DRUG PLAN A BUST

Some people hide it deep in the woods where it's difficult for
passersby and law enforcement to see.

But for a National Guard pilot with extensive training spotting
vegetation in an area where there just shouldn't be neatly planted
rows or water hoses, finding marijuana isn't that complicated.

Communicating the location and hovering over the spot until a team of
investigators with the Onslow County Sheriff's Department can navigate
through thick brush, vines, snakes and possibly chiggers -- now, that's
a different story.

But it's what the sheriff's department does at least once a year --
sometimes twice -- in an effort to eradicate the county of its drugs,
at least the stuff grown outside.

A recent attempt didn't yield much in the way of marijuana. While the
search was cut short by the storm that dumped more than 4 inches of
rain on Jacksonville Wednesday, causing the two National Guard
helicopters to be grounded, it's possible that there just wasn't much
marijuana to be found. "A lot of people who sell marijuana realize
there is more of a market for specialized marijuana, which can be done
inside using hydroponics," said Onslow County Sheriff's Capt. Rick
Sutherland. "If more people are specializing, it lessens our chances
of finding any." The window of time to locate marijuana growing
outside is narrow. While seedlings are usually put in the ground in
March, usually law enforcement must wait a few months for some growth
to take place. But they want to get to the marijuana and destroy it
before harvest time, which is usually late July or early August,
Sutherland said.

"This time of year, the plants will be closest to maturity, which
makes them easier to spot," Sutherland said. "We want to get there
before harvest begins." It's not unusual for the sheriff's department
to receive complaints from residents who spot the signs of marijuana
growing in fields or even in pots on their neighbors' back porches or
behind sheds.

As a result of the tips, the sheriff's department can find some of it
on their own. But the stuff planted off the beaten track becomes more
of a problem. "Frequently, marijuana is planted in really secluded
areas and we can't get there without air support," Sutherland said.

Based on the tips received from residents and investigations done by
the sheriff's department, the pilots, who can be from the National
Guard, the N.C. Highway Patrol or Marine Patrol, are given global
positioning system coordinates to help them get close to a suspected
area. The rest is up to the keen eyes of the pilots and the
investigators willingness to search.

"The key to eradications is having good pilots and good spotters,"
Sutherland said. "It helps to have good information, too." PVC pipes
or numerous hoses linked and stretched into the woods are usually
telltale signs, and more often than not growers plant on land that
doesn't belong to them whether it be a farmer's plot or somewhere in
the middle of Hoffman Forest, Sutherland said.

"(Drug growers) want something that won't be drawn back to them by tax
records," Sutherland said.

While some arrests spring out of annual drug eradications, the key to
the effort is to destroy the plants before they are harvested and sold
on the street. "If we find a grow, we can set up surveillance and see
who tends it," Sutherland said. "Or we can just seize it and get it
off the market. ... We attempt to pull it out by the roots and take the
whole plant and root ball with us. Where that's not feasible, we take
a machete and cut it off as low to the ground as possible."