This would suck I wonder what his plant limit was

[Bigmone357]

Highly sophisticated grow discovered on Eaton Road
By GREG WELTER - Staff Writer
Article Launched: 03/30/2007 01:26:25 AM PDT

Click photo to enlarge http://www.chicoer.com/newshome/ci_5554859
The site of an indoor marijuana grow located in a home on Eaton Road in Chico is seen...

Information gathered while investigating an indoor pot grow on Nord Avenue earlier this week led members of the Butte County Marijuana Suppression Team to a home at 1066 East Eaton Road.

Investigators knocked on the door of the home Thursday afternoon and were greeted by property owner James Robertson, 38, who gave deputies permission to see his "grow."

He led them to a large outbuilding in the backyard, and into a room where about a dozen small marijuana plants were growing. A medical marijuana authorization from a Grass Valley physician was hanging on the wall, with a recommendation that Robertson smoke about 1.5 ounces of pot per week.

In two adjacent rooms, investigators found dozens of additional, larger plants.

Sgt. Steve Collins said the grow was one of the most sophisticated he'd seen. Robertson had installed grow lights and reflective material to replicate sunlight, as well humidifiers, machines that produce carbon dioxide, and digital controls to regulate humidity and temperature.

Collins said expensive charcoal activated filters in the growing areas were used to cleanse the air, so it wouldn't smell like marijuana when it was pumped to the outside.

Three bags of processed marijuana, each weighing
about a pound, were also found in the building.

Collins guessed about 100 plants in various stages of maturity were seized from the building, and said Robertson had a potentially very profitable commercial grow underway.

He said the equipment in the building would be left behind, because the county had no place to store it.

Robertson was arrested Thursday afternoon and booked into the Butte County Jail in Oroville on suspicion of cultivation of marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale. His bail was initially set at $100,000.

Robertson was living alone in the home. Collins said the man's pit bull and bird would be cared for by a relative.

A neighbor living directly across Eaton Road said Robertson bought the home about two years, and initially appeared to have several roommates.

He said there was never any trouble at the home, and recently very little traffic.

Ernie Carpenter said he thought it was odd that Robertson, who told deputies he was self-employed, didn't appear to have a job. "He played golf a lot," Carpenter said.

On Thursday, as deputies turned off air filters in the growing rooms, Carpenter said he could smell the marijuana for the first time.

 

[Guest]

poor guy when will our government come to senses?

 

[J0sh1]

Ernie Carpenter said he thought it was odd that Robertson, who told deputies he was self-employed, didn't appear to have a job. "He played golf a lot," Carpenter said.

Always the snooping neighboor ever present, that is why I feel so blessed to own a couple of acres of land. Nearest neighbor is two miles from me and its a relief. That is something i don't miss at all, the crowded suburbia with people always watching what the neighboor is doing. I feel for all you out there in suburbia running your grows, always watch your back cause your neighboor for sure will be watching you.

 

[Bigmone357]

I know it's a dumb law they need to change it. Who doesn't like a lil' puff erry now & then for their pain people hafta be careful not to go over their PLANT LIMIT don't let em' catch ya slippin' here's another incident.

Nearly 100 plants seized at Nord Avenue residence
By GREG WELTER - Staff Writer
Article Launched: 03/30/2007 01:26:48 AM PDT

Click photo to enlarge http://www.chicoer.com/newshome/ci_5554863
An officer searches Peter Buchanan, 48, after 96 marijuana plants were reportedly found growing...



A Chico man who had a permit to cultivate a small amount of marijuana for personal medical use was arrested Monday after investigators found 96 plants growing inside his residence at 30771Ú2 Nord Avenue.

Peter John Buchanan, 48, was booked into the Butte County Jail Monday on suspicion of cultivation of marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale.

He was arraigned Wednesday and returned to jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Butte County sheriff's Sgt. Steve Collins said some of the plants were mature, and ready for harvest. Others were about a month from reaching maturity, while more were about two months from harvesting, Collins said.

Buchanan was under surveillance Monday by undercover investigators, who made contact with the suspect when he pulled into a parking lot on Mangrove Avenue.

Investigators from the sheriff's Marijuana Suppression Unit and uniformed deputies followed Buchanan back to his home, where a search warrant was served.

Collins said the case is still under investigation, and noted that Buchanan might be connected with other illegal marijuana growing operations, some in Plumas County. He said Plumas County authorities assisted in the investigation that led to Buchanan's arrest.


Collins said Buchanan lived alone in the residence. The plants were seized as evidence.

 

[Bigmone357]

Always the snooping neighboor ever present, that is why I feel so blessed to own a couple of acres of land. Nearest neighbor is two miles from me and its a relief. That is something i don't miss at all, the crowded suburbia with people always watching what the neighboor is doing. I feel for all you out there in suburbia running your grows, always watch your back cause your neighboor for sure will be watching you.

Speaking of suburbia look at this article :http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070330/NEWS03/203300397/-1/sports Pot growers going suburban and getting away with it


By ERRIN HAINES, The Associated Press

Published: Friday, Mar. 30, 2007

ENLARGE PHOTO
Marijuana plants discovered growing in a home in Dacula, Ga., are shown Feb. 28 after the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department raided the home. Investigators are increasingly seeing suburban homes in middle-class and well-to-do neighborhoods turned into indoor marijuana farms.
File photo by The Associated Press
Marijuana plants discovered growing in a home in Dacula, Ga., are shown Feb. 28 after the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department raided the home. Investigators are increasingly seeing suburban homes in middle-class and well-to-do neighborhoods turned into indoor marijuana farms.

In Coldwater Creek, a middle-class housing development outside Atlanta, the neighbors mind their own business and respect each other’s privacy – ideal conditions, it turns out, for growing marijuana in the suburbs.

Police this month raided an utterly ordinary-looking red-brick house on the block and broke up a pot-growing operation with 680 plants arrayed under bright lights.

“You’d never know from the outside. I guess that’s the idea,” said Doug Augis, who lives with his pregnant wife and a toddler in Coldwater Creek. “That doesn’t give you a really good feeling.”

Around the country, investigators are increasingly seeing suburban homes in middle-class and well-to-do neighborhoods turned into indoor marijuana farms. Typically investigators find an empty home, save a mattress, a couple of chairs, some snacks in the fridge and an elaborate setup of soil-free growing trays.

Grow houses have been a problem for years in California and Canada, but investigators are now seeing scores of them in the South and New England. In the past six weeks alone, more than 70 have been uncovered in northern Georgia – nearly 10 times last year’s total for the entire state. Only one was busted in 2005.

Indoor pot farms also have been discovered in recent months in residential areas of New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina and Florida. In fact, the phenomenon has inspired a cable TV show, “Weeds,” starring Mary-Louise Parker as a single mom who grows and deals pot out of her suburban home.

Crackdowns in Canada and elsewhere have apparently led some operators to move into parts of the United States where the public and police are not as familiar with the operations and less likely to detect them, authorities say.

“They can go in and basically fly under the radar,” said Ruth Porter-Whipple, spokeswoman for the Atlanta field division of the Drug Enforcement Agency. “These aren’t neighborhoods where they would stand out.”

In Georgia, the latest busts averaged about 200 plants per house. With each plant yielding $4,000 on average per harvest, that works out to about $3.2 million per year, considering the plants can be harvested every three months.

The DEA said more than 400,000 plants with a potential annual value of $6.4 billion were seized from grow houses in the U.S. last year – up from about 270,000 the year before. That is less than 10 percent of the marijuana plant seizures in the U.S.; most pot is grown outdoors on farms and in ditches, backyards and gardens.

Grow houses typically grow marijuana hydroponically – that is, using a nutrient solution instead of soil. They also use 24-hour-a-day lighting to produce plants more rapidly. The marijuana is usually cut, dried and packaged on the premises.

Typically, the windows are covered up, and the electrical system is rigged to hide how much juice is being used.

Nearly all of the grow houses busted in Georgia were connected, police say. Fayetteville resident Merquiades Martinez – a Cuban immigrant – and his wife, a real estate agent, are accused of recruiting other Cubans to buy homes that cost $300,000 to $450,000.

Investigators employed tips, surveillance and information from the power company on electricity usage to find the Coldwater Creek home and the other Georgia grow houses, most of which were said to be operating for about two years.

It was a string of electrical fires that led New Hampshire authorities to more than dozen grow houses in December. (Marijuana grow houses often have rows of power strips and spaghetti clusters of extension cords and other power lines.)

“They are very sophisticated, probably the highest quality of marijuana we’ve seen in years,” said Lt. Terry Kinneen, commander of the New Hampshire State Police narcotics unit.

In another elaborate scheme, more than 50 houses with thousands of plants recently found in Florida were traced to marijuana financiers in New Jersey who offered “relocation packages,” with 100 percent financing for the homes. Buyers would agree to operate a grow house for two years, after which they could sell the house and split the profits with their backers, or keep growing pot.

The big advantage of such operations is the privacy that comes with being in a community full of people so busy working and raising their families that they don’t know the neighbors well and pay little attention to what is going on next door.

When Tom Paige met a woman living three doors down last summer, she told him that she and her husband wouldn’t be around much.

“As I remember, they had some kind of boat business in Florida and they were splitting time between here and there. I didn’t think anything of it,” said Paige, president of the homeowners association in Waterford Place, another Lawrenceville neighborhood where a grow house was found.

A few months later, the couple put up a for-sale sign.

“They were taking care of the house and taking care of the yard,” said Paige, a security contractor trained to notice suspicious activity. “As we found out later, they were taking care of other things.”
MAAAN alot of people are growing looks like the growers are winning the war LOL GROW ON!!!

 

[KGB47]

Im sorry, but these idiots deserved to get caught. Butte county is very clear on what you can grow with a doctor's perscription, only 6 mature(flowering) plants plants at a time with 10-12 in veg, that's all. People that do huge grows like this are giving responsible medical growers a bad name and are focusing the law directly at the doctors that are helping medical patients. As more greedy growers get scripts and get busted the public at large paints all of us with the same brush.

 

[sow the seeds]

That article about the grows popping up in suburban areas actaully makes me happy. It seems that overgrowing the government is really starting to take place and while they may get a few of these places, there are still thousands of others they haven't found.

Fucking with med patients though, thats just wrong.

 

[Guest]

Im sorry, but these idiots deserved to get caught. Butte county is very clear on what you can grow with a doctor's perscription, only 6 mature(flowering) plants plants at a time with 10-12 in veg, that's all. People that do huge grows like this are giving responsible medical growers a bad name and are focusing the law directly at the doctors that are helping medical patients. As more greedy growers get scripts and get busted the public at large paints all of us with the same brush.

im not a med patient, but i would like to see the eventual legalization of mj so i completely agree with the above

 

[Pops]

Sow the seeds, the big problem ,for the law, is that anyone in Cali can become a med patient. There are pot doctors who will give you a prop 215 script for hemorrhoids or anal spasms. All they are interested in is the $125 for the office visit. This enables anyone willing to pay the money to become a med patient.

The guy who was busted wasn't violating Prop 215 of Cali's law, but he was violating SB420, which politicians passed to set limits on how much patients can grow, and,in some cases, how much space they can use to grow their pot.

No one has yet seriously challenged SB420 legally. I think that if they did, those provisions which differ from Prop 215(the plant count and area restrictions) would be found to be in violation of California's Constitution. The constitution states that politicians cannot amend laws that are passed by the people through propositions.

 

[vonforne]

That article about the grows popping up in suburban areas actaully makes me happy. It seems that overgrowing the government is really starting to take place and while they may get a few of these places, there are still thousands of others they haven't found.

Fucking with med patients though, thats just wrong.

If we over grow the gov. then it will make it easier for the med patients. This is where our unity comes in to play. The war on drugs is failing, just like the war on terrorism. Its just a matter of time.

 

[Guest]

I know a few growers with varying amounts of plants but NONE of them are anywhere near millionaires. I think there over estimating the value of work being done by themselves. I'm no dealer and I don't sell to friends even but $4,000 a plant sounds awefully high to me.

J.

 

[Guest]

fucking bullshit pigs...why the hell did the guy allow them to search his place? what an idiot! "here mr. piggie would u like to see my grow that doesn't smell and is hidden in the back?"