POT PLANTS SEIZED IN RANCHO HOME

Raids: Further Busts Expected

The raid of an alleged marijuana growing operation in Rancho Cordova
on Friday was the latest in a record year of plant seizures in
California, authorities said.

Police confiscated at least 100 relatively young marijuana plants
during an early afternoon raid on Aboto Way, said Reuben Meeks,
Rancho Cordova police chief and commander of the Sacramento County
Sheriff's East Division.

The raid follows a pattern in the Sacramento region of growing
operations inside homes allegedly run by suspects from the Bay Area.

Since Aug. 3, federal and local agents have raided at least 21 houses
in Elk Grove, Natomas and now Rancho Cordova, seizing more than
13,000 marijuana plants with a combined street value of more than $50
million, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of
equipment, officials have said.

Four Bay Area residents have been arrested in connection with the Elk
Grove and Natomas raids, and court records show the network may have
links to San Francisco's Chinatown.

Stockton police made their own busts this week, raiding seven homes
and arresting four more Bay Area residents, police said. More than
2,000 plants were seized in those raids Wednesday and Thursday, and
authorities are investigating whether the operation is linked to the
network behind the Elk Grove and Natomas grows, said Stockton Police
Officer Pete Smith.

The homes in Stockton -- like the homes in Sacramento and Elk Grove
- -- were "dedicated to the growing of marijuana," Smith said.

"We have to go on the assumption that there are more (homes)," Smith
said. "Especially when you see what's going on up and down the Central Valley."

Statewide, agents from federal, state and local offices have already
seized more than 2 million marijuana plants, said Gordon Taylor,
assistant special agent in charge of the Sacramento office of the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Last year's number of 2,001,580
seized plants was a record. With the marijuana harvest season just
beginning, agents are expecting to surpass that total by 25 percent,
Taylor said.

Taylor said the DEA has received 15 percent more funding for its
Domestic Cannabis Suppression Eradication Program this year, money
that helps pay for marijuana growing investigations in 39 counties.
He believes authorities are busting more pot-growing operations
because the state's medical marijuana laws have "created a permissive
attitude, unfortunately, in not only the use of marijuana, but the
cultivation of marijuana as well."

Organized crime groups in California -- which once sold only
methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin -- are moving into marijuana
because the pot being grown here is more potent and fetching more
money on the street, Taylor said. He said the marijuana being
produced today is eight times more potent than in the 1970s, and
"these people are scientifically engineering the plants these days."

Agents expect a record year -- not just in the overall amount of
marijuana seized, but in the number of indoor growing operations
raided. Many of the recent busts have come in suburban settings at
homes valued between $400,000 and $600,000, authorities said.

Details about Friday's Rancho Cordova raid were sparse, but Meeks
said the suspects appear to be "guys out of the Bay Area." It's too
early to tell, he said, if they are connected to suspects in other
raids in the region.

Meeks said Friday's raid was developed and conducted solely by
officers in his department.

Authorities said the Sacramento-area pot-growing operations busted
last month may have been pushed from the Bay Area to the Sacramento
suburbs for the same reason many families move there: housing prices.
Most of the homes raided were purchased at far less than the average
price for a single-family home in San Francisco, records show. The
properties could be subject to forfeiture.

Authorities have speculated that the drug growers are drawn to
Sacramento's suburbs on the theory that they offer a greater level of
anonymity and isolation.