A federal grand jury in Sacramento has indicted a Trinity County man on marijuana conspiracy and cultivation charges, months after a series of raids resulted in the seizure of more than 2,700 pot plants. According to a criminal complaint, William Robert Barsanti, 26, who was indicted Thursday, bragged to local sheriff’s deputies that he could beat any charges against him because he was protected under California’s medical marijuana laws, the Sacramento Bee reports. Redding Record Searchlight coverage Trinity County authorities referred the case to federal prosecutors after 2,769 marijuana plants and five pounds of pot [...]
A federal grand jury Thursday indicted a 23-year-old man suspected of cultivating marijuana on public land in the mountains west of Red Bluff and arraigned seven others in connection with a Trinity County plantation. Jesus Mendoza could face life in prison and a fine up to $4 million if convicted of the cultivation charges, U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner said. Authorities found Mendoza with 9 mm ammunition in his pocket with a stolen 9 mm semi-automatic handgun nearby, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case. Mendoza is accused of cultivating marijuana on Tom [...]
Apr 162010
Narcotics agents on Wednesday uncovered a massive and elaborate underground marijuana cultivation operation in Hayfork. Jack Nelson, a special agent supervisor for the state Department of Justice office in Redding, said agents found 2,200 plants growing in 8,000 square feet of secret rooms built underground. A 4,000-square-foot house was being built above ground, over the marijuana operation. The underground rooms were vented by pipes routed through the house and out the roof, Nelson said. Carbon filters scrubbed the air to mask the marijuana smell coming from underground, he said. The operation was a rare find, [...]
A San Francisco-based blogger for Fox News (“Fair and balanced … because we say so.”) offers this snippet of wisdom about Hayfork, a rural town in Trinity County. “Tucked amid the vast forestland of Northern California’s Trinity County, the small town of Hayfork is – literally – going to pot…with marijuana being smoked, grown and sold more than ever before,” Claudia Cowan writes in a piece that lacks sourcing beyond the local school superintendent. The same source was quoted in this L.A. Times blog post from November; the “pot paradise” label comes from a High [...]
Nov 132009
“Trinity County has joined the ranks of many cities and counties throughout the state weighing how to regulate medical marijuana collectives and cooperatives, with the Board of Supervisors set to consider a possible moratorium on storefront operations at its Dec. 1 meeting.” That constitutes the whole of this story posted by the Trinity Journal . You have to be a subscriber to read the whole story, or wait two weeks to read it in the archives as a non-subscriber. That particular approach is one of many models used by newspapers to help build paid readership [...]
No less than the Los Angeles Times takes a look at the Trinity County town of Hayfork, where marijuana cultivation has gone mainstream as it has in much of rural Northern California. “It’s not a subculture here,” said Tom Barnett, the superintendent of the Mountain Valley Unified School District. “Marijuana is drying in their houses. It’s falling out of their (students’) pockets.”
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