When Operation Hammer Strike — nine San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies and two state Fish & Wildlife officers — descended on a property in remote Wonder Valley recently, they were greeted by a message scrawled in yellow paint on the gate of a makeshift wooden fence.
It surrounded a greenhouse containing about 400 illicitly grown marijuana plants:
“Don’t cut the plants. Don’t be (jerks). Just say u did. We don’t feed drugs to kids. Do us a solid,” begged the message, whose authors were nowhere to be found.
An Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department removes some of the 316 pounds of marijuana found within a residence in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. The adult residents at the home were cited for possession for sales, a misdemeanor. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department cut and confiscate mature marijuana plants from a grow house at a rural location in Wonder Valley on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A resident of a home is detained and led out of his home for questioning by an Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department as other deputies remove 316 pounds of marijuana found at the residence in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. The adult residents of the home were cited for possession for sales, a misdemeanor.(Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department enter a shipping container containing 218 growing marijuana plants outside a home in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Heavily armed Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department enter a home suspected of distributing marijuana in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A woman cries after Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department raided her property containing 507 immature marijuana plants at a rural home in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. The woman was cited for cultivation, a misdemeanor. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department remove and confiscate mature drying plants from a home in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department load confiscated mature marijuana plants from a grow house at a rural location in Wonder Valley on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike Sgt. Rich Debevec with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department loads confiscated mature marijuana plants into a trailer at a grow house in a rural area of Wonder Valley on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
An Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department prepares to cut and confiscate mature marijuana plants from a grow house at a rural location in Wonder Valley on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
An Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department detains residents of a “stash house” in Twentynine Palms where 316 pounds of marijuana were found on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Marijuana and cash confiscated by Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department sit on a vehicle outside of a Twentynine Palms where 316 pounds of the drug were found on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department walk towards a pair of large greenhouses containing over 800 marijuana plants at a grow house at rural location in Wonder Valley on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department remove some of the 316 pounds of marijuana found within a residence in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
An Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department holds a marijuana bud found in a tote box within a residence in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
An Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department finds a tote box full of marijuana within a home in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department remove 316 pounds of marijuana from within a residence in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department prepares to cut down 405 immature marijuana plants in a greenhouse at a grow house in a rural location in Wonder Valley on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A resident of a home is detained and led back into his home by an Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department as other deputies remove 316 pounds of marijuana found at the residence in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Marijuana buds spill out of a broken bag in front of a Twentynine Palms home which deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department raided on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A resident of a home is detained and questioned by an Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department after 316 pounds of marijuana were found at the residence in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A residents dog sniffs a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department trailer filled with confiscated marijuana during a raid at rural grow house in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
An Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department uncovers some of the 316 pounds of marijuana found in a Twentynine Palms home on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
An Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department counts cash found inside a Twentynine Palms home where 316 pounds of marijuana was found on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike Sgt. Rich Debevec with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department tosses a bag of marijuana found in the garage of a Twentynine Palms home to another deputy on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
An Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department walks a resident back into her Twentynine Palms home past the 316 pounds of marijuana found within on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department remove some of the 316 pounds of marijuana found within a Twentynine Palms residence on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputy Scott Moore (left) with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department weighs some of the 316 pounds of marijuana found within a Twentynine Palms home on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department prepares to cut marijuana plants found in a pair of greenhouses outside a rural grow house in Twenty-nine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department cut and confiscate mature marijuana plants from a grow house at a rural location in Wonder Valley on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department prepares to cut marijuana plants found in a pair of greenhouses outside a rural grow house in Twenty-nine Palms home on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputy Scott Moore with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department counts marijuana plants at a rural grow house in Twentynine Palms residence prior to cutting them down on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department detain residents at a rural grow house in Twentynine Palms after finding a pair of greenhouses full of marijuana plants on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Sgt. Rich Debevec with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department slices holes into the plastic covered roof of a greenhouse full of immature marijuana plants for ventilation at a grow house in a rural location in Wonder Valley on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department weigh drying mature marijuana plants as they confiscate them from a home in Twenty-nine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department prepare to cut some of the 507 immature marijuana plants growing at a rural home in Twenty-nine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department cut some of the 507 immature marijuana plants growing at a rural home in Twenty-nine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike Sgt. Rich Debevec with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department loads confiscated mature marijuana plants into a trailer at a grow house in a rural area of Wonder Valley on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
A woman cries after deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department raided her property containing 507 immature marijuana plants at a rural home in Twenty-nine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Sgt. Rich Debevec with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department cuts some of the 507 immature marijuana plants growing at a rural home in Twenty-nine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department attempt to enter a shipping container containing marijuana plants outside a home in Twenty-nine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department cut and confiscate mature marijuana plants from a grow house at a rural location in Wonder Valley on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
An Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department enters a shipping container containing 218 growing marijuana plants outside a home in Twenty-nine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
An Operation Hammer Strike deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department removes some of the 316 pounds of marijuana found within a residence in Twenty-nine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department detain residents at a rural grow house in Twenty-nine Palms on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department detain residents at a rural grow house in Twenty-nine Palms after finding a pair of greenhouses full of marijuana plants on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike Sgt. Rich Debevec with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department dumps some of the 316 pounds of marijuana found inside a Twenty-nine Palms home in the front yard on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike Sgt. Rich Debevec with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department dumps some of the 316 pounds of marijuana found inside a Twenty-nine Palms home in the front yard on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Operation Hammer Strike Sgt. Rich Debevec with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department dumps some of the 316 pounds of marijuana found inside a Twentynine Palms home in the front yard on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. Operation Hammer Strike was started by new San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus to combat illegal marijuana cultivation in the High Desert. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Growers of illegal marijuana, anticipating the arrival of a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department team from Operation Hammer Strike, left a message for them on a gate in Wonder Valley imploring them not to cut their plants. “We don’t feed drugs to kids,” it said in part. The deputies cut the plants, anyway. (Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)
Sgt. Rich Debevec, in charge of Team 3 this day, sized up the request. He said he was amused.
“We’re going to cut the plants,” he nevertheless announced. “Let’s go be (jerks).”
Team 3 is one of six groups created on Aug. 12 when the county Board of Supervisors passed an urgency ordinance that gave birth to Operation Hammer Strike, less than a month after Undersheriff Shannon Dicus was appointed sheriff.
“The biggest quality-of-life crime we have here in San Bernardino County is the illegal cultivation of marijuana, particularly in our rural communities,” Dicus said.
Residents there have complained of intimidation by gun-toting lookouts, damaged roads, a pungent smell and scarcity of water. Debevec said his deputies are finding more guns on properties as rivalries among growers escalate and roads that crumble under the weight of vehicles overburdened by heavy equipment being trucked in by growers. Some residents have told him they’ve had to dig their wells 70 feet deeper to reach groundwater because so much has been siphoned off to grow marijuana plants, which require several gallons a day each.
The operation received its name after Dicus told a community group that he wanted to throw a 10-pound hammer at the problem.
Before Operation Hammer Strike was created, the Sheriff’s Department had assigned four investigators and a sergeant to marijuana eradication, Debevec said. Now, 27 deputies are on the teams.
“We couldn’t keep up with the amount of calls that were coming in,” he said.
Even with the new program, staffing remains an issue. After busting a stash house in Twentynine Palms on Tuesday that had 316 pounds of marijuana processed and packaged for sale, Debevec said that was as far as the investigation into that case would go because of a lack of resources.
“(Residents) don’t care who Mr. Big is. They just know that the grow 100 yards up the road is making their lives hell,” Debevec said. “People are sick and tired of having their neighborhoods destroyed. This isn’t what they came out here for.”
‘It’s a game’
Under state law, each parcel — not person — is allowed to have six marijuana plants, and they must be grown indoors in a building that can be locked. People who are registered with the state can grow as many as 18 for personal use, Debevec said.
Those people are not the targets of Operation Hammer Strike.
“People think we are going after the two teenagers sharing a joint. We are going after the major producers,” the sergeant said.
Most of the nearly 180 properties raided and 1,000-plus greenhouses closed since the operation began are off dirt roads frequently marked by handmade street signs north of Joshua Tree National Park. Those homes are often ramshackle, including a Twentynine Palms residence that appeared patched together like an old pair of pants. But arrests and seizures have also been made closer to San Bernardino in Muscoy, Yucaipa, Chino Hills and Highland.
See also: Operation Hammer Strike by the numbers
The greenhouses seen Tuesday were surrounded by wooden fences or plastic tarps. At one location, two greenhouses were placed out of sight in a 6-foot-deep pit, but the wooden fence around it was a giveaway on a property where the dirt and shrubs nearby stretched for miles.
“Any sort of hard fence is suspicious,” Debevec said.
There are 1,270 properties on the operation’s list to be raided, and Debevec estimated that based on his experience, there likely are 1,000 more yet to be discovered.
“It’s a game,” said Debevec, 51, who has been uprooting illegal marijuana farms for 10 years. “They try to not get caught.”
Each of the six raids Tuesday began with a briefing. A team member would discuss intel gathered from previous scouting of the property such as where the greenhouses were located, where the living quarters were, the type of fences surrounding the location and the breed of dogs — these places always have dogs — and whether they were dangerous. (None seen Tuesday were vicious. They ranged from disinterested in the deputies to rub-my-belly friendly.)
Each approach is the same: “Sheriff’s Department! Search warrant!” are shouted. If no one responds, a deputy pulls out a round saw and cuts the lock off a fence or uses a battering ram to cave in the front door.
Deputies then enter the greenhouses. Mature plants ready for harvest are cut and dragged to a trailer. Younger plants are simply cut and left to wither. If deputies find a pesticide such as methamidophos, which is illegal in the United States in its most toxic form, the mature plants are cut and left behind because of the danger of exposure to the chemicals.
The work is breathtakingly efficient considering it’s tedious yard work — snip, snip, snip — and hundreds of plants are cut just above ground level in a matter of minutes.
Debevec describes his team as “tactical gardeners.”
The first stop Tuesday was a house in a residential neighborhood in Twentynine Palms where pot had previously been grown and now was being stored in every nook. cranny and bin to be sold — 316 pounds in all. The woman living there said she didn’t know who the marijuana belonged to and that unknown people came and went in the middle of the night to deliver it.
“That’s what they all say,” said Deputy Michael Lomboy, who cited the woman on suspicion of possession for sales.
Coral Palomino, 60, who has lived on that street for 11 years, scrunched her nose at the smell of the marijuana as it was being loaded into a trailer. She said Operation Hammer Strike “is fabulous.”
“Water is precious,” she said, “and for them to be stealing the water for their gain is not good.”
Tears and fears
At the next stop, a large, dusty property littered with cars in Twentynine Palms, one person ran as deputies approached. With nowhere to go except open desert, he quickly surrendered. This was a small grow with two greenhouses, which typically are about 20 feet wide by about 100 feet long, Debevec said. Some properties have had as many as 300 greenhouses, he said.
The deputies exchanged light banter with the three people they cited on suspicion of illegal cultivation but were mostly matter-of-fact. They came and went quickly in a convoy of 10 vehicles, most of them unmarked.
Then it was off to Wonder Valley, past a sign that read “Next Services 100 Miles.”
There, deputies broke down the front door of a one-room home that was littered with trash. That was the property with the two greenhouses in the pit. Hot air blasted out of them when the doors were opened. Deputies used knives to slash the plastic wrapping the greenhouses and then counted, photographed and cut about 800 plants before doting on the dogs.
One deputy lamented that the fence surrounding the pit spoiled the spectacular view of the mountains surrounding the Morongo Valley.
Though bothered by the effects of the illegal marijuana farms on the community, some of the deputies showed concern for an older woman they encountered on a property near Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. In two greenhouses, 500 young plants had sprung up around two crosses where pets had been buried.
The woman, crying with her head in her hands, sat outside a home that appeared stuck somewhere between undergoing patchwork repairs and imminent collapse.
“She was renting it out to some guy named Dave,” said Lomboy, who wrote an illegal-cultivation citation that left the woman relieved that she wasn’t going to jail. “She doesn’t get much from Social Security, and she needed the extra money.”
But there was no such compassion for the growers in Wonder Valley who had asked deputies to leave their plants alone.
For one thing, there were 765 plants in the two greenhouses, and one would have to be completely cleared of mature plants. But not until cumbersome nets covering them — “the bane of our existence,” Debevec said — were removed so deputies wouldn’t become entangled in them.
After the plants were cut, one deputy suggested that they respond to the growers’ handwritten plea. So Deputy Ricardo Rodriguez pulled out a black marker and wrote one word in large letters on the back of the gate:
“Oops.”