 Marijuana plants rise above a ragged wooden fence in Fresno. Pot cultivation is on the rise in the Central Valley, where many farmers have been hard-hit by the recession. (Gary Friedman, Los Angeles Times / October 3, 2010) |
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Reporting from Lindsay, Calif. —
The father was clearly worried.Behind him, his son was tossing medical marijuana plants into a truck — part of a hasty move out of this small farm town after a deadly shooting.
The week before, on a mid-September night about 11:30 p.m., Robert Craven had gotten a call from his son, who lives a half-mile away down a country road. The son said his neighbors, who also grew medical marijuana, were being robbed. There were four gunmen.
"I flew over there locked and loaded, there was already an ambulance coming down the road," said Craven, 45, a pig farmer and Little League coach.
The son had gone next-door armed with a handgun. One of the gunmen grabbed him from behind and the son fired over his shoulder, according to police reports. Authorities deemed the shooting self-defense. He killed a 17-year-old suspected gang member.
Now he's on the run from threats of retaliation.
It's harvest season in California's Central Valley, and that includes medical marijuana. Pot-growing used to be more the domain of free-thinking, freely-puffing places such as Humboldt County along the state's northern coast. But in recent years, with some legal cover, this conservative, agricultural valley has sprouted a new favorite crop and a new crop of troubles.
"There's so much of it that we can't even get a handle on the quantity," said Capt. Jose Flores of the Fresno County Sheriff's Department.
"We're the No. 1 agricultural valley in the world. Then you add this recession where there are people who know how to grow things who are desperate to augment their livelihood, unclear laws that allow growing marijuana, doctors who will write a prescription for anything, and for the past three years it's been open season on marijuana-growing in our rural setting," he said. "We're a very fertile valley."
Medical marijuana cards might shield growers from law enforcement, but not from robbery. In the past month in the Central Valley there have been at least five confrontations with growers, two of them fatal. In one Fresno incident, a woman in her 70s used a machete to ward off two thieves. One of the thieves fired a round that wounded an 82-year-old man who lived in the home.
Citing the Valley violence, Fresno County's Board of Supervisors on Sept. 14 passed an emergency ban on outdoor medical marijuana cultivation.
Proposition 19, an initiative on the November ballot, would legalize non-medical marijuana in California and allow it to be regulated and taxed. A Public Policy Institute of California poll released Thursday showed majorities in the San Francisco Bay Area and much of Southern California support Prop. 19, while a majority in the Central Valley do not.
In the Lindsay shooting, police arrested two men on suspicion of robbery and kidnapping. A third is wanted for questioning.
Craven thought medical marijuana cards protected his 22-year-old son and his son's friends. They all had plants, they all had prescriptions (his son's was for migraine headaches). Craven didn't much like their pot-smoking, but they were grown men and he'd been most worried about them getting in trouble with the law. He hadn't thought of robbers.
"I mean, why that house?" he said. "You're going to have trouble finding a place around here that doesn't have a grow."
Across the street, Maria Sanchez, a grandmother, had a medical card. Her squat, showy pot plant grew among her rose bushes.
"I don't smoke it. I use it in tea. I use the leaves and just a tiny bit of bud. I have really bad arthritis," she said.
Her son, Socorro Sanchez, 31, also had a prescription and his own plants.
"I make edibles, like rice crispy treats," he said. "You make marijuana butter and when a recipe calls for oil you replace it with the butter. It's for my epilepsy."
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
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