ISHIDA TO SEEK MONEY IN D.C.

Supervisor to petition government for more help to battle illegal pot gardens

Tuare County Supervisor Allen Ishida said more federal money is
needed to combat the growing problem of illegal marijuana gardens
grown in Tulare County, and he'll take that message to Washington,
D.C., next week when he testifies before members of Congress looking
into the problem.

"We need money so we can increase our manpower. We not only need to
increase our personnel in the county [to fight the illegal gardens],
but we need to increase federal personnel," said Ishida, who will
testify Thursday before the House Subcommittee on National Parks and
Public Lands.

ADVERTISEMENT "It doesn't help if one jurisdiction gets money and one
doesn't," he added. "It just pushes the marijuana growth from one
jurisdiction to the other."

Among the things he'll seek from Congress is $5 million to fund a
marijuana garden task force composed of staff from the Tulare County
Sheriff's Department and the Tulare County District Attorney's Office
along with U.S. Forest Service and national park rangers, the
California Highway Patrol, and other state law enforcement.

"I think the most important thing, they need to look outside the
individual agency or department funding," which so far has been
paying for their marijuana plant eradication efforts from their own
operating funds, said Ishida.

Since October 2004 to the present, Ishida said, sheriff's deputies
have put in about 5,200 man-hours to locate, raid and remove the
marijuana gardens in the foothill and forest areas of the county,
much of that on National Forest Service and federal Bureau of Land
Management land, while the National Park Service has battled the
problem in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

"Our gang task force has been on federal land and marijuana busts all
summer," Ishida said. "We need them on the Valley floor fighting gangs."

And if the federal government isn't willing to

help,"maybe we need to focus on gangs" and not the marijuana gardens,
which have become a more than $4.5 billion industry in California for
the Mexican drug cartels that mostly run them.

Last year, the Sheriff's Department confiscated 161,624 marijuana
plants, about 38 percent of them found on federal lands. So far this
year, deputies have confiscated more than 157,500, according to Ishida.

He said he'd like Congress to use Homeland Security or other federal
money earmarked to fight drugs to fight marijuana growing in Tulare
County, one of the most active areas in the state and the country for
this illegal activity.

The state Attorney General's Office announced Monday that seizures of
marijuana plants across the state have numbered 1,134,692 this year,
more than double last year's total.

Shasta County had the largest number of plants seized with 214,319,
followed by Lake County with 133,441 and Tulare County with 133,038,
according to the Attorney General's report, though his figure for
Tulare County is less than the 157,500 provided by Ishida.

Ishida said that he believes the state numbers are off.

Tulare County sheriff's Lt. Ron Castaneda said there likely are
numerous gardens that law enforcement here have missed because
they're so well hidden. "I would venture to say we get about a third of them."

"Our resources, you know, are somewhat limited. We do the best we
can. This money would help us," he added.

Ishida has met with law enforcement here to discuss the marijuana
garden problem and he has strongly supported lobbying efforts to get
funding for a task force. He said he heard that the Subcommittee on
National Parks and Public Lands was scheduling a hearing to look into
the problem, and he contacted U.S. representatives Devin Nunes,
R-Visalia, and George Radanovich, R-Madera, -- the latter of whom is
a member of the subcommittee -- and asked to testify.

He said one potential stumbling block is that input the county
supervisors have gotten from officials in Washington indicates
federal efforts are focusing on targeting the cartel leaders that
profit from the gardens, "but the guy that is growing the plants,
they aren't interested in."

But Castaneda said federal officials should focus on both ends of the
problem. "You need to go from the ground up and from the top down."