Feds, local police launch raids on up to 50 black-market marijuana grow houses in Denver area
Sam Tabachnik, The Denver Post
Black-market marijuana plants line a driveway in Commerce City as agents raid homes across the Denver area on Jan. 31, 2019.
Scores of agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and local police agencies fanned out early Thursday morning in a coordinated raid of up to 50 suspected black-market marijuana grow houses in the Denver metro area, authorities say.
Dozens of search warrants have been served to homeowners and residents across the metro area, said Randy Ladd, spokesman for the DEA’s Denver field office.
Agents can be seen stacking uprooted marijuana plants on the driveway of a home in the 10900 block of Unity Lane in Commerce City.
The law enforcement officers also are stacking dozens of heat lamps used for growing marijuana on the lawn. DEA agents arrived around 7 a.m. and homeowners were inside the home at the time.
It is one of two homes raided Thursday morning on the same block. A car in the driveway of one of the targeted homes had a car seat in it and a stroller is in the garage.
A DEA agent told The Denver Post that one of the cars parked in front of the home contained a traffic ticket. On the document, the cited woman replied, “I just babysit and have no money.” The car was a Lexus SUV.
Sandra Braig and her daughter Hannah live next door to the home. They were about to go to school when they heard a DEA agent yell over the bullhorn: “We have a warrant to search the house!”
This is the third large-scale, coordinated raid in five months on black-market grow houses. Ladd said the grow operations have ties to organized crime syndicates on the East Coast.
Colorado is a prime location for the grow houses because, unlike other states that have legalized marijuana, it allows people to grow marijuana inside residential homes, Ladd said.
On Oct. 10, federal and local drug task force agents targeted at least 24 homes, largely in the Tollgate Crossing subdivision near Aurora’s Cherokee Trail High School. At the time, agents were seen carrying hundreds of marijuana plants outside, lining them up in neat rows across driveways and front lawns.
Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler previously said all the illegal grow houses in Aurora were centered on a single criminal operation.
During the Aurora raid, Ladd said, “people don’t live in these homes. They bought them solely to run marijuana operations.”
Ladd, the DEA spokesman, alleged that black-market pot operations have brought many other illegal activities to Colorado, increasing the numbers of murders, robberies and gun sales. The drug traffickers are part of multi-drug operations that sell cocaine, methamphetamine, opioids, and heroin, he said.
Brauchler has previously said he’s seen 11 first-degree murder cases in the 17th Judicial District related to black-market marijuana transactions since the state first legalized recreational marijuana nearly five years ago. He said the high potency marijuana is diverted to other states where marijuana is illegal.
Colorado’s recreational marijuana law was passed in 2012, and retail pot sales began on Jan. 1, 2014.
Ladd said that just since 2014, law enforcement officers in Colorado have raided 300 black-market marijuana grow houses and seized 70,000 marijuana plants weighing 10,000 pounds.
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