LOS ANGELES—On a recent summer morning, a caravan of unmarked state police vehicles and white hazmat trucks crept past strip malls and wide intersections, making its way toward a pair of modest homes in a remote suburb north of Los Angeles.
A command came from the officers in the front of the black-and-white vehicles: "Seat belts off—in case we start taking fire."
But there was no shootout. Just a tense half-hour as a phalanx of two dozen state police officers—agents from the Department of Cannabis Control (DCC)—kept snipers trained on the house, waiting for the second of two suspects to emerge.
When she finally did, petite and barefoot in a black dress, the effect was mercifully anticlimactic.
Illegal cannabis cultivation operations, or "grows," are a multibillion-dollar-per-year industry in California, dominated by a mix of transnational criminal organizations that authorities believe are symbiotic, if adversarial.
When agents serve a warrant, they often find human trafficking victims, automatic weapons, booby traps, and, increasingly, banned toxic pesticides smuggled from China.
This particular raid, in Lancaster, netted about 1,020 plants—a modest haul compared with the herculean grows that have become common across California's booming black market.
But such mild suburban tableaus belie a sleeping, sinister threat.
"What we have right now is organized criminal enterprises literally destroying the city building by building as they modify them for illegal cultivation," Mike Katz, a Lancaster code enforcement officer who heads the city's cannabis unit, told The Epoch Times.
"They're endangering the families who will occupy those buildings in the future. They are lowering the value of neighboring properties and dragging the whole community down."
'Super Toxic'
Buildings contaminated by illegal grows are dangerous because the harsh pesticides that growers use permeate every surface—ceilings, walls, floors, vents, and drywall.
Toxic black mold blooms in the 75 percent humidity needed to grow marijuana. The massive amounts of water and electricity required to sustain an operation can result in structural damage to vents and sunken floors, overloaded transformers, and corroded wiring just itching for a fire.
Katz, whom the city's chief of police refers to as the department's "Swiss Army knife," has been a firefighter, reserve police officer, and now, an unarmed code enforcement official. He approaches the job with a certain zeal, devouring scientific studies and how-to books on cultivation and generally making it his mission to stop grow houses from slipping through the cracks.
Owners can often get away with making cosmetic fixes—"candy coating," as one inspector put it—if local governments don't intervene before they start concealing the damage.
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