Deputies Arrest Man, Seize Parkland Marijuana Plants

THOUSAND OAKS —  Sheriff’s deputies harvested about 250 high-grade marijuana plants Wednesday on national parkland in Thousand Oaks.

The deputies suspect three county residents cultivated the pot at the two sites in the Santa Monica Mountains near Hidden Valley Road for several years.

One man escaped an early-morning ambush by deputies crouching among shrubs and oak trees at one cultivation site. Police are attempting to locate the fugitive and another suspect. The third suspect, 35-year-old ranch foreman Jose Alvarez, was arrested Wednesday afternoon and held in lieu of $10,000 bail.

When the deputies sent out a helicopter to search for the fugitive, they spotted another forest of the sweet-smelling, seven-foot plants. Police aren’t sure whether the two sites, which are a quarter-mile apart, were planted by the same people.

The contraband collected in Wednesday’s bust, with an estimated street value of at least $250,000, brings this year’s bounty to 2,000 plants harvested by sheriff’s deputies on six occasions.

Sgt. Curt Rothschiller said the marijuana was a seedless variety of relatively high quality.

“It’s better than the stuff coming across the Mexican border,” Rothschiller said.

The first field was located by a sheriff’s helicopter beneath a canopy of oak trees.

“The color is distinct for guys trained to find it,” he said. “It’s a lighter, brighter green.”

Several large water containers were located next to the first site, but Rothschiller called it a low-tech operation.

“We once found a solar-powered watering system in Ojai,” he said.

The marijuana was harvested by about 15 deputies who marched into the dense, forested ravine wearing camouflage and carrying machetes as well as guns. They were aided by a police helicopter that airlifted the cut hemp to an open-bed truck.

“It usually takes just one whack of the machete to cut the plant if you do it right,” said one deputy, whose job in the narcotics division necessitates anonymity. “We don’t bother with the roots if the ground is hard because it won’t grow back anyway. It’s an annual.”

The deputies treat the plants with far less care than their owners.

“We just hack them down and drag them along the dirt,” one said. “We find it, cut it, burn it and they don’t get to smoke it. Sorry.”

The marijuana was transferred from the scene by a cadet who drove off with the green bounty of stalks, stems, leaves and buds in an open truck to the East County Sheriff’s Station, where it was to be weighed, booked as evidence and eventually incinerated.