Well, Manuel, some of it is, and some of it isn't. And when you're working with a Mexican drug cartel, you kinda fall into the latter category.
An illegal marijuana grow that was part of a Mexican drug trafficking organization was shut down by an Oregon State Police SWAT team early Tuesday morning.
Officers seized more than 6,500 plants valued at more than $9 million at the grow, located in rural Dayton near the Willamette River.
They also made an arrest of Manuel Madrigal, 42, on federal drug trafficking charges. Madrigal, who has an address in San Antonio, Texas, and a history of previous drug arrests, was transferred to U.S. Marshal custody in Portland.
Madrigal was found in an elaborate living area, complete with a kitchen, that was hidden by a tarp.
Manuel, it seems, was siphoning water out of the river to irrigate the crop, part of which is shown in the above photo. It evidently didn't occur to him that somebody might notice a pot plantation growing right out there in the open like that. They may put a lot of hard work into operations like this, but they don't appear to put a lot of hard thought into them.
In further agricultural news here in Oregon:
Rebekah Spinnett says all she wanted to do was help the city maintain a small piece of property and keep the area around her family’s business looking nice.
Tuesday, that plan was thwarted by a letter from Portland Parks and Recreation.
The letter, dated June 22, orders owners of Steve’s Imports to “cease and stop… all landscape activities” along the Springwater Corridor.
Spinnett says employees at the auto body shop have been mowing, mulching and trimming back blackberry bushes along the trail for years.
The city doesn't seem to mind the hordes of homeless campers in the area: Apparently, this is okay, but cutting back non-native Himalyan blackberries isn't. The city claims that they're planting native species along the trail, and somehow the employees at this woman's business are ruining it all by cutting back invasive blackberries. The campers are cool, though; they evidently float through the air and never bother any of the native plants.
Well, apart from that big fire last week that took out a camper's squat. The fire department has responded to 79 fires there in just the past several months, but that's no big deal; the city bureaucrats know that ashes are great fertilizer.