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Marijuana Bust in Santa Clarita, a.k.a., Setting of 'Weeds'
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There's something similar about Weeds on Showtime and today's marijuana bust in the Santa Clarita Valley. If you watch the TV show and know the SCV, you know that it is filmed there (opening credits are very much the neighborhood of unincorporated Stevenson Ranch).
And now today, via the Santa Clarita Sheriff's Station's Blog/RSS feed (see, SCV can be hip too), we find that "detectives discovered a substantial indoor marijuana grow estimated to contain more than 1,000 marijuana plants... Initial estimates indicate the street value of the plants at this marijuana grow would exceed one million dollars," the bloggish incident report states in a post from late this morning. In a phone interview with Sergeant Darren Harris who was at the scene all morning, he said detectives suspect the product to be of a higher quality, upping the estimate of the street value to at least three million dollars. The suspect, who was not home during the execution of the warrant was arrested later this morning when sheriff's spotted him driving back to the house.
The location of the house is on 29300 block of Via Estancia in the Tesoro development, which is north of Santa Clarita's city boundary. It was only a few years ago when this very development of pre-fab homes sat unoccupied with only a few early-adapter families who had moved in -- it felt like a ghost town. You could throw a wild party all night long and no one would complain, because no one was around to do so. Sounds like a perfect spot to move your marijuana operation too... except you eventually get caught.
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And how did they get caught? Easy. Someone smelled it from the sidewalk, gave a tip to the police who then investigated, obtained enough evidence for a search warrant and voila.
And what did the neighbors do? They stood out on their front lawns and applauded the sheriffs. "It's one of those satisfying moments being a Sheriff" Sergeant Harris reminisced of only a few hours before.
Previously on LAist: Interview with Jenji Kohan, Creator of Weeds
Photo by vanz via Flickr
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