Cook County Weed Operation Destroyed
Written by DJ Special Blend from Chicago on August 19, 2009
Cook County Forest Preserve police and agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on Wednesday destroyed an elaborate marijuana-growing operation tucked away in a patch of woods in Palos Township.
In all, authorities burned about 6,000 marijuana plants that were being cultivated in six fields along a stream in the Edward M. Sneed Forest Preserve near 123rd Street and LaGrange Road.
If harvested, the 12,000 pounds of pot would have had an estimated street value of almost $2.5 million, according to Forest Preserve Police Chief Richard Waszak.
“These are public lands, and you can’t grow anything on public lands, whether it’s corn or marijuana,” Waszak said at a press conference held in one of the destroyed marijuana fields.
It was the largest pot-growing operation found in a Cook County forest preserve since police and DEA agents seized and destroyed nearly 20,000 marijuana plants worth about $4 million at the Crabtree Nature Preserve near Barrington in July of 2007.
Both operations show the growing sophistication of Mexican drug cartels, which hire immigrant farmers to grow marijuana in U.S. forest preserves rather than smuggling it over the border–a riskier proposition for drug dealers, according to authorities.
