HOMEGROWN:

Seemingly Innocuous Residences House Pot Farms in Trend Taking Root in Marin

Until a few weeks ago, Frederic Saland owned a tidy rental property
in Novato with three bedrooms, two baths and a neatly landscaped yard.

Now he owns a charred shell with blown-out windows, a gutted interior
and a roof full of holes.

The house at 1208 Chase St. was ruined last month after a fire was
sparked by the utility meter - which investigators said was bypassed
to steal electricity for a sprawling indoor marijuana farm operated
by Saland's tenant. Now the renter is gone, the house is
uninhabitable and Saland is left to deal with the insurance adjusters
and contractors.

"I'm out months of aggravation, and very probably my insurance will
go up in perpetuity. I'll be paying more forever," said Saland, a
Novato resident who owns several rental properties. "And, of course,
I'll be paranoid forever. E The cost of what society sees as a
boy-will-be-boys crime is not measurable. When you're the victim of a
crime, you carry that, and it will influence your thoughts and
actions for the rest of your life."

The incident highlighted what police say is a statewide trend taking
root in Marin County: the use of residences, often very expensive
residences, as massive hydroponic factories for extremely potent marijuana.

Indoor farms allow growers to discreetly harvest four times or more a
year, under controlled conditions that produce stronger marijuana,
than once-a-year outdoor harvests that are more vulnerable to
weather, stray hikers and police surveillance aircraft.

"This idea of indoor cultivation seems to be a new trend," said
Novato police Sgt. Dave Jeffries, who recently completed a three-day
federal course on the subject. "It keeps it out of sight. It allows
them to control the climate. And when you're about to do this
12-month grow season, you can turn out a lot more and a lot more potent stuff."

In Marin, six indoor marijuana farms have been shut down in the past
two months alone, including:

. A 3,000-square-foot home on Tamalpais Road in Fairfax, where police
found 900 plants valued at $270,000 on June 20. Three suspects were
arrested in the case.

. The home on Chase Street in Novato, where police found 75 marijuana
plants on July 7, plus rooms full of lamps and cultivation equipment
and 100 pounds of dried marijuana stuffed into garbage bags. Police
estimated the street value of the marijuana at $500,000.

. A rented home on Olive Avenue in Novato, where police said they
found 30 pot plants, several pounds of processed marijuana on July
24, plus an elaborate cultivation facility with enough lighting, fans
and other equipment to grow 1,000 plants. Police arrested the renter,
who also leased the home at 1208 Chase St., which is around the corner.

. A $900,000 home on Indian Hills Drive in Novato, where police said
the entire four-bedroom house was converted into a sophisticated
marijuana farm that could accommodate up to 1,000 plants. Police
seized 225 marijuana plants from several rooms on July 10 and
arrested five suspects, all Orange County residents who were secretly
working at the house.

. A rented home on Courtright Road in the southern San Rafael hills,
where police seized 600 marijuana plants valued at $800,000 on July
18. The father and son who worked at the home were arrested.

After busting the Courtright Road home, police then linked it through
ownership records to the co-owner of a home on Wimbledon Court in
Novato that contained the remnants of an indoor marijuana farm.

"It looked like he had come in and destroyed all the growing stuff,"
said San Rafael police Sgt. Dan Fink. "It was obviously a grow house.
We wish we had gotten there in time."

Investigators say sophisticated indoor marijuana operations, often
connected to criminal syndicates, have been surfacing recently in the
Sacramento area, the Central Valley and Southern California. But the
marijuana operations in Marin have not yet been linked to any large
criminal organizations, and federal authorities have not jumped into
the Marin investigations.

"We haven't been contacted to adopt the case federally, but it
doesn't mean that it won't eventually happen," said Special Agent
Casey McEnry, based at the federal Drug Enforcement Administration
office in San Francisco. "If anything came down and they need
assistance, I'm sure we'd be more than happy to work with them."

News articles about Marin's indoor marijuana farms have led numerous
residents to call in even more tips, said Detective Jesse Klinge of
the Marin County Major Crimes Task Force. Such tips led investigators
recently to search two more growing operations in Novato, but the
proprietors claimed amnesty under medical marijuana laws - even
though the homes had 50 to 150 plants inside.

Legitimate marijuana patients are allowed eight ounces of processed
weed, six mature plants or 12 immature plants, Klinge said. The cases
were sent to the district attorney's office for review.

"Some people we have been contacting are way, way beyond their limit,
and they're taking advantage of their situation," Klinge said. "It's
really a shame. Some of these people really need it, and on the other
hand you have people abusing the system because there's so much money
to be made off it."

John George, special agent in charge at the state Bureau of Narcotics
Enforcement office in San Francisco, agreed, saying the state's
medical marijuana law is "being abused extensively."

"Because of the medical marijuana laws, there's some confusion within
the law enforcement community," he said. "There's political pressure
on law enforcement in support of the medical marijuana laws. Some
agencies have made medical marijuana enforcement the lowest of priorities."

Lynnette Shaw, director of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana,
the pot club in Fairfax, said that while a few individual growers
have been "opportunistic" and "greedy," there is no widespread abuse
of the law. If anything, Shaw said, society's tolerance of
residential marijuana farming has reduced crime by making pot more accessible.

"Marijuana has become less valuable in the streets because patients
are growing their own," she said. "We've reduced crime, we've reduced
harm and we've reduced prices."

But Gordon Taylor, who runs the DEA office in Sacramento, said indoor
marijuana farming has become a widely destructive force. Taylor has
been spearheading an investigation that recently shut down 50 in-home
pot nurseries in Sacramento, Elk Grove, Stockton, Tracy and Modesto
and Lathrop.

The operation was large enough to produce 12 tons of marijuana a year
- - which, if sold for $4,000 a pound, would generate annual revenue of
nearly $100 million. Investigators have arrested 16 suspects, all of
whom are suspected members of an Asian gang in San Francisco that was
spreading its operation to the Sacramento area, Taylor said.

"Nobody was living in any of these homes. Virtually every square inch
was being used for the cultivation of marijuana," he said. "These
people completely retrofit. They gut the insides of these homes. Most
of the homes were purchased with 100 percent financing. So, in
essence, these grows adversely affected the real estate market, the
mortgage industry, the insurance industry.

"Not to mention the stigma these places create in a neighborhood. And
these homes, we were finding them in relatively nice neighborhoods."

George, the state narcotics agent, said he has noted a rise in crime
when marijuana farms come into a neighborhood.

"I've seen an increase in home-invasion robberies, kidnapping and
other violent crimes when people know there's marijuana being grown
inside a house," he said. "People go in there and steal it."

The initial investment in a pot nursery, not including the real
estate itself, can be up to $75,000, Taylor said. Typical growing
equipment includes irrigation tubing, lamps, fans, soil, electrical
circuits, timers, Mylar foil and wall coverings to reflect or conceal
light, and air ducts and charcoal filters to redirect the vapors
through the attic.

Saland, the owner of 1208 Chase St., said he spent five days with a
work crew cleaning out the cultivation equipment and gutting the
house, which he remodeled eight years ago at a cost of $100,000.

"It's down to rafters, it's down to studs," he said. "Every floor has
to be redone. Every appliance has to be torn out. It's as extensive
as could be."

"My friends have teased me, 'How could you not know what was going
on?'" he added. "The lawn was mowed, there was never a car there so I
never stopped to say hello, and the rent came in on time."

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HOW DO COPS PUT A VALUE ON THE BUSTS?

When San Rafael police raided an indoor pot farm last month, they
seized 600 plants and estimated their street value at $800,000.

Yet when the Marin County Major Crimes Task Force raided an indoor
farm in Ignacio days earlier, they seized 224 marijuana plants and
estimated the value at up to $1 million.

One estimate pegs the street value of each pot plant at $1,333, the
other at $4,464. Why the big discrepancy?

"There's no exact science on this stuff," said San Rafael police Sgt.
Dan Fink. "There's so many factors involved."

The variables that determine street value can include the maturity of
the plants, their potential yield and their potency, investigators say.

A plant's potency depends on the amount of THC, or
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, it contains. Gordon Taylor, a special
agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, said a typical pot
plant has a THC content of about 8 percent, but marijuana cultivated
in sophisticated indoor hydroponic facilities can be as strong as 15
percent to 25 percent.

Prices vary accordingly. Sgt. Rudy Yamanoha of the Marin County Major
Crimes Task Force said low-grade marijuana sells for about $340 a
pound, mid-grade for $750 a pound, and high-grade for $2,500 to
$6,000 per pound. A fully mature plant can a produce a quarter-pound
to three-quarters of a pound of pot, according to various estimates.

Dealers sell marijuana in eighths of an ounce, ounces, quarter
pounds, half pounds or pounds, Yamanoha said.

"It really varies," he said. "A lot of marijuana sellers sell
different increments in weight."

But Lynnette Shaw, director of the Marin Alliance for Medical
Marijuana in Fairfax, said the $6,000-per-pound figure is highly
inflated because the legalization of medical marijuana in California
has brought prices down.

"The most a pound would cost on the street right now - the very,
very, very most - would be $4,800 a pound," she said.