AUTHORITIES PRESENT ANATOMY OF A DRUG INVESTIGATION

SKOWHEGAN -- Sitting in a basement office surrounded by drug
paraphernalia collected in hundreds of drug investigations, Lt. Carl
Gottardi II said marijuana eradication season isn't what it used to be.

Gone are the days when investigators flying in helicopters could spot
small plantations of hemp and follow a wellDworn path from the plants
to a nearby house where the growers lived, said Gottardi, a 24Dyear
veteran of drug investigations at the Somerset County Sheriff's Department.

Driven partly by pressure from police, marijuana growers, even in
rural Somerset County, are increasingly moving indoors to high-tech
operations in basements or barns. Growers themselves are less likely
to be local and more likely to be using a home specifically as a base
for their drug operations.

That means fewer and often better quality plants -- information and
materials including special seeds and fertilizers to improve the
quality of crops are available over the Internet -- and it also often
means longer and more difficult investigations to gather information
on drug suspects.

"These people who are in it for a lot of money, they have a lot of
money invested and they go to great lengths to protect it," said Gottardi.

The investigation into a Connecticut man due to appear in Skowhegan
District Court for a probable cause hearing in November is one
example of the cat-and-mouse game marijuana investigations have often become.

Jason Campbell, 36, of Prospect, Conn. was charged with aggravated
drug trafficking, marijuana cultivation and furnishing drugs after
police, including Lt. Gottardi, executed a search warrant at the
Campbell's Norridgewock home in May.

The affidavit attached to that warrant details an investigation that
apparently started in May with a routine traffic stop in Fairfield
and which led police to a Norridgewock home on Route 139 owned by
Campbell, who has a record of drug convictions. Police believe the
home was the location of an indoor grow operation, although when they
later searched the home, the only plants they found were outside.

According to the affidavit, the investigation into Campbell started
when police stopped a 19-year-old Connecticut man named Garret Couch
on May 6. In Couch's vehicle, police found a container of a type
often used to transport drugs. The container was empty but Couch told
an officer that he lived in Campbell's home in Norridgewock.

On May 12, Couch was killed in a crash in Madison. In the car in
which Couch died, police found a marijuana pipe and an undeveloped
roll of camera film.

When a relative of Couch's developed the film, they found pictures of
an indoor marijuana grow operation, according to the affidavit, which
is signed by Lt. Gottardi.

Bills for electricity, obtained from Central Maine Power Co.,
indicated that electricity use at the house varied from a low of 640
kilowatt-hours to 4,400 kilowatt-hours. High levels of electricity
use are often associated with indoor marijuana growing, according to
the affidavit.

With that information as well as the discovery of marijuana plants
growing near an allDterrain vehicle trail behind the home, police
obtained a search warrant and executed it on May 26.

They found no marijuana plants inside the home, although there were 23 outside.

Gottardi said police found evidence that was consistent with an
indoor marijuana growing operation, including plant fertilizer and
marijuana residue. The basement, however, appeared to have been
recently thoroughly cleaned, although it smelled of marijuana, said Gottardi.

Campbell's attorney, Paul Sumberg, said the affidavit strings
together unrelated events that police use to arrive at the wrong
conclusion about his client.

"Most of the affidavit is inaccurate," said Sumberg.

Sumberg described his client as a Connecticut businessman who enjoys
coming to Maine during the winter months for skiing and other winter
recreation.

When police executed the search warrant they found no indoor grow
operation because there had been no indoor grow operation, said Sumberg.

He said it is not clear who owned the plants found outside the home,
but they may have belonged to a man who looked after the home for
Campbell during the summer.