Police to Wyden: Pot farms a growing problem

Baker City Police Chief Wyn Lohner, left, talks with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on Wednesday in Baker City.

By ED MERRIMAN
Baker City Herald

Gun-toting members of foreign drug cartels are endangering Americans and polluting forests and wilderness areas with chemical-intensive marijuana-growing operations, local police officials told Sen. Ron Wyden during a meeting Wednesday in Baker City.

County sheriffs, police chiefs and other law enforcement officials from across Eastern Oregon told Wyden, Oregon’s senior senator, that they’re worried about the growing threat posed by pot farms in the region’s remote forests and rangelands.

The officials invited Wyden to attend the meeting.

“We’ve got heavily armed foreign combatants coming into areas where we no longer allow timber harvesting, farming or ranching because the environment is too delicate, and they’re setting up high-intensity chemical pot grows,” said Andrew Bentz, Malheur County sheriff. “We have to shift money around and shift resources around to fight this cancer.”

Bentz said he thinks the job comes under the jurisdiction of the federal Department of Defense rather than local police agencies.

 Wyden said the fears he heard from police officials Wednesday reaffirmed his own concerns about the proliferation of illegal marijuana plantations.

Unfortunately, Bentz said, eradicating the pot farms doesn’t seem to him to be a high priority for the Department of Defense, which leaves city, county and state police agencies to bear the brunt of the risks and costs of dealing with those problems.

Wyden said the federal government doesn’t appear to be fully aware of the extent of those problems.

“The federal government doesn’t realize what is going on with these sophisticated foreign gangs and criminal organizations,” Wyden said.

Bentz argues that the military should play a larger role in combating the marijuana grows because a large percentage of the operations are run by foreign cartels, and because the task is better suited to the soldiers’ skills.

“We are civilian peacekeepers, not military,” Bentz said.

 “Fifty years ago it would be considered an act of war to come in here, armed, and do this,” Bentz said. “It’s just frustrating no one wants to look at this for what it is. (The Defense Department) says it is not an act of war, but it is.”

Baker City Police Chief Wyn Lohner, who coordinated Wednesday’s meeting, along with Baker County Sheriff Mitch Southwick and officials from several other counties, nearly all raised their hands when Wyden asked how many jurisdictions are having trouble with sophisticated pot grows.

Also attending Wednesday’s meeting were officials from La Grande and Union County, Umatilla, Pendleton, and Umatilla County, John Day and Boardman and the Oregon State Police.

“I am spending my resources to deal with the problem. We are eating the cost” to deal with appears to be a federal security issue, said Chief Brian Harvey of the La Grande Police Department.

Bentz said he hopes environmental groups that closely monitor the effects of livestock grazing and logging on federal forests will be equally worried about the pollution caused by marijuana plantations.

Wyden said he will work with DOD officials to raise awareness and to keep funding for National Guard helicopters used to locate pot grows on federal lands, and other resources, including more funding for rural law enforcement agencies, to address the foreign pot-growing operations.

“The environmentalists ought to be with us on this every step of the way, because these pot grows are devastating to the resources,” Wyden said.

He credited Eastern Oregon law enforcement officials for being ahead of the curve and recognizing the marijuana farms on federal lands for what they are — national security issues.

“We are very appreciative of what you do every day,” he told officials attending the meeting at the Best Western Sunridge Inn.

Harvey said it’s a mess trying to deal with a military problem in the civilian court system.

Wyden said part of his job is to give civilian law enforcement the funding and tools they need to do their jobs.

However, he said the effort to find and eliminate illegal marijuana grows is a new kind of war, one that will take new tools and more money.

Wyden also promised to work to ease the regulatory paperwork required to make COPS grants and other federal money available to rural police and sheriff’s offices.

 Lohner said the Baker City Police Department did receive a $46,000 COPS grant to buy a vehicle for its canine officer a couple years ago.

But he said the city hasn’t had much luck since tapping into those funds, even though $80,000 allocated through the state for use in Baker County last year was never appropriated.

“I’d like to know what the state did with that money,” Lohner said.

Wyden said he would look into the matter.