Wet slog to sink drug crops
TRUDGING through the swamp, rain falling and mosquitoes swarming, the police are on the hunt for a marijuana grow site.
It’s tough going, feet sinking into the marshy bog, clambering over logs to cross patches of water, hopping over fences.
Once there, the scene is almost ingenious. What’s before us is a number of floating platforms. Sitting on top of those is a garden bag, with fertiliser and soil, where a number of cannabis plants are starting to grow.
It’s a smaller site, but is the first hit during a four-day operation run in northern New South Wales to find and seize marijuana crops.
The Bulletin went behind the scenes on day one of the operation last week, gaining an insight into the lengths criminals will go to grow and hide their crops.
It’s early on Monday morning. Officers from the drug squad and police are being briefed about the job ahead. They’re being warned about the threat of traps, leeches, ticks and to keep an eye on their mates, as the dense bushland is easy to get lost in.
From there we quickly jump into our car and follow the officers. The first stop is just outside of Byron Bay, the swamp, where floating marijuana plants are found.
The next site, between Byron Bay and Lennox Head, is down a dirt road.
There are bee hives. It’s too thick to walk through so specially trained drug squad officers have to be winched down from a helicopter. They land in chest-deep water to another site that is floating on little platforms.
They pull hundreds of plants, bundle them up before they are winched out by the same helicopter. One of the officers later tells the Bulletin he saw a massive python swim by him.
Overall, the four-day sting nets 1015 plants of varying size, worth about $2 million.
The growers are brazen, these sites are not far from the public, in both Byron Bay, Lennox Head and around the Tweed.
Some go to great lengths to hide their crops, plants and equipment. Solar panels, fertiliser and other gear is left there as crops grow. Buds are pulled from the plants and they are left to grow again. Other than the hiking and the initial plant, it’s not a lot of ef
fort for high turnover and this is why the police are going so hard at it.
Detective Superintendent John Watson, commander of the drug and firearm squad, said the crims were becoming more adept at growing and hiding crops.
“They’re finding isolated areas, using areas that are totally inaccessible to the average person,” Supt Watson said.
“They are prepared to take measures most ordinary people would not take, but having said that, New South Wales police have got the specialists and the capabilities that we’re prepared to raise ourselves to meet the challenge.
“Criminals are becoming more sophisticated. They are acting in groups, rather than in isolation, so we are prepared to meet them head on.
“We’ve got some specialists here from our aviation support groups, some dogs and we’ve got some rural trained, specialist bush-trained police. We are prepared to do whatever it takes in order to make the seizures.
“The exercise we are on now is a third phase of a threepart cannabis eradication program we run annually. It’s a cause we are invested in, it means these criminals can’t make profit out of what we’ve got and they can’t divert those profits into other crime.
“This program has been underfoot and in planning for the last three months. It’s a rolling program that we have over a 12-month period and we’ve seen some results that show us that the program needs to continue.”
Tweed/Byron Police District Commander, Superintendent David Roptell said the annual operation was a successful strategy for reducing the availability of prohibited drugs in the local community.
“The start of this year has been particularly difficult for the northern region communities with the devastating fires and turbulent weather conditions,” he said.
“As a result, our farmers continue to do it tough, which makes operations like the cannabis eradication program so important. The last thing we need is organised criminal networks destroying parts of their property and attempting to make a money out of crops on stolen lands.”
Detective Chief Inspector Brendon Cullen said there was definitely a connection between the cultivation of marijuana and organised crime.
“It’s a lucrative enterprise and they don’t care about the impact it has on the community or individuals,” he said.
TODAY’S behind-the-scenes feature article on elaborate drug farms in remote northern NSW shows how far criminals are prepared to go to tear the heart out of our communities.
The sale and production of marijuana is a multimillion-dollar trade that is taking money out of the pockets of some of our most vulnerable people.
Make no bones about it, marijuana is a dangerous drug.
As specialist police tell the Bulletin today, in their quest to intercept the illegal substance over the border, its wider effect on the community is stark.
Crime syndicates, outlaw motorcycle gangs and underworld figures are making a motza off the sale of marijuana, and furthering their ability to weasel their way into local communities.
It is this, the bump-on effect from the sale of the drugs, that should concern us all. Millions of dollars is being funnelled into the pockets of these people, without a care in the world about how it is affecting the user or the community.
Police have had to get smarter, learn new skills and develop their intelligence to put an end to it.
Whether it’s dropping into crops from helicopters, intelligence gathering or finding new ways to locate the drugs, police are getting ahead of the game.
And it’s working. As the drug squad’s four-day operation showed, it is smashing up syndicates, pulling plants from the ground and wreaking havoc in a growers’ paradise, where conditions are perfect for cultivation.
One of the greatest issues facing police is information. Many people remain quiet about what they see and hear in their towns, choosing to turn a blind eye to the issue, over speaking up. Without information on where these crops are being grown and who is behind them, it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Speak up if you see or hear anything. Help quash not only marijuana, but ice, pills, steroids and any other substance that is tearing small communities apart.