Pennsylvania police bust a growing operation

[mr_mojorisin]

This was in the paper this morning, it happened in Allentown, PA which is not far from where I live.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/15401771.htm

After a Pennsylvania National Guard helicopter had hovered and police had hauled seven long plants from his cornfield outside Lenhartsville, Berks County, Ronald Donat recalled that this wasn't the first marijuana raid in the neighborhood.
In the late '80s, he returned to the farm one day to find neighbors talking about "the goings-on" at a nearby property. Whoever planted the marijuana back then knew what he was doing. "Had them staked up, taking good care of them," Donat said.
In the field that he now rents out, someone had been equally meticulous. Donat didn't know who had planted the seeds.
Deep in the cornfield, the marijuana plantings were in a row, each about 20 feet from the next.
But no longer.
This is harvest time for the pot police, the cannabis cops.

On its annual marijuana eradication day last week, the Lehigh County Drug Task Force removed 75 plants from sites in Lower Milford Township, south of Allentown, and, with the approval of Berks County officials, from fields near Kutztown.
From midmorning to midafternoon, the force confiscated a few plants as tall as seven feet, a few knee-high.
Most of the plants are destroyed and do not result in prosecution, explained Joseph P. Stauffer, chief detective for the task force, in a morning interview at Queen City Municipal Airport south of Allentown.
"Usually we have found it's not the property owner" who planted the drug, Stauffer said.
"It is unusual for us to make an arrest," he said later. "If a person can argue that it was for his own personal use, then the penalties are not that severe."
Though the day resulted in no arrests, Stauffer seemed pleased even before he heard the approaching helicopter.
Since the annual confiscations began in his county about 10 years ago, he said, "we see less and less plants."
So does the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, which has been flying search missions since 1989, when Congress began funding such programs in every state. After the Guard identifies the pot plots, the helicopters return to guide local or state police to them.
During its missions across the state in 2002, the Guard reports, 4,566 marijuana plants were seized, valued at $11.3 million at that time.
Each of the next three years, those numbers were down by more than half. Last year, 1,560 plants, with a value of $4 million, were seized.
In three of the four years from 2002 to 2005, the New Jersey State Police confiscated roughly 1,000 outdoor marijuana plants from between 37 and 48 plots.
The New Jersey National Guard said numbers confiscated during its searches roughly mirrored those of the state police.
"The National Guard does most of our spotting flights," said Dennis Donovan, a state police detective.
Speaking by cell phone as he walked out of woods after a marijuana raid, Donovan warned that "the numbers that we have, I'm sure, are underreported."
Municipal police responding to a domestic disturbance, he said, may find marijuana growing on a vacant lot, destroy it, and not report it to the state police.
Chester County Chief of Detectives Albert DiGiacomo seemed to confirm that, warning that county numbers do not reflect the anti-marijuana effort there.
"If a township police officer makes an arrest or seizure... he's not required to report that to us at all," he said.
"We administer a municipal drug task force, but that doesn't include [every town] in Chester County."

Standing on a country road and watching his helicopter guide police through one Lower Milford cornfield, Pennsylvania National Guard Lt. Dan McHugh said that in his four years with the statewide program, there were "more flights, every year now...
"They're flying just about every day - sometimes two and three aircraft up in one day" somewhere in the state from late June.
McHugh, operations chief for the Guard's statewide marijuana hunters, said the Guard had searched Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties in 2001. Only the city and Montgomery County have been searched every year since, including this year, he said. Chester County was the only other one searched since 2001.
This summer, McHugh said, searches have taken place in 13 Pennsylvania counties, the most since 15 in 2001.
Most requests for flights come from the Pennsylvania attorney general or the state police, McHugh said.
Though the federally funded budget for the Pennsylvania National Guard Counterdrug Program - which supports more than marijuana searches - was $2.77 million last year, up from $2.65 million in 2001, the support decreased in real dollars, because $2.92 million would have been needed to keep up with inflation.
At the Queen City airport that morning, McHugh and his helicopter pilot had conferred with Stauffer about the Lower Milford sites that the pilot spotted earlier in the month.
This day would not be easy hunting.
Nearing the first sighting, the convoy - a humvee, a police cruiser, and several unmarked cars - turned into an open field only to be told by the pilot to get back onto the road and keep driving.
The first cornfield was up a dirt path that tested the underpinnings of a few of the unmarked cars.
Later, the hunt in another field was a test of the underpinnings of the searchers - a good hike along a tree line past one field, and then along a second field.
The crackling intercoms told the searchers to head into the field. But once among the cornstalks, taller than the tallest officer, they were in a maze with no exit.
Except for the pilot's voice, guiding them as if at midnight in a moonless forest.
From the helicopter, the marijuana was obvious even to the untrained eye - lime green against the yellow-green corn leaves - and usually planted in a circle where the cornstalks had been torn out.
This day, there seemed slim pickings - a few plants in one field, a few in another.
But Master Sgt. Richard Breach, a Guard spokesman, speculated that the growers were sellers because even one good-size plant would provide one person with enough marijuana for several months.
Breach, citing the National Drug Threat Assessment 2005 summary report, said marijuana is more potent than ever.
"Certainly, there's a difference from the olden days," the 1960s and '70s.
"Back in those days, it was not uncommon to find a field cut out of the woods with 500, 600 plants.
"That doesn't happen anymore today. People pretty much realize that if they plant that kind of a field, they're going to be found real quick."
For a slide show on the marijuana raids, go to http://go.philly.com/dope

[JohnnyWeedSeed]

sons of filthy bitches!!! i hope their helocopters crash and take the ground pigs with them

[Mister Postman]

That fricken sucks man.. all that hard work for the pigs to have a field day "BUSTING" the plants? Really man what a fricken waste of time. go get us some meth labs, or crack dealers, and then you can be "proud"

[troah]

Yeah, man. I saw that on the news this morning. I'm 200mi west of you but somehow they still showed it on the local news here...it happened recently here in Blair county, too.

[eric111e]

Almost makes me scared about growing my plants outside, but i think its pretty safe where i live

[BrazyJay]

Damn... i stayed in Allentown on my way to NYc lol... that sucks they got taken... but atleast they didnt really arrest anyone

[HollowedHero]

that really makes me mad. what makes me even more mad is when cops think they are doing such a good deed by destroying the precious marijuana plants .