grove," Ferry said. "At one camp (at Coe State Park), we found a four-point rack, blacktail deer that they poached. At another camp, we found these two water lines, you know, black plastic pipe, coming out of a plastic-lined pond that ran two miles to the grove, and you know that creek has been damaged."

In the Bay Area, the favorite site of illegal growers seems to be Santa Clara County, in the vicinity of Mount Hamilton and Mount Umunhum. Two weeks ago, sheriff's deputies pulled 20,000 plants in five gardens, bringing this year's total to 70,000 plants confiscated worth roughly $280 million, according to their estimates.

So many illegal gardens are being located, such as 8,000 more plants found in Mendocino National Forest in Glenn County last week, that CAMP may surpass last year's record busts: 1.2 million plants worth more than $4.5 billion, according to agents.

About 90 percent of the illegal groves are on public lands, usually at parks, open space reserves and national forests, Ferry said. The hottest spot appears to be the west slopes of the Sierra Nevada east of Fresno. "We pulled gardens for five days a week, for three months, in Sequoia National Forest," Ferry said.

Hikers, bikers, 4-wheel-drivers, off-highway-vehicle riders, equestrians, anglers and hunters can wander into an operation or see evidence of one. One common episode is for anglers, fishing a remote stream, to spot a plastic pipe irrigation line. Another warning sign is to see a van, filthy from being driven on remote dirt roads, filled with workers -- if you see such a vehicle, take down the license number and report it.

"Just about all of it is being run by the Mexican drug cartel," Ferry said. "They recruit illegal immigrants in Mexico, bring them to safe houses in California, and give them $300 to get by. Then they run them into the hills and mountains, and if they go through the whole cycle through harvest, give them $3,000."

One dilemma "that is really throwing us," Ferry said, is the wide-scale acceptance of medical marijuana and the perception that casual marijuana use hurts nothing.

But if marijuana smokers saw the carcasses of deer, squirrels, songbirds, owls and other wildlife shot or poisoned at the illegal groves, as Ferry has, perhaps they would understand the price wildlife pays for their next toke.

"I don't know the answer, but I've seen the damage," he said. "Every day I go out, it doesn't surprise me to hear we have another bust."


<span class=postbold>Wildlife tales</span>

-- Wolves, cont: Another reliable wolf sighting has been reported, this time by field scout Bruce Pressley. After his band, fronted by Mick Martin, opened for Elvin Bishop at South Lake Tahoe last May, he was heading out of the Tahoe Basin on Highway 50 when he saw the animal. "Late that night, just as we reach the last turn before the summit (Echo Summit), we spotted a large, gray/silver fox trotting along not too terribly worried about us. We were both stunned because we just knew what it was."

-- Range expansion: A mated pair of rare peregrine falcons was identified hunting the foothills near Smith Ranch Road and Interstate 101 in eastern Marin County, reports Michael Baranowski. This is evidence that peregrines are likely expanding their range from Point Reyes National Seashore.

-- Rare sighting: A squadron of 10 bat rays was seen roaming the flats of the marina at the St. Francis Yacht Club on the San Francisco waterfront by Vince Moyer. This is a lucky sight, similar to the event reported three years ago in late summer off Tiburon, likely a ray mating ritual.


<span class=postbold>Notes of note </span>

Trout hot spot: Remember how Highway 140 along the Merced River near Yosemite National Park was closed most of this year by the big rock slide? Well, one lane is now open, where traffic is led by a pilot car, and field scout Merced Mike says the fishing for trout on the Merced River is fantastic, that the trout have forgotten all about the wiles of anglers. "Seven per hour is my average, catch-and-release."

Deal falls short: California game wardens are still angry over pay disparity with other enforcement branches, despite winning a 10 percent pay raise last week. Seasoned game wardens make $53,184, and in comparison, CHP officers top out at about $80,000, including an average of $10,000 in overtime, says Dennis DeAnda, president of California Fish & Game Wardens Supervisors and Managers Association.

Coastsiders alert: The Coastside Fishing Club, the edgy, Internet-based organization with 10,000 Bay Area members, has put out an alert asking its members for an all-out push to get the salmon-blocking dams removed on the Klamath River ... and will also fund a second donation of $16,669 to Oregon State (and matched by the college) for research documenting the ability of rockfish to survive after being caught and released. coastsidefishingclub.com.

New map, Part 1: The latest from Tom Harrison, the Bay Area's map wizard, is a clean, detailed trail map of one of the Bay Area's most famous and loved trails, the Dipsea Trail, from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach, in Marin. tomharrisonmaps.com.

New map, Part 2: New from Dave Imus, and now hitting the outdoors stores, is his map on the Sierra Nevada. While hard to read at first scan, with a bright light and reading glasses the detail is impressive. imusgeographics.com.

Paradise reopened: The Marble Mountain Wilderness, closed to the public entirely three weeks ago for the first time by lightning-caused fires, has been reopened by Klamath National Forest.

Boat projects on line: Two major boat access projects, one at Berkeley Marina on San Francisco Bay, and another at Antioch Marina in the San Joaquin Delta, will enter their final phases this fall and offer first-class boat ramps, docks, restrooms and parking facilities.

Final duck numbers: Heavy rain last spring in Northern California helped produce a 26 percent increase in breeding mallard ducks, 318,000 to 399,000, with most of the production at wildlife refuges in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys.

Lake Chabot Park is featured on the "Great Outdoors With Tom Stienstra" 6:30 p.m. Sunday on KBCW-44 (Bay Area Cable 12).

E-mail Tom Stienstra at tstienstra@sfchronicle.com.

Page C - 13

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Dark Green
<blockquote>
<span class=postbold>If you smoke pot, there's a chance your bag of weed was produced by a murderous drug syndicate that pays poor immigrant laborers to camp out in the woods with guns and threaten hikers, shoot cops and foul the environment. Does that bring you down?</span>
</blockquote>
By Stett Holbrook
metroactive
October 11-17, 2006


<table class=posttable align=right width=265><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/dark-green_chopper.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap><b>South Bay raid:</b> California's Campaign Against Marijuana Production (CAMP) is a multiagency task force that flies helicopters all over the state looking for pot groves and chops them down. They've found plenty of work in Santa Clara County over the last two decades.</td></tr></table>IF THERE was a television commercial for marijuana, you could imagine it featuring some good-looking adults passing a joint around a dinner table, laughing and having fun while a pro-pot celebrity like Woody Harrelson or Lenny Kravitz walked on with a knowing smile and made a pitch for smoking herb. "Pot. It's natural. It's organic. The way nature meant it to be. Have a toke and a smile."

Society no longer regards marijuana as the devil weed. While once reviled as a fast ticket to an underworld of crime and vice, the days of "reefer madness" have evolved into tolerance. In California, possession of under an ounce is a misdemeanor that carries a $100 fine. Since the passage of Proposition 215 in 1996, people with medical conditions are relatively free to smoke, possess and grow pot as long as they have a doctor's note. For everyone else, it's still naughty, but much of society seems to regard pot as an entirely different drug than cocaine, methamphetamine or heroin.

Showtime's hit series Weeds, about a suburban mom who deals pot to make ends meet, is a further indication of how social mores have changed. There's no way the show would be as popular if it featured a lovable crack dealer. And then there's Willie Nelson, perhaps the country's best-known dope smoker and legalization advocate. He was recently cited for marijuana possession when Louisiana state police pulled over his tour bus and found a pound and a half of pot. Yet there have been no outcries for his incarceration or a campaign to melt down his records to protest his dope-smoking ways.

"I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug," Nelson has been quoted as saying. "Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If he put it here and he wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?"

Nelson is not alone is his live-and-let-live views on marijuana. After alcohol and tobacco, marijuana is the third most popular drug in America. According to government surveys, marijuana has been used by approximately 80 million people. Twenty million people smoked pot in the past year, and 11 million smoke it regularly.

It's just pot, right? What's the big deal?

The big deal is this: In spite of widespread social acceptance and evidence that smoking marijuana is less harmful than consuming alcohol or tobacco, pot has an ugly side that shatters its happy hippie image of an innocuous herb.

The reality many recreational smokers don't want to hear is that pot can be a dirty, bloody business. While there are countless backyard growers and small-scale pot farmers who stay clear of the nasty side of cultivation, the marijuana trade is increasingly controlled by Mexican drug trafficking organizations. That's especially true in California, the No. 1 pot-growing state. While once controlled by relatively benign hippie growers and opportunists in the "emerald triangle" in Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties, Mexican drug syndicates have muscled into the business over the past years, government authorities say, ratcheting up production and profits and well as violence to protect their crops.

"The same people who have been bringing you cocaine, meth and heroin are now bringing you marijuana," says Rich Camps, South Bay task force commander for the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. "They've added it to their portfolio."

And Santa Clara County is a big player in the illegal marijuana trade. Camps says many of Santa Clara County's pot gardens are linked to drug trafficking organizations in Michoacan, Mexico. These criminal syndicates act as a "command and control" structure for pot operations in the Silicon Valley, the Central Valley and Northern California, he says.

What's more, the growers who have set up shop in the state's wild lands are fouling the environment by piling trash, siphoning local creeks for irrigation and dumping pounds of fertilizer, pesticides and human waste into the water table and sensitive habitats.

"It's a serious pollution issue," says John Nores, a warden with the California Department of Fish and Game.

<span class=postbold><big>Growing Awareness</big></span>

It's not just law enforcement that decries black market pot.

From the other side of the aisle is Valerie Corral. She's co-founder of Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) in Santa Cruz. WAMM is a nonprofit collective that provides marijuana to the seriously ill. She's been arrested three times on marijuana charges and is an outspoken critic of current marijuana laws, but she too condemns the criminal underground that has turned pot into an organized-crime industry.

"I think people don't see the harm caused by the illicit market," she says. Just as purchasing petroleum products or a fast food can have negative social consequences, so does buying marijuana grown by drug traffickers, she says.

"I think the important thing is to observe our impacts as consumers," she says.

While there's not yet a fair trade, organic brand of marijuana for conscientious pot smokers, Corral urges like-minded people to educate themselves about what she sees as the value of legalized marijuana and to take a stand for better access to marijuana for those who need it.

<table class=posttable align=right width=133><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/dark-green_men.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap><b>Chop, chop:</b> With a month left to go in the 2006 season, CAMP had already set a new record with 1.6 million marijuana plants destroyed.</td></tr></table><span class=postbold><big>The New Green Gold Rush</big></span>

There are different theories about why Mexican drug traffickers are now growing pot on California soil in such large quantities. Some say it's because clampdowns at the U.S./Mexican border have made smuggling the drug harder, making it more practical to grow it here. However, Camps believes law enforcement's efforts to shut down methamphetamine labs in California by restricting the sale of the chemicals needed to make the drug have left a criminal "workforce" without work. Growing weed has filled the void, he says.

"There's big money to be made in marijuana and that's why they're figuring it out," he says.

The infiltration of Mexican pot growers into California rural lands has ushered in an era of low-intensity warfare between the growers and law enforcement. California's Campaign Against Marijuana Production (CAMP) began in 1983. It's a multiagency task force that flies helicopters all over the state looking for pot groves and chops them down. Since its inception, plant seizures have gone up almost every year. Last year's eradication of 1.1 million plants was a new record, and with about a month left to go in the 2006 season, CAMP has already set a new record with 1.6 million plants.

Until three years ago, Santa Clara County was a good place to grow pot. Silicon Valley's eastern and western mountains provide ample water for irrigation and hundreds of miles of rugged, densely forested land to plant gardens and set up covert encampments. The risk of getting caught was low because local law enforcement wasn't trying to root out the gardens in a systematic way. But that's changed now.

The county sheriff's office received a state grant to create its first-ever marijuana eradication team (MET). The team is on the job all year long. During the spring-to-fall growing season, they fly over the hills in helicopters trying to spot gardens and hike across rugged terrain with topo maps and GPS devices in hand to sniff out illicit pot farms. During the winter months, they explore sites they may have missed and reconnoiter gardens they plan to hit during the next growing season.

<span class=postbold><big>Meet the Eradicators</big></span>

While the marijuana eradication team is a two-man operation, it's really a collaborative effort. They work closely with the Department of Fish and Game and local park services because many pot gardens are on public land. The growers often seek out remote areas of public land to grow but have been known to plant marijuana within 50 yards of public hiking trails. For particularly large, hard-to-reach gardens, the county calls in CAMP to help eradicate the crops. The sheriff's office also gets help from Waste Management which disposes of confiscated marijuana for free.

In its first year, the eradication team pulled about 6,000 plants. Last year that number jumped to 80,307, putting Santa Clara County into the state's top 10 for total plants eradicated. This season isn't over yet, but the county has already topped last year's count with 122,607 plants. With each plant yielding as much as 1 pound of buds and a pound of pot going for approximately $5,000, that's more than $613 million worth of dope.

With that kind of money taken out of the hands of dealers, the MET deputies don't want their names revealed, as a precaution against retribution. Both are former patrol deputies and members of the sheriff's office SWAT team. One is a baby-faced deputy with a buzz cut and a quick smile. His partner is the more reserved of the two. He's an intense man with glasses, a thin build and a calculating stare.

As big as this year's haul has been, the shorthaired deputy says there's a lot they're not finding. He estimates they're missing 60 to 70 percent of the pot growing in the county. "It seems like it's wildly out of control," he says. "These guys will do it anywhere and spare no expense."

The deputies say they have no interest in raiding medicinal marijuana gardens. Under Proposition 215, medical marijuana patients or their caregivers are allowed to have six mature or 12 immature plants. As long as medicinal pot growers can provide a medical marijuana card, they leave the gardens alone, they say.

"We respect state law and respect the right of people to have medical marijuana," says the shorthaired deputy.

But with 23 raids of large-scale illegal gardens under their belts this year, these anti-pot commandos are more than a minor irritation to the illicit growers.

"It's getting more and more violent every year," says the bespectacled member of the eradication team. "I could use another five guys on my team and use them seven days a week. There's just so much [marijuana]."

<span class=postbold><big>Guns on Mt. Umunhum</big></span>

On a recent foggy morning just before dawn, the scene in the parking lot of a Los Gatos church was enough to make an early-rising parishioner whisper a few Hail Marys and run for cover. Six men in camouflage fatigues and bulletproof vests stepped out of unmarked vehicles and began to unsheathe various semiautomatic weapons. The MET deputies and other deputies assigned to help them smeared on dark face paint and racked their rifles, chambering rounds with a series of metallic clacks and pops. After checking that their walkie-talkies and earpieces were all functioning, they clambered in the back of a pickup truck driven by a sheriff sergeant and drove up Reynolds Road, high above a slumbering Silicon Valley. At a pre-designated spot near Mt. Umunhum, the men jumped out and walked single file down a dirt trail and disappeared into the half-light of sunrise.

A few weeks earlier, one of the deputies flew over the area with a pilot in the Sheriff's Department's sole helicopter. Both deputies received training in aerial marijuana spotting in Mendocino County, the state's best outdoor classroom for learning such a skill. Banking over the rugged, steep terrain above the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve, the MET deputy saw a telltale patch of green that was much brighter and lighter than the manzanita, oak and chemise that forests the hillsides here. After flying over it a few times to confirm what he saw (but hopefully not close enough to arouse too much suspicion of anyone hiding out in the garden), he marked the site with his GPS device and added it to an ever-growing list of gardens he wanted to hit.

While a GPS certainly helps locate a "grow," as the deputies call pot gardens, two of the most reliable signs are decidedly more low-tech: foot trails and black irrigation pipe. Pot won't grow without water, and fortunately for growers, water is plentiful in the mountains that bookend Silicon Valley. The heavy rains this spring could be part of the reason for this year's bumper crop. Growers lug in miles of the plastic pipe and divert water from creeks and drainages to feed their thirsty crops. Find a black pipe snaking along the ground and follow it downhill and chances are good you'll find a garden. And where there are gardens, there are often gardeners.

Once at the grow, what they found was typical of these large-scale marijuana operations. The area around the garden was heaped with garbage and toxic waste. There was evidence of the growers' camp, including a dismantled tent, blankets, camping stove, empty fuel canisters, food wrappers, plastic water bottles and empty cans of food. Scattered throughout the camp were empty jugs and bags of fertilizer and pesticides. Nearby, the growers had dug two pits and lined them with heavy black plastic and piped in water from a nearby drainage to create a makeshift irrigation tank. The basins are often filled with fertilizer and other chemicals, creating a toxic soup that leeches into the ground and, potentially, back into creeks and groundwater supplies.

"Whatever makes it downstream or underground is toast," says Nores of the Department of Fish and Game.

As for the weed itself, about 1,000 chest-high plants were growing from individually dug holes. They were several weeks from budding, so rather than haul them out, the deputies simply clipped them with pruning shears and let them lie where they fell. Once cut, pot won't grow back.

In addition to the trash, the growers left something else that reminded the deputies of what they were up against each time they raided a pot garden: a gun holster and empty boxes of .357 caliber, hollow point rounds. Once they enter the body, the bullets are designed to splinter and cause maximum damage.

<table class=posttable align=right width=210><tr><td class=postimg><img src=bin/dark-green_truck.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap><b>Your marijuana eradication dollars at work:</b> Last year, Santa Clara County was in the state's top 10 for total plants eradicated. This season isn't over yet, but the county has already topped last year's count with 122,607 plants—more than $613 million worth of dope.</td></tr></table><span class=postbold><big>The Ambush</big></span>

Just a few miles away from this grow was the scene of a raid last year that didn't go as well. The MET deputies, two state Fish and Game wardens and other sheriff's office deputies were walking through a dense garden of marijuana when they were ambushed by two men hiding in the plants armed with AK-47s. Shots rang out and Fish and Game warden Kyle Kroll was struck by a bullet that went through both his legs. The deputies returned fire and hit one man. The other suspected pot grower escaped into the woods and was never found in spite of a huge manhunt. Kroll spent three hours waiting for an airlift. He's since recovered from his wounds. By the time a medical team arrived, the wounded suspect, an East Palo Alto man, was dead.

Camps, the task force commander with the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, said he later learned the suspect was part of the Michoacan-based drug trafficking organization that's involved in much of the South Bay's marijuana trade. The man's family never claimed his body.

While public land is preferred by growers, large tracts of private property are attractive as well, and properties don't get much larger than the Isabel Valley Ranch. Located about an hour east of Mt. Hamilton, the remote ranch is 11,500 acres of rolling hills and oak. It's just 18.5 miles from San Jose International Airport, but walking the ranch feels like being in the foothills of the Sierra. And as remote as the property is, the owners are furious to learn that pot growers have set up shop on their ranch.

"In some ways you're kind of held captive on your own property," says Lou Oneal, a former trial attorney. "You don't have full use it."

His son, Jim, spends a lot time hiking the property and is writing a book about the ranch. He's found Ohlone Indian artifacts and a silver spur left by what he believes was the De Anza party in the 18th century. He also spends a lot of time hiking and hunting with his 13-year-old son, but he has had to curtail his forays because of ominous-looking foot trails that cross the ranch. Alarmed by what he's seen, he called the sheriff's office to investigate.

He led the deputies to one of these trails and sure enough, after following it for about a mile, it led to a well-equipped campsite littered with trash that looked like it had been there for several years. Nearby was an old pot garden.

Oneal shook with rage as he surveyed the growers' camp.

"We've worked for 60 years to make this a pristine wildlife area," he said bitterly. "This just kills me."

<span class=postbold><big>Growers' Getaway</big></span>

In spite of the Sheriff's Department's success in hacking down plants, arrests have been harder to come by. So far this year they've made just three.

Growers are hard to catch because they often hear the law coming. They live in the woods for weeks at a time and are well tuned in to their environment.

"They know every trail, every tree, every rock," says the shorthaired deputy.

Even when the deputies do manage to sneak up on the growers, they take off into the brush like jackrabbits. While the deputies are fatigued from arduous hikes and burdened with backpacks, bulletproof vests and weapons, the growers are fresh and ready run. But every once in a while they get lucky and grab a few suspects.

"We're not gardeners," says the shorthaired deputy. "Our job is to catch the bad guys."

That's why the sentencing of two men arrested in July was particularly sweet for the deputies and their partners in the Department of Fish and Game. The men, Saul Toledo and Luis Herrera, pleaded guilty to marijuana cultivation and two environmental charges: streambed diversion and water pollution. Toledo was also charged with the possession of a handgun and Herrera was hit with a parole violation. The men received two years in state prison.

The prosecution of the environmental charges was a first in the county and could establish a precedent for future cases, says sheriff's Sgt. Joe Waldherr, who supervises the marijuana eradication team.

Johnny Gogo is an assistant district attorney assigned to the eradication team. He admits Toledo and Herrera were probably just "worker bees" in a much larger organization. Getting suspects to reveal whom they're working for never happens, he says.

<span class=postbold><big>Legalize It?</big></span>

Advocates for marijuana legalization say prohibition and profit drive the illegal market. Even though California has decriminalized possession of marijuana, it ensures illegal cultivation will flourish, says Corral, co-founder of the Santa Cruz medical marijuana cooperative.

"It helps proliferate the illegal market," she says. "We don't look at the far-reaching impact."

Dale Gieringer, California coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), believes that only when growing marijuana is legal will the violence and nefarious nature of the illegal drug trade stop. What's more, he says a state-controlled marijuana industry could rake in huge sums of money through taxation.

"This is a multibillion industry that's being lost to the state through criminality."

But until the laws change, the war against the growers has to continue, he says.

"As long as you have this dumb game of prohibition, [law enforcement] doesn't have much choice."

For his part, the shorthaired deputy with the marijuana eradication team doesn't lose sleep over the legalization debate or the efficacy of what he does. His job to enforce the law and growing pot is illegal.

"If it wasn't a felony tomorrow, we'd find something else to do," he says.

Until then, he's got more gardens to root out before the rains come and this year's pot season comes to an end.