El Monte Marijuana Bust Uncovers $1 Million In Pot

When Los Angeles deputies responded to a burglary-in-progress call in El Monte, they had no idea they’d be stumbling across one of the biggest marijuana grow houses in the city’s history.

On Saturday morning, four men and a teen boy were caught trying to break in to what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse on Continental Avenue. Instead of guns or other weapons, the thieves were armed with gloves and clippers, reports NBC LA. Their getaway car? A U-Haul.

Eventually, one of the suspects tipped authorities off about their intended target: over 3,000 marijuana plants valued at around $1 million. After obtaining a search warrant, El Monte police entered the warehouse to carry out what is being touted as “the biggest drug bust in El Monte history.”

KTLA’s look inside the El Monte warehouse plantation reveals a secret 3-foot high crawl space where a guard was stationed to watch the door through an air-conditioning vent. Inside, a sophisticated system of lighting and irrigation nurtured thousands of marijuana plants that were just three weeks away from harvest. Finally, the growers evaded detection by sourcing their electricity directly from underground wires, which authorities believe enabled them to steal $10,000 of electricity per month.

One of the robbery suspects alleges that the grow house belongs to his family, who was cutting him out of the profits. He had wrangled four friends to help him claim his share. From the Daily News Wire Service:

Benjamin Kwok, 37, of San Gabriel, Xing Xi He, 24, of Baldwin Park, Louie Frank Fraijo, 28, also of Baldwin Park, Raymond Guan, 29, of Rosemead and a 17-year-old boy from San Gabriel were all arrested and booked for commercial burglary…

El Monte is no stranger to jackpot marijuana busts. In 2008, a home in a small gated community was busted for housing a $1 million marijuana plantation. In 2010, police busted two more home plantations with estimated values of $250,000 and $1 million.

Proposed Tracking Program Has SF Medical Marijuana Growers In Fear Feds Or Criminals Could Obtain Addresses

San Francisco officials want to keep a record of all suppliers of medical marijuana dispensaries, an idea that has some members of the pot community fuming.

“If there is a list, it’s available to the public, and it’s available to the feds,” said Kevin Reed, a member of The City’s Medical Cannabis Task Force and owner of the Green Cross, a medical cannabis delivery service.

Reed said most members of cannabis collectives and cooperatives grow small amounts of pot in their homes, warning that a city record of their names and addresses could be accessible by anyone — including federal law enforcement officials or criminals who rob grow operations.

Despite statements by the Obama administration that it would not go after medical marijuana dispensaries that comply with state laws, cannabis supporters say such raids have continued, and Reed remained wary about a public record of growers.

“It just goes against everything that we’re doing,” Reed said. “What we do is federally illegal. As long as The City is offering patients no protection, it’s just absurd.”

According to a written statement from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, officials announced at a May 20 task force meeting that they “anticipated maintaining a record of all sources/cultivators for each [dispensary].”

Public health officials would only answer questions about this proposal in writing, and a spokeswoman did not respond to a question about whether the list would be publicly available.

The statement noted that the department, which issues permits for medical cannabis dispensaries, is tasked with ensuring that the cannabis such dispensaries cultivate and distribute is in compliance with state and local laws.

There currently are 26 permitted dispensaries in The City, and nine more have applied for permits.

Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, the director of environmental health, said such dispensaries get their products from “diverse sources” and that the department needs to ensure those sources are legal. California law requires that marijuana distributed by medical cannabis collectives or co-operatives be cultivated only by their members, and not for profit.

“Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of cultivation in many San Francisco neighborhoods,” Bhatia said. Some of these sites violate city planning and building codes, and create fire or hazardous materials dangers, according to his statement.

“The department’s overarching aim is to steer [medical cannabis dispensary] practices towards conformity with California and San Francisco law,” Bhatia said. “In this way, we reduced the likelihood for MCDs of community concerns and criminal prosecution.”

The idea is apparently just in its formative stages, however, and no decision has been made.
“We are open to alternative ways to ensure the safety and legality of cultivation,” Bhatia said. “We will be discussing this with the dispensary community.”

Community activist and task force member Stephanie Tucker called a public list “a deal-breaker.”

“DPH historically has always been very good at protecting safe access, and balancing that with public safety,” Tucker said. “Obviously, as a community, we have concerns about that information becoming public.

“We need to find a solution, a happy medium.”

http://www.theweedblog.com/proposed-tracking-program-has-sf-medical-marijuana-growers-in-fear-feds-or-criminals-could-obtain-addresses/

S.F. Pot Shops Must Release Names & Addresses Of Growers

​The San Francisco Department of Public Health, which licenses and polices the city’s 26 storefront medical marijuana dispensaries, announced on Friday that it will ask every dispensary to provide a list — with names and addresses — of every grower with which it does business.

The result would be a disaster for the city’s burgeoning medical marijuana industry, according to Kevin Reed, president of the Green Cross medicinal cannabis delivery service, reports Chris Roberts at the S.F. Weekly.

“It’s unacceptable,” Reed told the Weekly. “It would be a disaster.”

The list of grower names and addresses is needed, claimed Rajiv Bhatia, head of DPH’s Occupational & Environmental Health, for safety and legality reasons.

“DPH is trying to ensure that permitted MCDs [medical cannabis dispensaries] comply with all state and local laws,” Bhatia said. “By ensuring this, the industry will be best situated to be protected from code enforcement and criminal prosecution.”

Photo: Luke Thomas/The Green Cross

Kevin Reed: “It’s unacceptable. It would be a disaster.”

​ But that isn’t sitting so well with the city’s medical marijuana growers, who have noticed the increasingly threatening nature of letters of U.S. Attorneys in medical marijuana states. All that saber-rattling by drug warriors within the Obama

Administration doesn’t exactly make turning over a list of names and addresses seem like the best idea ever.

According to Reed, the list would push legal operators underground while doing nothing to change the habits of illegal cultivators.

And if the list were publicly available, it could be used as a “shopping list” by rip-off artists, thieves, and, of course, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), since the feds still consider cannabis illegal, even for medicinal purposes, regardless of state laws.

“There’s no way anyone on the city or state level can provide us protection from the federal government,” Reed said.

Theories regarding why the S.F. Health Department is suddenly concerned about whether dispensaries comply with state and local law — more than a decade after the City By The Bay passed its Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary Act — include taxes, police, and in industry takeover, reports Roberts at the Weekly.

Reed said he believes the DPH wants a list of all the city’s legal growers so that it can eventually tax them. But the city also wants addresses of grow sites located outside San Francisco.

Some growers believe the DPH is being strong-armed by the S.F. Police Department.

And then there are the conspiracy theorists who say the stricter regulations would make it easier for a few mega-operators to take over the medical marijuana industry.

“I understand DPH’s frustration of being thrust into the middle of this confusing and contradictory system, but there is way too much risk to force full transparency in cultivation,” said Brendan Hallinan, an attorney handling permitting for medical marijuana dispensaries.

“After the federal government specifically told Oakland ‘no way’ on their permitted-cultivation sites, it is ridiculous to ask SF MCDs to go right ahead and do the same thing,” Hallinan said.