POT SITES POSE A GROWING DANGER

Valley Officials Deal With Bigger Gardens And Armed Guards.

As growers fertilize and manicure thousands of marijuana plants for
harvest, sheriff's deputies are scouring remote areas of the Valley where
they typically find large, booby-trapped gardens.

The season for growing marijuana runs from April through October and it's
already proving busy and dangerous. Marijuana gardens have turned into more
sophisticated and potentially deadly operations than the small backyard
farms of the past.

"We've seen a change from the lower-threat level to an extremely dangerous
situation," said Lt. Donna Perry of the Tulare County Sheriff's Department.
"Times have changed. What we face now are very sophisticated operations."

Tulare County authorities have made two major busts since June; late
Saturday, deputies killed a Visalia man after he shot at them near one garden.

Law-enforcement agencies throughout the Valley are conducting flyovers and
other surveillance to track down the largest gardens that are usually
hidden in remote areas. Later this summer, they will begin raids on the
properties where they hope to seize thousands of budding plants.

Many will join forces with teams of state narcotics agents who bust large
marijuana operations every year. Agents with the Campaign Against Marijuana
Planting, or CAMP, eradicated more than 300,000 plants in 57 of the 58
counties last year. San Francisco is the only county that doesn't
participate because it doesn't have rural areas where marijuana can grow.

CAMP's efforts last year helped rid Tulare County of 11,091 plants, Fresno
County of 5,527 plants and Madera County of 2,114 plants.

That's in addition to the number of plants seized by local authorities.
Fresno County estimates it seized 40,000 plants last year, and Madera
County estimates it seized 3,000 plants. Tulare County officials said they
seized 23,170 plants last year.

Despite these successes, many sheriff's officials said it's becoming more
dangerous when they attempt to bust the larger gardens.

"Every year in the Valley, unfortunately, it's not uncommon to have
shootouts in these gardens," said Lt. Robert Hagler, who is in charge of
the Fresno County Sheriff's Department Narcotics Unit. "The growers are
very protective. Most of them are armed. We've had to call in the SWAT
teams to go in and secure the campsite before the narcotic units come in
and destroy the plants."

In eastern Fresno County, three U.S. Forest Service officers were shot at
two years ago when they busted a marijuana garden off Highway 180, Hagler said.

Madera County sheriff's deputies killed a 19-year-old man from Mexico in
August 2000 after he fired shots at them during a raid of a large garden
east of Ahwahnee.

The sophisticated gardens are typically run by Mexican cartels. They're
springing up across the state and rapidly moving from the Valley into Los
Angeles County, said Sonya Arriaga Barna, CAMP operations commander.

When CAMP formed in 1982, agents encountered mostly smaller operations run
by hippies. The highest concentrations of gardens were found in the
northern part of the state. Most of the marijuana production occurred in
three counties -- Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt -- dubbed the "emerald
triangle."

That changed in the late 1990s, when Mexican cartels started getting into
the pot business. They found more remote areas to grow the plants and
located many of their gardens in the Valley because of its proximity to
Mexico, Arriaga Barna said.

The cartels bring in Mexican nationals to live and work in the gardens
during the season. They tend to the plants and prepare them for harvest,
which typically occurs in September and October. The marijuana business can
prove to be very lucrative, with some plants selling at wholesale for
$4,000 each.

"The plants need a lot of care," Arriaga Barna said. "It's not something
you can plant and walk away from."

It's not unusual, officials said, to find men dressed in camouflage, armed
with automatic weapons, standing watch outside a garden. They set booby
traps that include fish hooks and lures strategically hung at eye level to
harm unsuspecting trespassers.

Sometimes those unsuspecting trespassers are hunters, and it's common for
them to spot gardens, Arriaga Barna said.

That can lead to potentially deadly situations. In 2000, a father and son
were shot when they wandered into a marijuana patch while hunting deer in
El Dorado County.

The Valley has become a prime locale for marijuana gardens particularly
because of the vast agricultural land. Growers like to plant in areas where
they can easily tap into a water source, like a farmer's irrigation system.

For that reason, it's becoming more common to find marijuana plants on
private land.

John Dofflemyer, a cattle rancher in northern Tulare County, said he's had
problems with people planting pot on his 10,000-acre property off Dry Creek
Road.

Two years ago, he found 20 plants sprouting up near the fence that
surrounds his ranch and notified the Sheriff's Department.

"It's a difficult situation, because as a property owner when you report
it, you're under suspicion initially," he said.

He said the growers tapped into the water meant for his cows. His property
is fenced and locked, but he said it's still difficult to keep people out.

"It really disrupts business, and we don't want these people around," he
said. "But it's just one of the things you have to deal with in this
business that you didn't have to deal with 20 years ago."

The marijuana garden in Tulare County where Saturday's shooting occurred
was on private property off Drum Valley Road.

The garden was in an area of rough terrain and had about 1,000 plants
varying from 2 feet to 5 feet tall.

If the plants had grown to full size, the marijuana would have had a street
value of $4 million, officials estimate.

Deputies had staked out the garden for the past five weeks after receiving
a tip from a man who stumbled upon it.

At 11 p.m. Saturday, a man with a flashlight approached the area. When
deputies identified themselves, the man fired shots at them.

The deputies returned fire, killing Ignacio Rangel Gonzalez, 46, of
Visalia. Gonzalez, who died of two gunshot wounds to the upper body, had a
criminal record. He was arrested and charged with possessing marijuana for
sale in Visalia and Porterville in October 1996.

The two deputies, whose names are not being released, were placed on paid
administrative leave. They have worked for the county for more than 15 years.

Authorities aren't releasing many details about the garden and are still
investigating the shooting, Perry said. But in recent years, they've found
more large gardens cropping up in the foothills.

"As the season moves along, the gardens become bigger and they become more
sophisticated," she said.

"The [growers] are armed, and the gardens sometimes have traps. All of
those things become an issue for us."