May 14, 2020 — As summer approaches, outdoor recreation and crime are taking on their seasonal significance. Most county parks are set to open up on Friday, and on Wednesday morning, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office took down a large pot grow in Covelo.
Karen Horner, the director of the County Cultural Services Agency, which comprises the libraries, parks and museum, shared her plans with the Board of Supervisors this week. Parking lots for the parks will open up, but bathrooms and playgrounds will remain closed. “But allowing people to walk, hike, individual play, people to access the parks and get more recreation,” she summarized.
Horner also plans to open the county museum in mid-June, to limited numbers of people for limited hours, for free. And starting on Thursday, curbside pickup will be available at libraries through the end of May. Patrons will be able to order books and garden seeds that are in their local branch, and pick them up outside the library at a designated time. This will continue into June, when the Bookmobile will also start going out. The library will not be accepting returns until next month. “All of our branches have seed libraries, so (patrons) will also be able to request seeds, and we’ll do it the same way that we’re doing the materials,” she announced.
Early Wednesday morning, the sheriff’s office and the Major Crimes Task Force eradicated a different kind of garden entirely, on grounds that may have significant historical importance to local tribes: 6,601 illegal pot plants on a mixture of tribal property and allotted lands, which are held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the federal government on behalf of individuals. “It’s basically on the northern end of Covelo; what would be the center point of the valley, but all the way up into the northern foothills,” described Sheriff Matt Kendall. “It’s Agency Road, basically where it turns out by the buffalo field.” Seven people were detained, two got away, and four guns had been seized by early in the afternoon. Three of the detainees were local tribal members, and four were Mexican nationals.
Kendall and Lt. Shannon Barney both say that the grows have gotten increasingly larger over the last few years. “In areas that in 2017 where there may be a small fenced area and, you know, 25 plants growing there, now there’s 10, 15, 20 hoop houses with 5,000 to 25,000 plants,” Kendall said.
Barney says it’s gotten “out of hand this year. It’s a notable increase from last year, to the point that many of the locals are, for lack of a better term, they’re kind of fed up with it.” He says outside growers are “taking advantage of the tribal property. And what they’re really taking advantage of is poverty,” offering tribal members a few thousand dollars to grow on their land. But some of the other members are fearful, he says, especially with the gunplay that’s increased in and around the gardens this year. “It’s indiscriminate firing, and I think a lot of it is people warning other people, that you know, we’re armed over here, don’t come over and mess with us...it’s rural, but whatever you shoot in the air has to come down,” he noted.
Another big concern is that two archaeological sites seem to have been damaged, including what may be a burial ground. Barney said a tribal monitor had been on the scene that morning, and that he was working to get a professional archaeologist from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to assess the damage. The plants, which were what Barney called “field destroyed,” were in a wetland area of the valley, but a biologist has not examined the site for environmental damage at this time.
He’s not sure if there’s a connection between this operation and the one that was taken down last week, with the help of the San Jose Police Department, due to the possibility of a connection with a missing person out of San Jose. There are some similarities to the way the hoop houses on the two sites were constructed, “but we have made no concrete connection at this point. But the investigation is ongoing,” he said.
There are several open investigations of missing persons surrounding this kind of high-volume illegal growing operation. Barney, who served as the Round Valley Tribal President for two years in the early aughts, is still keeping an ear out for a tribal member who went missing in 2014. “Since I was in there, we’ve had three tribal members killed,” he recalled; two of them obviously related to grow operations. “That last one was taken out and dumped into the National Forest, which is very difficult for any of the family members to try and deal with, you know, that their loved one is just discarded like some kind of household garbage.” He reported that the sheriff’s office did get a tip on that case as a result of last week’s enforcement action, and “we’re hopeful that maybe something will play out.”
Barney said the sheriff’s office is working with the District Attorney and the Assistant US Attorney to determine the charges on this week’s operation, including whether they’ll be state or federal.