Cops Find Marijuana Plants After Roommates Fight

Dumb and Dumber just went at it and screwed theirsevles with the stupidity.

An East Hampton man is being held on $40,000 bond and $20,500 cash after he was arrested on charges he menacing his roommate with a metal pipe and was growing marijuana at his house.

On Aug. 3 at 12:10 p.m., town police were called to Alejandro Fernandez’s house on Tub Oarsman Road by the alleged victim who said he been in fight with Fernandez. The man accused Fernandez of punching him in the face and chasing him around the backyard with the pipe.

Fernandez, who is 30, had left the house by the time police arrived.

Police asked the roommate to point out where the incident took place and was brought onto a large deck overlooking the backyard. The “officer noticed several orange pots with cannabis plants growing in them along the side fence,” a report said.

Meanwhile, Fernandez returned to the house and as another police officer went over to his pick-up truck and reportedly saw marijuana branches next to a pile of top soil in the back of the truck.

He was charged with third-degree criminal possession of a weapon with a previous conviction, a felony, second-degree menacing with a weapon, a misdemeanor, unlawfully growing cannabis under the Public Health Law, a misdemeanor, and second-degree harassment, a violation.

Following an arraignment in East Hampton Town Justice Court, Fernandez was turned over to the Suffolk County sheriff’s office in lieu of bail.

(Source) http://easthampton.patch.com

Florida Leads the Nation in Indoor Marijuana Growing Busts

Photo: NORML Blog

Florida has some of the nation’s harshest laws when it comes to growing marijuana – and it leads the nation in busts of grow houses.

​You’d think a place called the Sunshine State should be growing outdoors, but last year, more indoor marijuana grow houses were busted in Florida than in any other state, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Nationwide demand for high-potency marijuana has supposedly turned Florida into a top producer of hydroponic weed, reports Alexia Campbell at the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, and hundreds of Floridians are turning their homes into grow houses.

Florida law enforcement agencies raided 818 grow houses in 2010, followed by California’s 719, according to the DEA, but not all agencies report their findings to the DEA.

The heart of Florida’s marijuana industry is in the south of the state, where police conduct numerous undercover stings in the South Florida High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA).

Cops are complaining that growers are now learning “high-tech tricks” to hide their grow operations from investigators.

“The bad guys are getting smarter, and we’re not finding them all,” said Captain Joe Mendez, who oversees HIDTA’s marijuana task force in South Florida (can you imagine a more completely useless job?)

Tracking down individual growers has supposedly gotten harder, since many are now using closed circuit TV cameras to monitor their homes from afar. Police said they sometimes raid grow houses and find no one inside, according to Captain Mendez.

Large-scale growers have reportedly moved to rural Palm Beach County and Miami-Dade to evade nosy neighbors and police surveillance.

“They’ve gotten really sophisticated,” claimed Delray Beach Police Sergeant Phil Dorfman.

The supposed “huge profits” made from indoor marijuana grows create a never-ending battle for police, according to Captain Mendez, who claimed each pound has a street value of about $4,000 in South Florida.

Captain Mendez also made the ludicrous claim that “each plant produces about three pounds a year.” Remember, these are indoor plants we’re talking about, where the average is actually more like four to six ounces.

Law enforcement officials are pushing for — surprise, surprise! — “tougher penalties” for marijuana growers. Yeah, right! Those have just worked so well in the past, and with all that extra prison space and plenty of tax money available in Florida to pay for all this nonsense… Yeah.

But logic never stopped cops and politicians before, and in 2008 state legislators passed the Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act, a supremely stupid piece of legislation that lowered the previous level of 300 plants to qualify for a second-degree felony to just 24 plants.

Flori-DUH, indeed.

Are you a RAT? Narcotic Detectives Turn To Public

Another waste of Tax payers hard earned money…..

In hopes of cracking down on illegal outdoor marijuana growers in Santa Barbara County, Sheriff’s Narcotics detectives are turning to the public for assistance. The Narcotics Division has received a federal grant to help it fund the production and distribution of fliers encouraging the public to help law enforcement officers identify and report non-medical marijuana producers.

Last year alone, the Sheriff’s Office destroyed more than 325,000 marijuana plants with a street value of more than $900,000,000, said spokesperson Drew Sugars.

The fliers explain what signs to look for when identifying someone who may be using forest or private land to cultivate marijuana. It is the hope of the detectives that by creating the fliers, they will not only educate people about illegal marijuana operations, but also minimize the danger to citizens and reduce environmental damage that can be attributed to unlawful marijuana growth.

read more: http://www.thcfinder.com/marijuana-blog/news/2011/06/are-you-a-rat-narcotics-detectives-turn-to-public#ixzz1Ou5Sm17H

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.