Back in early May, the Board of Supervisors unanimously signed off on a letter I characterized as a “Hail Mary” imploring “state agencies and lawmakers for greater collaboration from state agencies to enforce cannabis laws on unpermitted grow sites in Mendocino County.”
During the discussion leading to the Supes approving the letter, District 5 Supervisor Ted Williams once again reminded his colleagues that a major flaw in the failed weed ordinance is that County officials “looked the other way” when it came to enforcing the ordinance.
The letter which was sent to Governor Gavin Newsom, Nicole Elliott, Department of Cannabis Control, the State Water Resources Control Board, Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, Senate Pro Tem President Mike McGuire, and Assemblymember Chris Rogers, identified the primary consequence of “looking the other way”: “Major tension stems from the accountability placed on legal cannabis growers by County and State regulations, while unregulated bad actors continue to thrive. Many legal operators have thrown in the towel and abandoned the occupation that once paid their bills and allowed them to support the local economy. The scale at which unregulated cannabis is currently operating in Mendocino County significantly contributes to the collapse of the industry and a central reason for the continued proliferation of unregulated grows.”
The “bad actors”, of course, are the violence-prone cartels based mostly in Mexico.
Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall traced the post-legalization history of cartel infiltration of the cannabis industry when he said, “Several years ago, I along with several Northern California Sheriff’s met regarding the violence, human trafficking, drug trafficking organizations and environmental degradation we were seeing in illegal marijuana grow sites throughout Northern California. We began a partnership realizing we were all facing the same issues at a time when we are all facing personnel shortages.”
Bill Jones, the head of enforcement for the state’s Department of Cannabis Control, focused on what law enforcement did — or rather, what it didn’t do — in the first few years after California approved a licensed weed industry.
“Most jurisdictions — local jurisdictions — police or sheriff’s departments and district attorney’s offices, were very reluctant to do any kind of enforcement on cannabis. It really created an air of impunity, and the unlicensed activity really skyrocketed.”
Trinity County Sheriff Tim Saxon, whose county forms one of the legs of the Emerald Triangle, talks of cartel workers being held against their will. Sometimes, workers’ passports, visas or driver’s licenses and cell phones are locked away until they finish the harvest season. And cartel cultivators often threaten to harm the workers or the workers’ families if they run off or talk to police.
“They’re basically being held prisoner,” Saxon said.
Congressman Jared Huffman, who represents our area, said human trafficking is a “localized crisis” in parts of his district. “Cartels are operating with impunity there,” he said, citing limited sheriff’s department resources to police an expansive area.
Aside from the shortage of law enforcement personnel, the problem is compounded by a general dearth of overall funding for enforcement.
So we all know what the problem is but what do we do about it?
Actually, Abraham Lincoln provides us with the answer.
Lincoln once defined what one of the cornerstones of government is.
He said, “The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all — or can not, so well do, for themselves — in their separate, and individual capacities.”
Sure sounds like that’s the exact situation we find ourselves in.
We have a huge problem and we don’t have the resources to solve it.
The good news is the means to solve our problem are close by.
The National Guard, Marines, ICE, all sorts of federal agencies have been in Southern California for several months allegedly enforcing immigration laws. I’ll defer further comments on that situation for the time being.
The point is, up here in Northern California we’ve had ongoing criminal activities with cartel gangs and syndicates who have created intolerable conditions for Lincoln’s “community of people” who cannot solve their problem “in their separate, and individual capacities.”
The needed and required federal assistance and resources are already present in the state.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), with assistance from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the National Guard, conducted a large investigation at several illegal marijuana operations near Thermal on June 18.
In a statement, the Drug Enforcement Administration Los Angeles Field Division said, “The Drug Enforcement Administration is leading a vast investigation, which involves multiple illegal marijuana grow operations, in the area of Thermal, CA. Preliminary numbers, subject to change, are as follows: 70 to 75 undocumented migrants were arrested. At least one US citizen was arrested for impeding law-enforcement. The operations covered 787 acres. The operation is authorized by federal search warrants signed by a federal magistrate judge…”
In contrast to some of the ham-handed immigration “enforcement” activities in the city of Los Angeles and other SoCal areas, there were no complaints about the illegal, presumably cartel operations in the Thermal raids.
Mendocino County should request federal assistance that would be coordinated with local law enforcement to eradicate our cartel operations.
(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, [email protected], the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)
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