Scores of agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency 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 were served on homeowners and residents across the metro area, said Randy Ladd, spokesman for the DEA’s Denver field office.
Agents could be seen stacking uprooted marijuana plants on the driveways of multiple homes in the 10900 block of Unity Lane in Commerce City, and a few miles away in the 11500 block of Chambers Drive.
The law enforcement officers also stacked dozens of heat lamps used for growing marijuana on the lawn, and loaded bags of cash into U-Haul trucks. DEA agents arrived around 7 a.m. and some of the homeowners were inside at the time.
The home on Unity Lane was one of two houses raided in the same block. A car in the driveway of one of the targeted homes had a car seat in it and a stroller could be seen in the garage.
A DEA agent told The Denver Post that one of the cars parked in front of the home contained a court document from a traffic incident. 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 one of the homes that was raided. 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!” The mother and daughter heard loud bangs as officials barged into the home.
Agents told Braig they had to remain in their house.
“Yeah, I had to call the school and say, ‘Sorry, my daughter’s gonna be late cause the DEA is outside our house,’ ” she said.
A man and woman answered the door of one of the raided homes on Unity Lane.
“We don’t want to talk,” the man said, slamming the door.
Braig said she didn’t know much about her neighbors, noting the blinds were always drawn and the house was normally dark. The house was usually very quiet, she said, but once a month three or four cars would arrive.
“It’s a little bit disturbing,” Braig said. “We paid a lot for this house. This will be associated with our neighborhood now.”
About 1½ miles away, agents were hauling hundreds of marijuana plants out of three homes and piling them on driveways. More than 1,000 plants were taken from one house. Lexus vehicles sat in the driveways of two of the homes.
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.
“People don’t live in these homes,” Ladd said. “They bought them solely to run marijuana operations.”
Ladd said these grow house operations amount to “indentured servitude.”
“These people never could have gotten to this country without doing this,” he said. “They will be told, ‘You owe us five grows.’ Then that same group will send a rip-off crew to steal the marijuana. They can never get out.”
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.
“Colombia is to cocaine as Colorado is to marijuana,” he 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.
No arrests have been made in the Aurora raid. Deanne Reuter, assistant special agent in charge for the DEA, said no arrests were made Thursday in connection with the large-scale bust.
Reuter added the DEA has not seized many weapons in recent raids.
Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler previously said all the illegal grow houses in Aurora were centered on a single criminal operation.
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.
Reuter said that since 2014, the DEA in Colorado has raided 350 black-market marijuana grow houses and seized 100,000 marijuana plants weighing 12,000 pounds.