Covert crops: Tens of thousands of illegal pot plants seized in cartel bust

    SACRAMENTO COUNTY, California (KOVR) -- Thousands of illegal marijuana plants were seized in a two-day operation in south Sacramento County this week, and authorities say it was the result of drug-cartel operations

Sacramento County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Sgt. Amar Gandhi said 36,524 illegal marijuana plants were found across 10 separate cartel-related grow sites.

The two-day operation required personnel to be airlifted into some of the remote locations using a helicopter. The illegal plants were hidden among legal crops, like corn with stalks that were dense and hid the marijuana plants.

Members of the sheriff's office assigned to the Central Valley High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, with the assistance of the sheriff's office's Problem Oriented Policing unit and the Rancho Cordova Police Department's Crime Suppression Unit, were responsible for finding, seizing, and destroying the tens of thousands of plants that had been growing for an unknown amount of time across the delta area of Sacramento County.

Farmers and land owners did not know of the illegal growing operations, according to Gandhi, and reported the findings to law enforcement once found.

"We'll call these guys all kinds of things: we'll call them dangerous, we'll call them criminals, but they are not stupid, they know how to adapt for different law enforcement intervention." Gandhi said.

Gandhi said that the cartels behind these criminal growing operations know the harvest schedule and work around timing that they believe will let them go undetected.

Also found in the bust this week were chemical supplies, likely concentrated pesticides, that are typically not FDA-approved. This part, according to Gandhi, contaminates the environment and can be toxic due to the chemicals used during the illegal growing process.

"This is interfering with agriculture," Gandhi said.