About 50 police officers and as many as 30 Forest Preserve District workers fanned into the 1,650-acre Crabtree preserve at 11 a.m. on Tuesday 24 July 2007, tearing down cannabis plants, dousing them with accelerant and burning the piles atop wooden shipping pallets as an Illinois National Guard helicopter circled above.[1] Federal agents joined local police in the burn, which officials said could take two days to finish.[1]
The grow spanned eleven to fourteen fields hidden in clearings in a heavily wooded area, with head-high plants in neat fertilized rows about a month from harvest, a sump pump and generator siphoning pond water for irrigation, and three campsites where the growers lived in tents.[1][2] A district intern researching foxes had stumbled on three men and the irrigation system on 10 June, and an air search on 29 June mapped the remaining fields.[1]
Officers arrested Bernardo Rangel and Jose Verra in camouflage clothing at the fields on 10 July.[1] Both were charged with felony cultivation of marijuana and criminal damage to land plus misdemeanor trespass; Rangel posted $40,000 bail and was released while Verra stayed in county jail.[1] Officials said the two did not appear to be the masterminds and the investigation continued.[1]
The street value of the crop could reach $10 million, a Forest Preserve District spokesman said.[1] The day’s count ran as high as 30,000 plants, and the later official tally exceeded 38,000 cannabis plants, the largest seizure on the region’s public lands that year.[1][2]
