Part 51, page 38

Transcript

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Marijuana 'gardens' raided

■ Narcotics experts hack through blackberry bushes on the Columbia River's Government Island to find and uproot 80 plants

By NANCY McCARTHY of The Oregonian staff

By air and by sea they approached Government Island on Monday, men in green sheriff's un- iforms, men in camouflage, men in the dark blue jump suits of the bomb squad.

As the National Guard helicopter hovered over the island in the Columbia River, narcotics and bomb experts approached in two boats.

In fields where cattle once grazed, authorities seized 80 marijuana plants, some chicken wire and a package of fertilizer.

National Guardsmen spotted three marijuana "gardens" as they flew over the 6-mile-long island near the Glenn Jackson Bridge and directed those who arrived by boat to the growing areas. Men armed with machetes climbed up steep, rocky hillsides and hacked their way through 12- foot-high walls of blackberry bushes surrounding the plants.

"Once we get under those trees, we don't know what we'll find," said Sgt. Brian Martinek, a member of the Multnomah County sheriff's spe- cial investigations unit.

Three weeks ago, a caretaker alerted them to the plants. The caretaker's tractor had hit an ex- plosive and flown into the air, and sheriff's dep- uties feared the marijuana patches were booby- trapped. But they found no explosives Monday.

Usually Martinek and his team of sheriff's dep- uties work indoors, ferreting out grow operations in basements, closets and barns. But at least once a year, they jump in the sheriff's River Patrol

Please turn to RAID, Page B6

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9/16-94

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A member of a raiding party uproots marijua- na plants grow- ing among the blackberry thick- ets on Govern- ment Island.

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DB Cooper-21142