The Department of Public Safety is having another stellar drug-seizure month with a pair of big busts kicking off the fall season.
As a part of investigation by the agency’s Criminal Investigations Division into a “drug trafficking organization,” law enforcers raided two Austin homes (at 6812 Cromarty Lane and at 9600 Mountain Quail Road) last week seizing 643 plants and more than 40 pounds of harvested marijuana from a “sophisticated” indoor hydro grow operation.
Interestingly, however, no one has yet been arrested in connection with the operation, reports DPS spokesman Tom Vinger. But it would seem that isn’t because police don’t know who committed the crime: According to a KXAN story, tenants at the rental property on Cromarty Ln. are responsible for the grow operation there, reporters were told by the home’s owner, Becky Ta. According to Ta, the growers trashed the place. “One of my contractors, who has been in the business for 45 years, says this is the worst he’s seen in 45 years,” Ta said. (Presumably the contractor is talking about being in the construction business and not the pot-growing biz.)
The investigation, says Vinger, is ongoing.
Meanwhile, smugglers dusting off the oldie-but-goodie scam of stashing dope in a fake school bus got themselves popped by a DPS trooper on patrol just north of Laredo. The bus, painted to look like a United ISD kid mover, in fact contained just more than 5,400 pounds of pot. (Seriously, folks, give it up on the school bus as a stash place — as my colleague Lee Nichols points out, that’s the first place one would think to look.)
The driver fled the scene on foot. That investigation is also ongoing.
This article appears in October 9 • 2009.