In nearly two dozen raids on illegal cannabis farms across the High Desert this week, the sheriff’s department said it arrested dozens of people and seized a volume of drugs, guns and stolen property that total out to a significant value on the black market.
Yet, no one is seeing jail time. Instead, a ticket was all the arrestees received before being released back into the public.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Marijuana Enforcement Team, along with deputies from various patrol stations, arrested 41 people at 23 cannabis-cultivation sites between Monday and Friday, according to a sheriff’s statement. They served search warrants at each of the illegal grows in Hesperia, Phelan, Twentynine Palms, Newberry Springs and Lucerne Valley.
Sheriff’s investigators “eradicated” 113 greenhouses at the grows and “mitigated one electrical bypass and one THC extraction lab,” sheriff’s officials said. They also nabbed an array of illicit items, citing seizures across all 23 locations that total out to:
- 21,002 marijuana plants
- 5,628.5 pounds of processed marijuana
- 6.2 ounces of psilocybin mushrooms
- 1.7 ounces of cocaine
- Nine guns
- More than $9,000 in cash
- A stolen motorcycle
- Three stolen RV trailers
- A stolen, trailer-mounted generator
A complicated crackdown
The wave of search warrants is a result of “Operation Hammer Strike,” which just completed its second week.
The operation — in line with other efforts, like a county Board of Supervisors vote last month to beef up civil fines — is an effort to crack down on illegal cannabis growth in mostly rural High Desert communities that are considered ripe for cultivation. Sheriff’s officials have said the presence of these farms has rapidly expanded, bringing with it escalating water theft, environmental damage and violence.
