Chicago cops seize pot plants: 'Big as Christmas trees' [2 football fields large]

A Chicago police helicopter discovered a patch of marijuana plants the size of two football fields, nestled among heavy brush along the Bishop Ford Freeway on the Southeast Side, authorities say.

The helicopter spotted the pot as it flew above overgrown wetlands near Stony Island and 105th Street around noon Tuesday.

“There are some good close shots in the vid. This stuff is not “ditch weed,”

I was on my Droid the first couple of posts. Didn't see the
vid. WOW! you are right! In a former life, I would have been
salivating at the sight of those.

SI “ends” at the river North of the Ford plant. The last section next to Lake Calumet is fear-inducing even in daytime.

I showed up to work one day (worked at the terminal there) and the CFD was putting out a car fire. Quite spectacular.

Stolen car...cripsy hooker.

Cannabis has a unique infrared signature and if an aircraft with that capability flew over that acreage in July they would have spotted it. Sometimes, if not most of the time, authorities will have detected it earlier in the growing season but they'll wait until it's mature enough to have a much greater street value than it would've had they busted it right then and there or the next day. Sometimes they fudge the street value of the plants they find. For example, a novice grower will have a plant or two growing on the porch or in a window box and a neighbor or (ex)girlfriend rats them out. The cops show up loaded for bear but nobody knows whether the plants are male or female. It's the female cannabis plants that produce the THC content when the plant flowers and that's what a grower wants but the cops and neighbors don't really care. The neighbor may be ignorant but the cops aren't. They'll proceed with the bust as though they're taking down some kind of drug kingpin but then the plants turn out to be male or just immature to the point that the ACTUAL street value is next to nothing. Once they have court case, they'll exagerrate the estimated street value even though they know that the plant(s) couldn't yield enough TCH to get a fly high.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.