cannabisnews.com: Imaginative Growers Strive To Be Stealthy Imaginative Growers Strive To Be Stealthy Posted by FoM on October 15, 2000 at 06:55:52 PT By S.J. Komarnitsky, Daily News Mat-Su Bureau Source: Anchorage Daily News It was subterfuge worthy of a James Bond movie. Tucked under the garage of a Hillside home was a secret room reachable only by a stairway hidden under a workbench that weighed several hundred pounds. Only the maker knew what to do. He'd flip a hidden switch on the bench, and with a gentle push, the seemingly immovable bench slid forward on concealed steel rails, revealing the stairs below. Even then, the owner wasn't satisfied, adding a fake bookcase below in a last-ditch attempt to conceal the rooms he used to grow and process marijuana. The officers who showed up at his home weren't fooled, however. The case is one of hundreds that Lt. Col. Bob Kean has worked on as head of the National Guard Counterdrug Support Program for the past 11 years. Mat-Su drug officers have seen a whole range of cases, from small mom-and-pop growers to sophisticated operations. Trooper Lt. Ed Harrington, who spent three years with the Mat-Su drug team, remembers one in Big Lake. "He had a video camera unbeknownst to us on the road and a cable across the road," he said. "As we were cutting the cable, he was running out the back door." The three-story house was filled with marijuana, Harrington said. The man had lined the floor with plastic and then filled it with dirt. Only one room didn't contain pot. "It was wall to wall," he said. The team makes garden-variety busts all the time, in all corners of the Valley. In October of last year, for example, authorities reported finding: 33 plants, scales and growing equipment in Palmer. A man from Chickaloon was arrested. Seven pit bulls, 66 marijuana plants and a loaded .357 Magnum handgun in a cabin in the Caswell Lakes Subdivision. 153 pot plants in a Houston home where two residents had just been beaten and tied up by armed robbers. 36 plants and assorted growing equipment on Clark-Wolverine Road. 165 plants in a grow vented through the septic system at a home in Skyline Estates Subdivision in Wasilla. The following month, drug agents made busts in Talkeetna, Houston, Wasilla, Big Lake, Hatcher Pass and Willow. They made four busts in a one-week sweep last December, taking down marijuana grows in Wasilla, on the Hatcher Pass Road and in Palmer, confiscating more than 1,000 plants. On Thursday of last week, the Mat-Su Narcotics Unit issued two more press releases: They had discovered, just the previous day, 262 plants in two buildings on Knik River Road and 102 plants in the garage of a home in Butte. It's not just Mat-Su. Kean has binders full of pictures from marijuana grows from all over the state. There's one in an abandoned gold mine in Tok lighted with generator power and insulated with blankets and cardboard. And a floating marijuana greenhouse near Ketchikan, kept on a barge next to the growers' home. On Prince of Wales Island, one grower camouflaged his crop in a forest, cutting trees to chest-high level and placing green painted pots on top of the stumps. Reporter S.J. Komarnitsky can be reached at: skomarnitsky adn.comSource: Anchorage Daily News (AK)Published: October 15, 2000Author: S.J. KomarnitskyCopyright: 2000 The Anchorage Daily News Contact: letters adn.com Website: http://www.adn.com/ Related Articles & Web Sites:Free Hemp in AlaskaAl Anders, Chair2603 Spenard RoadAnchorage, Alaska 99503 (907) 278-HEMP E-mail: freehempinak gci.netVisit their web site: http://www.freehempinak.orgHemp 2000R.L. Marcy, ChairP.O. Box 90055Anchorage, AK 99509907-376-2232 (p)Fax: 907-376-0530 (f)E-mail: marcy hemp2000.orgVisit their web site: http://www.hemp2000.org Hemp Initiative is Foolish and Dangerous http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7317.shtmlHigh Hopes in Alaska for Sweeping Pot Law http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7173.shtmlAlaska Hemp Initiative 2000http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6045.shtml END SNIP --> Snipped Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Post Comment Name: Optional Password: E-Mail: Subject: Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message] Link URL: Link Title: