LAW ENFORCEMENT FORCES POT INDOORS

Officers using aircraft work to adjust to the changing tactics of
marijuana growers. From April to October, while N.C. farmers are
planting, tending and harvesting their crops, hundreds of law
enforcement officers engage in the annual ritual of weed-pulling.

The Marijuana Eradication Program is a joint effort that uses federal
funds, state-owned aircraft and county sheriff's officers to find and
destroy marijuana plants. After more than three decades,
investigators say, the program has helped bring about a change in the
industry: Local growers have begun to move their operations indoors,
hidden from aerial spotters, leaving only tiny plots for pilots to
search for in the verdant landscape. When spotters do find a large
crop, usually divided into parcels over several acres where the
landowners are unaware of their presence, investigators think the
plants are often being tended as part of an organized criminal effort.

"The trend has been toward smaller patches and better concealment,
and there's a tremendous trend toward indoor growing," said Durb
Turner, special agent in charge of the air wing of North Carolina's
State Bureau of Investigation.

Pilots for the SBI, the N.C. Highway Patrol and the N.C. National
Guard try to fly in each of the state's 100 counties at least once
during the growing season. Marine Patrol aircraft also help. They
scan places where investigators have found pot in the past, and those
where their detective work suggests it might be growing now. It's an
old-fashioned form of sleuthing that works best against a low-tech
criminal. "The easiest time to find it is when they first set the
seedlings out in the spring," said Franklin County Sheriff's
Detective William Mitchell, one of many local narcotics officers who
have attended a state-sponsored "spotters school." "(Growers) just go
out and clear a space and put the seedlings in the ground," Mitchell
said. "All you got to do is go up and look for the dots." It's a bit
more challenging in late July, when the trees are full, milkweed is
as tall as a house and a marijuana plant blends more easily with
surrounding foliage.

Thirty years ago, Turner says, the biggest plots were usually planted
by local growers. Some of those growers aged out of the business or
just got tired of worrying they might get caught and lose their
investment, Turner says. Some still raise a few plants, scattered
from place to place over a broad area.

They have been followed, Turner thinks, by growers who have moved
their production indoors, setting up elaborate greenhouse systems
where high-quality plants can be raised year-round.

Investigators say those are more difficult to find. When plants are
spotted outside on private property, law officers can move in
immediately. But to raid a house, a search warrant is needed, and
it's more difficult to establish the probable cause a judge or
magistrate would require. After news of a big Harnett County bust
traveled across the country, Sheriff Larry Rollins says, he was
inundated with calls and e-mail from people questioning the value of
putting so many resources to work on investigations that rarely
result in arrests. When charges are made, they are usually for
manufacturing or trafficking marijuana. Even then, police say, the
courts treat the charges lightly.