The remote town of Hayfork in the foothills of Northern California\u2019s Trinity Alps woke to an unpleasant surprise the morning of June 25, with three big helicopters landed at the local airfield and a convoy of some 15 police and military-style vehicles spotted on a local road. <\/p>\n
To residents\u2019 outrage, it turned out to be a cannabis eradication mission involving the National Guard, as well as state police, U.S. Forest Service enforcement agents, and Trinity County deputies.<\/p>\n
The situation stirred unpleasant memories, as Trinity County had seen many such militarized operations back in the days of cannabis prohibition and the now-defunct Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the following days, some 15 warrants were executed in Hayfork and environs.<\/p>\n
California Department of Fish and Wildlife<\/a>\u00a0information officer Janice Mackey told\u00a0Redheaded Blackbelt<\/a>, a news site that closely covers the Emerald Triangle: \u201cThe operations yielded an estimated 12,548 illegal marijuana plants, 801 pounds of processed marijuana, 15 firearms and $435,875 in U.S. currency\u2026 23 suspects were detained during the operation. Charges will be filed with the Trinity County District Attorney\u2019s office for consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n Mackey said that \u201crecords checks confirmed that none of the parcels were permitted by the county, nor were they licensed by the state for commercial cannabis cultivation.\u201d She added that several game and water violations were documented in the raids, asserting that\u00a0\u201c[s]ites were selected based on their potential threat to the environment not plant count.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She also stated that \u201cthe eradicated marijuana was destroyed under the guidelines of HS code 11479\u2026 at a confidential location.\u201d That\u2019s the provision of the state\u00a0Health & Safety Code<\/a>\u00a0allowing eradication of confiscated controlled substances by law enforcement.<\/p>\n The convoy was apparently made up of vehicles from the sheriff\u2019s office, CDFW and the U.S. Forest Service. The\u00a0Shasta-Trinity National Forest controls much land in the area. The choppers were likely from the\u00a0California National Guard. One witness was quoted in an\u00a0earlier report<\/a>\u00a0on Redheaded Blackbelt describing the \u201c[b]iggest helicopter I ever seen.\u201d He also reported seeing a large military-type truck at the airport.<\/p>\n A\u00a0CDFW press release<\/a>\u00a0on June 21 also noted raids carried out earlier in the month in both Trinity and Shasta counties, netting some 10,000 plants and three arrests. The press release said that \u201ccommercial cannabis cultivation is prohibited\u201d in Shasta County, which borders Trinity on the east. In fact, as the 2017\u00a0county ordinance<\/a>\u00a0makes clear, this only applies to unincorporated areas of the county; Redding and other municipalities within Shasta County do indeed allow commercial cultivation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIllegal marijuana cultivation has no place in today\u2019s regulated cannabis market,\u201d said David Bess, chief of the CDFW Law Enforcement Division. \u201cIndividuals who destroy our environment and continue to cultivate illegally produced marijuana will be held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n There has been a lot of this sort of thing going on statewide in recent weeks \u2014 and not only in the Emerald Triangle. Simultaneous with the Trinity operation, National Guard troops were\u00a0sent in<\/a>\u00a0to aid Santa Barbara sheriff\u2019s deputies in a series of raids near the town of Buelton, seizing 20 tons of harvested cannabis and some 350,000 plants. In the first week of June, National Guard troops\u00a0backed up<\/a>\u00a0more than \u201c700 officials from about two dozen state and federal law enforcement agencies\u201d in seizing over 140,000 plants in Southern California\u2019s Riverside County. In late May and early June, Guard troops\u00a0joined operations<\/a>\u00a0across Siskiyou County, which borders Trinity on the north, confiscating nearly 20,000 plants.\u00a0<\/p>\n The statewide raids also come as California authorities have launched a new campaign targeting the illicit cannabis market, dubbed \u201cGet #weedwise<\/a>.\u201d Overseen by the\u00a0Bureau of Cannabis Control<\/a>, the three-year, $1.7 million campaign officially kicked off June 21, urging consumers to verify that their cannabis is produced legally and warning unlicensed growers that their days are numbered.<\/p>\n Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this year\u00a0announced plans<\/a>\u00a0to send the state\u2019s National Guard north to join in the crackdown on unlicensed growers, pulling them out of enforcement along the Mexican border. Newsom said troops will be \u201credeploying up north to go after all these illegal cannabis farms, many of which are run by the cartels that are devastating our pristine forests and increasingly themselves becoming fire hazards.\u201d And just over a year ago, then-Gov. Jerry Brown\u00a0unveiled a special investigative force<\/a>\u00a0to go after unregistered cannabis growers.<\/p>\n The\u00a0ecological tolls<\/a>\u00a0of unregulated cannabis cultivation are a very real problem. But advocates have pointed to\u00a0burdensome regulations<\/a>\u00a0that provide a disincentive for small growers to come in from the cold.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, how do you think illegal grows should be policed?<\/p>\n The post Militarized Raids in Trinity County Recall Prohibition-Era Policing<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The remote town of Hayfork in the foothills of Northern California\u2019s Trinity Alps woke to an unpleasant surprise the morning of June 25, with three big helicopters landed at the local airfield and a convoy of some 15 police and military-style vehicles spotted on a local road. To residents\u2019 outrage,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4588,4064,148,11183,4014,50,886,9799,90,7605,369,11184,4380],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36571"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36572,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36571\/revisions\/36572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}From the Emerald Triangle to the Inland Empire<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Militarized Raids in Trinity County Recall Prohibition-Era Policing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"