POT GROWERS LURE HOME INVADERS

Medical Marijuana Sites, Especially, Become Targets For Gunmen Seeking
Cash

One October evening, just five months after buying a $400,000 home on
a sleepy block in one of the better neighborhoods in Portland, a
couple had some visitors.

Two men, one brandishing a gun, forced their way in the front door,
used duct tape to tie up the couple and a friend. One of the men
claimed he was looking for the dealer who hooked his sister on drugs.

Eventually, the men left the house, in the 4600 block of Southeast
Madison Street, when the residents convinced them they had the wrong
address.

On Dec. 5, their horrifying ordeal was demystified when Portland
police officers searched the next-door neighbor's house, finding a
sophisticated grow operation and 352 marijuana plants.

A medical-marijuana cardholder, Timothy Surprenant, 35, was arrested,
cited and released a few hours later -- having told them that the grow
was for "personal use."

Police, however, suspect Surprenant's crop and cash were the real
targets of the home invasion.

Athough exact figures are impossible to come by, police say the number
of home invasions reported in Portland are on the rise, and are
increasingly related to marijuana -- especially medical marijuana.

In contrast to the middlin' weed of baby boomers' glory days, modern
strains of marijuana are highly potent and go for $300 an ounce,
turning patients and growers into targets.

While home invasions of drug dealers are not a new phenomenon, Sgt.
Pat Walsh argues that the state's medical marijuana law has
"absolutely" made Portland a more target-rich environment by adding
thousands of medical marijuana cardholders in Multnomah County alone.

A gunfight between a grower and a home invader in Portland is "just a
matter of time," he says. "And I think that when that day comes,
people will (fault) the police."

Several recent incidents Medical marijuana advocates also say such
invasions are not uncommon. But they say the lesson is not that the
medical marijuana law is bad -- it's that the criminal marijuana laws
are.

"I think the solution is to end adult marijuana prohibition," says
Paul Stanford of the Hemp and Cannabis Foundation, which operates a
chain of medical marijuana clinics in Oregon and other western states.

Police and growers say the home invaders hear about the marijuana
grows through word of mouth from patients, or just by smelling the
operation from outside the home.

There have been two other such crimes reported in just the past two
weeks in Portland. Last week police responding to a disturbance call
at a house in the 5200 block of Northeast 27th Avenue found traces of
a marijuana grow, suggesting another home invasion. The case remains
under investigation.

A few days before that, on Dec. 8, in what police believe to have been
another medical marijuana-related home invasion, three men with guns
forced their way into a home in the 2500 block of Southeast 168th
Avenue, sticking guns into the face of a 16-year-old girl and
pistol-whipping her 33-year-old stepfather.

In Portland, a couple of home invasions are reported each month, and
"more often than not" a medical marijuana cardholder is involved, Sgt.
Dave Hendrie says.

Police can do little to stop these crimes. That's because so few are
reported, and fewer still involve people willing to testify.

Invasions often unreported Moreover, the gunplay that Walsh predicts
for Portland already has happened elsewhere -- with nonmedical growers.

In Clackamas County on Oct. 4, two members of a group of would-be home
invaders were shot by marijuana growers in the 14500 block of
Southeast 162nd Avenue.

Earlier, in 2001, a local drug dealer seeking a plea deal, Humberto
Castro Soler Jr., told police that he had led a group that dressed in
FBI baseball caps and coplike garb while raiding a series of dealers
and pot growers.

Eventually, a raid in Clackamas County led to a gunfight and one of
the intruders being killed. None of the raids were reported.

Medical marijuana growers similarly are "afraid to call the police,"
says Paul Loney, a longtime local medical marijuana advocate.

One reason is they risk having plants confiscated.

In August, police pulled over three men in a car in Southwest Portland
who were believed to be casing a house. The men admitted that they
were headed out to a marijuana grow; they carried a real-looking BB
pistol and gloves.

"Where there's a lot of dope, there's a lot of cash," said one of
them, 27-year-old Nathan Baxter, according to a police report. He
added that the group felt the robbery could score 18 to 20 pounds of
marijuana, each one worth $2,200.

Police figured out who was targeted, and upon inspecting his home,
hauled off plants they said he had no right to own; the grower said
his cardholders' paperwork was just delayed.

"The irony is (the police) said they were protecting me from getting
ripped off -- even as they took 21 of my plants," the grower told the
Portland Tribune, on condition of anonymity. He added that he suspects
a former medical marijuana patient tipped off the would-be robbers.

To prevent a recurrence, he says he has purchased a sophisticated
surveillance system, motion detectors and burglar alarm -- to go with
the semiautomatic pistol he already owned.

Other growers use shotguns and dogs, while running their ventilation
through cat litter to prevent passers-by from detecting their grows.

Ideas may go to ballot Home invasions are likely to be part of the
case made by Republican former lawmaker and possible attorney general
candidate Kevin Mannix in an initiative for which he is gathering signatures.

It would substitute marinol tablets, containing the active ingredient
in marijuana -- for the leafy, home-grown stuff currently used in the
program.

Mannix contends that it would curb abuses and unintended consequences
of the program.

But medical marijuana advocates say Mannix's initiative would make
medicine much more expensive for needy patients. They are floating an
initiative of their own, which would create a series of approved farms
and dispensaries, thus decreasing the number of grow operations.

Both could reach voters on the November ballot, giving voters a choice
of which way to go.

Walsh says he thinks people should be aware of the risks they face
when they pick up a card and grow their own. And their neighbors
should know that while the growers next door may seem like nice,
hippie gardeners, many of them are packing heat.

"They know they need to defend their crops," he says.