December 16, 2022
By News Director Jared Atha
Sheriff Derek Manning said that he and his deputies, along with troopers from OHP’s special operations troop, assisted Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics agents in a raid of a grow house between Sayre and Elk City Wednesday morning. Manning said the raid, based on an OBN warrant, netted a surprisingly large number of plants and processed marijuana based on the size of the operation.
“There were only two metal buildings and two plastic hoop houses on the property, and the hoop houses were inactive due to the cold weather,” Manning said, “So we were expecting maybe two or three thousand plants. But those metal buildings were both packed with crop. Also the residence was full of small plants and processed marijuana.”
Five people were initially detained while officers searched the property, located at 11324, N1920 road. One person was later booked into the Beckham County Detention Center.
Manning said the individual arrested gave OBN agents the name of Huageng Ye, but when jail staff ran his fingerprints, they came back to a different name. “It appears he has one or more aliases, but he is being held on a $250,000 bond for trafficking illegal drugs and aggravated manufacture of CDS,” Manning said, adding that Ye could also be facing federal charges for an AR-15 that was found in the residence.
The Sheriff said that about 135 pounds of processed marijuana were found along with approximately 6,941 plants. “A rough value estimate is that each plant can produce about a pound of processed marijuana, and each pound sells for around $800,” Manning said. “That means what we confiscated and destroyed today represented more than $5.6 million in illegal drugs.”
Manning said OBN also seized a vehicle and the weapon from the property.
The search warrant was secured based on a traffic stop made near El Reno by a trooper with OHP’s Special Operations troop. That stop netted approximately 40 pounds of illegally trafficked marijuana that was sourced to the grow in Beckham County. “It’s very satisfying to see all of our agencies working together to combat the illegal trafficking and production coming from some of these grow houses,”Manning said. “There was also a DEA agent on the scene reviewing information for federal charges, so these crimes are being taken seriously at all levels. I’d also like to thank county commissioner Tate Finnell and his crew for helping us with the destruction of the plants. Our county commissioners have all been ready to help every time we do one of these raids.”
The sheriff said he expects such raids to continue, but he also hopes the legislature will do what it can to rein in the proliferation of illegal grows.
“Usually these grows just produce nuisance calls for our deputies, but we’ve had a shooting incident at one of the grows in our county, and, of course there was the recent quadruple homicide at the grow in Kingfisher County,” Manning said. “When you’re dealing with criminal enterprises that are producing millions of dollars of product out of each small operation, it doesn’t take a lot of deep thinking to realize that violence could ensue. We’ve had deputies respond to blowing trash calls at a grow house to find men inside the property armed with rifles. Our policy is that we do not send a deputy alone to any grow house call because we don’t know if they’re completely legal with no bad intentions or illegal and nervous about why we’re there. We need much, much better laws to fight this problem.”
Copyright 2022 Paragon Communications. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.
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