Mysterious Men Dropping From Helicopters To Chop Down NorCal Marijuana Grows

[shaggyballs]

Video here
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=10576466

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/20...grows-mendocino-county-lear-asset-management/

There’s been some mysterious activity in the skies over Mendocino County lately. Folks who live there want to know: Who are the armed men dropping out of helicopters to chop down their marijuana grows? They dress in combat camouflage, some of them hide their faces. This summer, a group of men in Mendocino County loaded into helicopters and flew missions to eradicate marijuana. They’re not police officers. They work for a security company called Lear Asset Management. According to their promotional poster, the group works with law enforcement .That’s why Susan Schindler suspected the posse, when her medical marijuana garden was hit last month.

“They took hand saws and just cut the trunks,” Schindler said. Schindler said the armed men in camouflage dropped into her garden from an unmarked helicopter and refused to identify themselves. “There was no paperwork, no copies of any warrants they didn’t leave any inventory of what they took,” she said. She told KPIX 5 that she is following all the county regulations: 25 plants per parcel, the legal limit in Mendocino County. And she said the strain of cannabis she grows has no street value: It really is medicinal. “The irony is that this whole garden that was destroyed was not a garden that would get you high,” Schindler said.

Lear Asset Management’s president Paul Trouette turned down KPIX 5’s request for an interview, but said Lear had nothing to do with the raid on Susan’s garden. So we asked Mendocino County’s sheriff, Tom Allman. “The sheriff’s department doesn’t hire any private security to go out and do our job,” he said. Allman said his deputies have conducted some recent raids, including several in Susan’s area on the day she was hit. But he says his guys wear badges and clearly identify themselves.

“So are they seeing things?” We asked him. “Or is it just the fact that they are mistaken?” “I think there are some people who may become paranoid this time of year,” he said. But Schindler has another theory: Whoever is behind it, she believes she’s an easy target. “I think they tried to find places where they saw nobody, I think they tried to find places where they would not be confronted with guns.” So it’s still unclear who exactly is raiding the pot farms. The security company, Lear, insists they are only staying on the private property that hires them. And that’s perfectly legal.


What is really going on here. WTF

 

[shaggyballs]

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/i...-security-police-pot-country.html#post2237376

Californians Turn To Private Security To Police Pot Country



On a recent Sunday, a local gardening club gathered with their local sheriff in Laytonville, Calif., a hamlet of 1,227 people in Mendocino County, America’s cannabis cultivation capital. By some estimates, up to 90% of the town’s residents are tied to the pot industry, and the event was a chance to ask about the county’s enforcement policies. Instead, some members of the community wanted to talk about a rumor that had been making the rounds.

Over the summer, residents claimed men in military gear had been dropping onto private property from unmarked helicopters and cutting down the medicinal pot gardens of local residents. Local law enforcement have conducted helicopter raids in the area, but some worried the culprit this time was different: a private-security firm called Lear Asset Management.

The confusion was easy to understand. In the wildlands of California’s pot country, the workings of law enforcement are hard to track, and the rules for growing pot are often contradictory. To add to the mess, the various local, county, state and federal enforcement efforts don’t always communicate with each other about their efforts. The added possibility of private mercenaries, with faceless employers, fast-roping from helicopters raised alarm bells for many farmers.

Founded in 2012, Lear (the name stands for Logistical Environmental Asset Remediation) is a creature of the area’s unique cannabis culture. The company employs about 15 people, who are mostly former military: ex-U.S. Special Forces, Army Rangers and other combat veterans. They fly out on rented helicopters, wearing camouflage fatigues, body armor and keffiyehs around their necks. They are hired by large land owners to do the work of clearing trespass gardens from private property, and perform forest reclamation, sometimes funded by government grant. Deep in the woods, they cut down illegal pot plants and scrub the environmental footprint produced by the backwoods drug trade. They carry AR-15 rifles, lest they meet armed watchmen bent on defending their plots.

Paul Trouette, Lear’s CEO, says his firm was not responsible for the helicopter raids that the town’s residents complained about. “We do not do any kind of vigilante, black ops, Blackwater stuff,” he says, noting the company is licensed and regulated by the state of California, and only works on private land when summoned by the owner. Trouette is neither cop nor soldier; he is a longtime Fish and Game commissioner in Mendocino County, and the head of an organization devoted to preserving local herds of blacktail deer. Security contracting, he says, grew out of volunteer environmental reclamation. “It was a natural for our company to move into security contracting,” he says. “It’s just too much to handle for private ownership.”

The firm’s business model is rooted in the region’s complicated relationship with weed. Rich Russell, the commander of Mendocino’s major crimes task force, has estimated that about half of the county’s residents work in the marijuana economy. Many longtime growers are remnants of the back-to-the-land movement of the Sixties, who operate within the county’s legal cultivation limits. But the county’s dense forests and ideal cultivation conditions have also been a magnet for more dangerous elements.

In recent years, small bands of criminals colonized the county’s forests, concealing grow sites on vast parcels hidden deep in the woods. In 2011, Operation Full Court Press—a three-week raid jointly carried out by local, state and federal anti-drug agencies—netted some 632,000 marijuana plants in and around the Mendocino National Forest, with a street value in the neighborhood of $1 billion. Illegal growers have a record of shooting at hikers and law enforcement; in 2011, a former local mayor was killed while looking for a marijuana plot.

The perps also produce environmental disaster. They strew trash through the woods, poison wildlife and pollute streams. The environmental devastation is an even greater problem this year. As California copes with a crippling drought, thirsty pot plants from illegal gardens are sucking up the water supply, creating a “holocaust” for fish, Trouette says.

More recently, the trespass grow sites have migrated from public land onto the vast plots owned by private citizens and timber companies. Some of them have hired Lear to deal with the problem. The company has run about nine missions across California’s pot country this year, with more planned this fall, Trouette says. And while the company’s special-ops aspect gets much of the attention, most of the work focuses on environmental reclamation.

While some of Mendocino’s challenges are unique to the region, others highlight the legal tangle that threatens the industry’s growth at a moment when boosters are trying to take marijuana mainstream. Residents are permitted to cultivate up to 25 marijuana plants for medicinal use, about four times the standard for much of the rest of the state. Federal law still prohibits pot, classifying it as a Schedule I drug on part with heroin and ecstasy. The clashing statutes produce a patchwork system of justice, with enforcement sometimes varying from county to county even within states where medical or recreational marijuana is legal. Federal money-laundering law prevent most legitimate pot businesses from banking their proceeds, forcing them to endure the safety hazards and logistical hassles of handling huge sums of cash.

In Mendocino, officials have tried to sort out the murkiness. In 2012, an experimental program that attempted to license legitimate cannabis cultivation under the supervision of the county sheriff was shut down under pressure from the local U.S. Attorney. Meanwhile, the county district attorney has pioneered a controversial program that offers reduced sentences for certain growers who are willing to pay hefty restitution charges: $500 per pound of seized pot and $50 per plant. While the approach has helped clear a case backlog and restocked the department’s coffers, critics say it allows wealthier clients to purchase leniency.

Reports of vigilante marijuana raids on private property may simply stem from a lack of legal clarity. Under the so-called “open fields doctrine” set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Fourth Amendment does not protect undeveloped property from warrantless searches. As a result, police may be permitted to cut down private gardens without a warrant.

 

[Player2]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/lear-asset-management-marijuana-raids-mendocino-california

So any unhappy farmers can just go and talk to Paul Trouette, head of Lear Asset Management, about the fourth amendment, the first and possibly the second.

So how long until someone gets shot?

Post constitutional America sucks. Didn't any law enforcement or government officials get their jobs to do good?

Yeah, real fucking christian of them!

 

[stoney917]

Hopefully there heli crashes n they all die. ... fukin rippers. ... id be pickin them off as they repel down..
SHOOT BACK NORCALI

 

[RetroGrow]

There is already a thread about this, here:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=292907

 

[VirginHarvester]

Hopefully there heli crashes n they all die. ... fukin rippers. ... id be pickin them off as they repel down..
SHOOT BACK NORCALI

Hate to say "yeah" but yeah!

 

[shaggyballs]

Mysterious Private Police Force Destroying Legal Pot Grows
As CBS reports, citing witness accounts: “These mystery men are clothed in combat camouflage, outfitted for what appears to be battle – armed with the likes of knives, machetes and saws.” Who are they and what are they doing? Shockingly enough, they’re on an environmental cleanup mission. According to CBS and Time, they’re privately contracted law-enforcement agents with Logistical Environmental Asset Remediation, or Lear Asset Management, who simply drop onto people’s properties without a warrant and start chopping down marijuana plants that are being legally grown in California for medicinal reasons. One permitted marijuana grower, Susan Schindler of Mendocino County, who was subjected to the surprise air assault recounted her experience to CBS. “They took hand saws and just cut the trunks,” she said. “There was no paperwork, no copies of any warrants, they didn’t leave any inventory of what they took.”

Lear Asset Management chief Paul Trouette denied his company had anything to do with the raid on Schindler’s property. Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said the same to CBS. Allman admitted his deputies conducted raids on properties near Schindler’s home the same day she was targeted, but he insisted his agents always display their badges and openly identify themselves.

Schindler isn’t the only pot grower, however, who’s complained of an unwarranted, unjustified raid. Several other residents of Laytonville, California – where between 50 percent and 90 percent of the 1,227 residents are reportedly tied to the cannabis industry – told local law enforcement that they’d either seen or heard about men in military-type gear rappelling onto privately owned properties from unmarked helicopters and tearing down the medicinally grown pot gardens, Time reported.

Once again, they fingered the private security firm, Lear Asset Management, as the culprit. And once again, Trouette denied any involvement, saying his 15 or so agents don’t do “any kind of vigilante, blacks ops, Blackwater stuff,” the magazine reported. He also clarified that his group is privately contracted, meaning, the agents who work for him don’t need warrants to do their jobs.

Trouette, Fish and Game commissioner for the county, is a leading advocate of the preservation of blacktail deer. His firm specializes in environmental investigations and reclamations, and hazardous materials cleanups for privately contracted individuals.At the same time, the county is a big draw for illegal marijuana growers, and Lear Asset Management’s path often crosses with that of law enforcement.

In 2011, for example, local, state and federal anti-drug agents participated in Operation Full Court Press, a three-week mission that rooted out a reported 632,000 illegally grown marijuana plants in the area of Mendocino National Forest with an estimated street value of $1 billion. Trouette’s firm is called to the scene of such forestry crimes to help mitigate the pollution and environmental hazards caused by the illegal growers. But he responds, he said, only when contracted by local property owners or local timber companies.

Undercutting all this is the fact that Mendocino County allows residents to grow up to 25 pot plants per parcel, far more than neighboring jurisdictions. It’s yet another addendum law enforcement must remember in what’s proving a massive disparity among federal, state and local marijuana laws. In other words, confusion sometimes reigns among the various responding police forces about which marijuana grows are legal and which are not.

Still, Lear insists it’s not dropping in on legal pot growers and wrecking their legal businesses. And yet the rumor persists. Part of the problem could be Lear environmental agents could be mistaken for military troops. As Time reported: “The company employs about 15 people, who are mostly former military: ex-U.S. Special Forces, Army Rangers and other combat veterans. They fly out on rented helicopters, wearing camouflage fatigues, body armor and keffiyehs hanging around their necks. … They carry AR-15 rifles, lest they meet armed watchmen bent on defending their plots.” All that for forest reclamation. The Mendocino Beacon said some of Lear’s agents have served in a military capacity in Baghdad and Tora Bora and are trained in interrogation. In addition, Lear missions are sometimes funded by grant dollars from the taxpayer, as reported by Time, and the Blackwater comparison is hard to dismiss.

The media have been focused on the militarization of police of late, mostly in the wake of the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, of 18-year-old Michael Brown that led to widespread community protests and local law enforcement’s deployment of an armored vehicle. Media reports also have raised issues, albeit quietly, about some school districts snapping up military gear, including an armored vehicle and weaponry, from the Pentagon’s 1033 program, all in the name of student safety. But Lear’s background, mission and modus operandi – in full battle dress, armed with military weaponry – poses another puzzler: Is the environmental movement the next to go militarized?

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/i...e-destroying-legal-pot-grows.html#post2248497