WEED WHACKERS

Officers Take Flight to Stamp Marijuana Out

The undercover police car raced west on Route 8 in Bakers Mills, the
officers inside knowing that every second that passed meant there was
more chance the evidence had been disposed of.

Minutes earlier, a State Police helicopter had hovered over the home
of [redacted], looking for marijuana plants a tipster had told police
were growing near woods on the east side of the home.

Helicopter pilot David Bowden had radioed a "hit" -- their code for a
positive sighting -- to the officers on the ground below.

But they had not yet made it that far into Johnsburg from points
south, so they weren't ready to visit the property yet to confiscate the weed.

So rather than hover over the home until the officers arrived, Bowden
landed the helicopter behind the Johnsburg United Methodist Church on
South Johnsburg Road and waited to meet up with the ground crews.
Within five minutes, the vehicles were on the headed to the Route 8
home to pull up the plants.

They arrived to find [redacted] coming down a set of steps to greet
them, two dogs furiously barking from second-story home windows.

"What's this all about?" he asked Warren County sheriff's Sgt. Steve Stockdale.

When Stockdale told him marijuana plants had been sighted on his
property, [redacted] said he had no knowledge of them. He welcomed
officers to look around.

Just to the east of his home, sheriff's investigators Ed Affinito and
Mo Aldrich and State Police Investigator Walter Trojanek found a big
vegetable garden with a number of large holes in the ground between
tomato plants.

But [redacted] had apparently made a mistake in his haste.

Two marijuana leaves had fallen off the plants as he pulled them up,
and officers presented the evidence to him as he continued to
maintain he didn't know of any marijuana plants on his property.

After a few minutes of questioning, during which [redacted] implied
he knew but was not responsible for what had been seen on his
property and said he didn't smoke marijuana, he eventually admitted
he had pulled up the plants when the helicopter left and disposed of
them behind an old bus up a hill to the east of his home.

"What's going to happen? Is this going to be in the paper? I can't
have this in the paper, I'm running for highway superintendent in
town. I need that job," [redacted] told the investigators. "Geez, God
almighty, I knew better."

Seconds later the investigators found two piles of pot plants, nine
in total, where [redacted] said they would be. [redacted] was
advised he was going to be charged with the misdemeanor of unlawful
growing of cannabis and released to appear in Johnsburg Town Court.

"You work fast. I can't believe you got rid of them already," Bowden,
a State Police technical sergeant, said.

The seizure from [redacted]'s home was one of three on the day as the
State Police and Warren County Sheriff's Office took their annual
September day to search for outdoor marijuana with the aid of eyes in the sky.

The Sheriff's Office and State Police Community Narcotics Enforcement
Team spent the day checking areas where tipsters had indicated
marijuana might be found growing. They had 11 spots on their list,
which the helicopter would check from the air and guide officers on
the ground to pull up.

Another spot in the hamlet of Bakers Mills, owned by a relative of a
Johnsburg man who was arrested on felony marijuana possession
charges, yielded 15 plants to sheriff's investigators Russ Lail and
Terry Comeau while [redacted]'s property was searched. No arrests
were made Tuesday in that case, but the investigation was continuing.

A field between deep forests in Bolton yielded another 20 or so
mature plants. The helicopter also located several other parcels that
were too remote to reach Tuesday afternoon.

"They'll mark the longitude and latitude for us and we'll go in later
to grab them using GPS," Stockdale explained.

The next day, they did.

Harvest Time

In rural counties like Warren, Washington and Saratoga, marijuana
growers find plenty of vacant, fertile land for cultivation.

However, the advent of indoor growing operations and availability of
State Police aircraft for surveillance has lessened outdoor growing.
In the 1980s, police in Washington County annually seized thousands
of plants, and that number has dropped dramatically over the years.

Sometimes pot growers choose state land, or relatives land, or that
of people they don't know.

The State Police annually set aside time for their helicopter pilots
to assist local police in the search for pot patches, efforts that
also serve as training for pilots.

On Tuesday morning, a team of 19 police officers, including two State
Police pilots traveling in a Black Hawk helicopter, met at Floyd D.
Bennett-Warren County Airport to go over their intelligence on 11
specific locations where tipsters had indicated pot was growing.

The goal was for officers on the ground to be in the area being
looked over by the helicopter as the chopper perused specific areas.

That way, if marijuana is located, the officers can get there quickly
before the owner has time to move or harvest it.

Sometimes, that's not possible. Helicopters obviously move much
faster than cars, and sometimes the pot is far off the beaten path,
where four-wheelers or long hikes on foot are needed to gain access.

So as was seen in the case at [redacted]'s home, the timing doesn't
always work perfectly. The helicopter crew can drop smoke grenades to
mark spots for officers working on the ground, or hover over the
parcel to guide police into an area by radio.

The helicopter crew -- two State Police pilots, the State Police
investigator Trojanek and sheriff's Patrol Officer Anthony Bruno --
communicates constantly via radio to the guys on the ground, using
code letters instead of road locations to describe the areas they are
searching.

They don't take chances and are all armed. Police have found trip
wires and other hazards set up to protect plants from raiders, law
enforcement or not.

Defending the Crop

Last summer, an unarmed police officer in Albany County was shot when
he and a group that was pulling up marijuana plants encountered the
plants' grower, leading to a fight.

"Make sure you're wearing a jacket or shirt on it that says 'Police'
on it," Stockdale instructed the sheriff's officers who involved in
the effort. "I don't want someone touching off rounds at us because
they think we're stealing their stash."

[redacted], the Johnsburg resident who was arrested Tuesday, didn't
go that far, but there was a fence around his pot parcel that was
equipped with chain-wrapped metal cans that would make noise if
anyone entered his plot.

The officers went over each site they planned to check, assigning
code letters to them for conversation over the radio and explaining
who they thought might be linked to each parcel, and whether there
was any information of booby traps or other possible hazards to
machete-wielding officers who would confiscate the plants.

Seven of the 11 locations on the list, from Queensbury to Stony Creek
to Johnsburg, were flown over Tuesday, with plants found at five of them.

In all, the effort had yielded about 100 plants as of Thursday.

With each plant producing about a pound of marijuana, the crop was
worth about $200,000, Stockdale said.

"There's big money in marijuana, and that leads to violence," Stockdale said.

A fatal shooting in Saratoga Springs several years ago was linked to
large-scale marijuana trafficking.

Washington County Sheriff Roger Leclaire said his department was
awaiting its annual flight time with the State Police, but ground
checks of suspected pot-growing locations as of Friday had not
yielded any seizures.