The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office Cannabis Compliance Team found what it was looking for in some seemingly nondescript shipping containers on a property just outside Buellton city limits on Feb. 20.
Stuffed into black and silver garbage bags, the containers’ contents became the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: the conclusion of the team’s investigation into a cannabis business owner, who it says created false documents to obtain a temporary commercial cannabis license from the state and was storing and selling marijuana illegally.
After serving a warrant on the property, the compliance team seized more than 14,000 pounds of mixed cannabis trimmings, as well as 240 pounds of packaged cannabis, ready to be shipped and sold. All told, the haul was worth an estimated $1.3 million to $2 million on the street.
The operation was the latest of several highly publicized compliance team raids on unlicensed commercial cannabis operations in the first two months of 2019. Those enforcement actions come as members of rural communities in the county have been raising concerns about the impacts of a flood of cannabis grows where they live.
The county’s Cannabis Compliance Team was created in June of 2018, and it consists of law enforcement and civilian personnel spread out across myriad county agencies and departments, including the Sheriff’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office, the Office of the County Counsel, the Planning Department, the Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, and others. According to Deputy County Executive Officer Dennis Bozanich, the full Cannabis Compliance Team is made up of 23 positions total. At least 11 of those are law enforcement positions, including the staff from the DA’s office and county counsel in addition to the Sherriff’s Office personnel.
“They provide, actually, a really key function for us in making sure we stay compliant,” Bozanich said at a Feb. 26 county Board of Supervisors meeting.
While much of the team may work behind the scenes, the most visible fruits of its labors have been the recent actions to shut down unlicensed cannabis operations. In the first two months of 2019 alone, the Sheriff’s Office publicly reported at least six major raids within the county. Those range from shutting down an unlicensed manufacturing operation in Santa Ynez that was making and selling oils and concentrates, to raids on cultivation operations in unincorporated areas near Lompoc, Carpinteria, and Buellton. Often those grows were shut down because the owners or operators were either totally unlicensed or had provided false or fraudulent information to obtain a license or permit from the state or county.
The recent enforcement actions were good news for Tepusquet resident Renee O’Neill. She’s one of many residents in unincorporated areas of the county who have been vocal with their concerns about the impact of commercial cannabis in the county. She and other residents from areas such as Buellton, Santa Ynez, and Carpinteria have appeared at multiple board meetings asking the county to address not only illegal and unlicensed commercial grows, but even permitted cultivation operations that flout noise, lighting, odor, and other regulations.
“We are really encouraged to see the enforcement job the team is doing under these circumstances,” O’Neill told the Sun.
However, O’Neill said she believed the county needed to go further. Specifically, she wants to see the county beef up the number Sheriff’s Office personnel on the compliance team. She noted that while Bozanich said there were 11 law enforcement-related personnel currently assigned to the team, just six were actual sheriff’s detectives—far fewer than she believes are needed to address the illegal cannabis activity in Tepusquet and other areas within county jurisdiction.
“I do think that they are doing an amazing job considering they are working with one hand tied behind their back,” she said. “The demands of the enforcement team have increased exponentially, and I think having just six detectives is inadequate.”
O’Neill raised the same issue at the Feb. 26 meeting, where the board discussed how to allocate revenues from its commercial cannabis tax measure, which does fund cannabis enforcement. O’Neill and other residents also wrote letters to the board urging them to use most, if not all, of the revenue to continue or step up enforcement.
Further increasing the compliance team’s staff could result in an additional increase in enforcement operations. At the Feb. 26 meeting, Assistant County Executive Officer Jeff Frapwell noted the connection between the recent raids and the board’s December 2018 decision to add personnel to the compliance team and augment the sheriff’s existing narcotics team.
“So I think what you’ve seen is the team working together in a focused effort, and they’ve been having great success,” he said.
Staff Writer Chris McGuinness can be reached at cmcguinness@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Mar 7-14, 2019.