Sonoma task force destroys 150,667 plants in June raids
Sonoma County narcotics agents with state CAMP support destroyed 150,667 young marijuana plants over six late-June days near The Geysers, Lake Sonoma and Mill Creek, topping the county's whole 2009 total.
🇺🇸 Near The Geysers, Lake Sonoma and Mill Creek, Sonoma County · California, United States
Sonoma County drug agents working with the state’s Campaign Against Marijuana Planting destroyed 150,667 immature plants over six days in late June 2010, more than the county’s entire 2009 take.[1]Three of those days with CAMP personnel yielded 145,467 plants from raids near The Geysers, Lake Sonoma and the Red Slide area of Mill Creek, while the county task force alone destroyed another 5,200 plants on private land, including in a vineyard.[1]
Sgt. Chris Bertoli, who runs the county Narcotics Task Force, estimated the crop could have yielded smokable bud worth $300 million at $2,000 a pound.[1]The county had seized 108,486 plants with CAMP plus another 40,000 on its own the year before, and Bertoli credited more calls from fed-up landlords and neighbors alongside ever-larger gardens.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The article, published in early July, gives no exact dates for the six raid days; 30 June stands for the end of the late-June campaign.
The same article reports a 123,302-plant week in Mendocino County and an expected 100,000-plant take in Lake County, separate operations left out of this report.
Only one source, a reprint of the Press Democrat article, could be opened for this event.
No verifiable photograph of the raided gardens was found.
California's Unified Cannabis Enforcement Task Force seized or destroyed 55,308 pounds of illicit cannabis and eradicated 108,226 plants between July and September 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom's office said. The quarter's operations across nine counties led to 14 arrests, nine firearms and $29,215 in cash, and brought the state's nine-month total to more than $230 million in cannabis.
Arrested 14Plants destroyed 108,226Cannabis 25.0873 t
Humboldt County sheriff's deputies eradicated about 3,102 cannabis plants and destroyed about 36 pounds of processed cannabis at two unlicensed grows near Alderpoint and Garberville on 5 and 6 October 2026. No arrests were made and the cases were sent to the District Attorney for review.
On 25 September 2026 New Mexico's Regulation and Licensing Department Enforcement Bureau and the Organized Crime Commission raided 102 Howell Road in Estancia, Torrance County, seizing and destroying about 6,300 mature cannabis plants in 21 greenhouses weighing an estimated 21,000 pounds. The case remains open for prosecution.
On 16 September 2026 U.S. Forest Service officers, Glenn County’s Major Crimes Task Force and a Forest Service helicopter team eradicated about 700 cannabis plants from an illegal grow in remote Mendocino National Forest. No arrests were reported.
