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Criminals Using Drones To Find Cannabis Farms and Steal Crops
schwit1 (797399) writes "There has been a huge surge in the number of hidden cannabis farms across Halesowen, Cradley Heath and Oldbury, towns on the outskirts of rural Shropshire some seven miles from central Birmingham. They require hydroponic lights for the marijuana plants to grow – and the huge amounts of excess heat given off make them easily spottable for a would-be criminal with a drone carrying infrared cameras. One such man says that after finding a property with a cannabis farm he and his crew either burgle or 'tax' the victim."
... to legalize and regulate.
In the old days, criminals would just follow others out or use dogs trained to sniff out other peoples grow ops in some farmers field, woods/back wood lot/etc. They're just going hi-tech, nothing to see in that sense.
Om, nomnomnom...
"They require hydroponic lights for the marijuana plants to grow"
What the fuck is a hydroponic light? Are we talking sonoluminescence or what? That's gotta be inefficient.
You mean an HID light, which produces tons of heat and is easy traceable from both ballast noise and heat.
Shoulda gone LED, suckers.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The development of anti-drone weapons is the next step. Small radar-guided missiles the size of a bottle rocket used to destroy "enemy" drones. Or "fighter" drones armed with heat-seeking missiles. It could add a new dimension to the phrase "too close for missiles, switching to guns".
Of course, as someone has already pointed out, legalizing pot is the best solution. Then the pot growers and the thieves can kill each other off.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
This will lead to thousands of drug enforcement pilot jobs getting offshored to afghanistan where militants can remotely fly drug search drones around England for 100th of the price of a guy in a Cessna.
if they were decent farmers they would not have a problem with the heat,use it for something, i feed my warmed,cleaned air from mine (very small) into my flat and now have under-floor heating and warm air heating,all controlable from anywhere with with internet/mobile coverage. i pay full cost of my electricity,no mucking about with meters etc and same unit also helps make some cash to pay for itself by having orchids etc in room as well and produce good stock early or out of season so sellable at premium prices,also fresh herbs and salad veg as well as my weed. kind of thing that would be much simpler,easier and safer if folk could self-produce,i only ever grow 6 plants,3 each for myself and partner.we have not had to do any buying of weed for years now,so no cash to criminals,we smoke all we grow,so no dealing,probably the only cash i have made for criminals are the ones who use hydro bit shops as fronts for their farms etc and i have bought lamps,feed etc from. legalise self production (3 plants per person) and that would probably do away with 50/75% of the criminality involved. if legalised,look at the amount of tax they are raiseing in usa + extra taxable profits for energy use and less theft also less house fires (mine is regularaly checked by
You can easily legalize MJ and continue your money-generatin war on all the other drugs. It's like a token gesture to the people to make them think the government has given them something, while at the same time pacifying them even further. Win/Win (for the government).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Halesowen? Cradley Heath? Oldbury? Shropshire? Where are these towns, Middle Earth?
the Colorado Government is already at it with their right wing propaganda
Colorado is (narrowly) governed by the Democrats, not right wing. The Democratic governor is trying to slow down states from legalizing, despite it being a roaring success for everyone.
In fact what you'll find these days, is that most right-wing people lean libertarian - which is exactly why the people of Colorado (who lead independent/to the right) were perfectly fine legalizing something so many people did all the time anyway.
Look to the Democrats to shut it down... They are the ones that need the massive funds the government gets from the war on drugs to help fund lots of other progressive measures.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Many growers have been doing this for years. Its not a big deal. You dig out a big hole in the ground, line it with concrete, throw a roof on it, and then pile dirt on top of the roof. No infrared signature.
You can even put it under your house or another greenhouse that has vegetables and flowers. If anyone quizzes you about all the materials you say its for that.
There is an issue with the smell. Nothing you can really do about dogs besides creating a hermetically sealed compartment that has very serious airfilters. Which is sort of the Walter White solution.
Anyway, build underground... its easy and works.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
First, what is a 'hydroponic light'??? I grow (more than just cannabis too) and have never heard of this? I can't imagine there'd be "huge amounts of excess heat" if the light was 'hydroponic' (read: water cooled lighting), sign me up for some of those after the initial test phase :) ... Second, how is there "huge amounts of excess heat"?? How big are these operations? Do they have 10 600W HID's glowing AT THE ROOF?? I've done everything from soil and hydro to gravity systems and fog-ponics, the MOST my rooms EVER heat up is a few degrees (2 to 5) ... if ANYTHING you would see that my growing areas are COOLER than other spots ... HEAT KILLS PLANTS and breads mold!
I'm not buying a lot of this story; the original article didn't mention anything more than 'some 33 year old dude claims he's stealing bud using a drone and an IR camera`
Except for that's not how it's panning out in places like Colorado and the Netherlands, where it's largely smaller growers who are making money....
Monstar L
According to a newspaper article in sweden (translated)
Drug dealers have set up webcams to be able to monitor police activity in the area.
Except for that's not how it's panning out in places like Colorado and the Netherlands, where it's largely smaller growers who are making money....
The Netherlands here. Not quite. We have this utterly silly situation where the selling of mj is sort of legal, up to a certain weight and only in designated establishments (the famous coffeeshops). However the growing and distributing is quite illegal.
The mom and pop growers are entirely insignificant compared to organized criminals. The latter produce way more than local demand, so much of that is exported.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
These are noteable for being a few of the places in the UK where the pronounciation actually reflects the spelling.
Big enough to raid, that's thousands of watts. And that heat ends somewhere.
The best answer would be a Net Gun.
From market or DIY. That's $400 or $60-$80.
I think many of the catched drone parts can be salvaged, after the fall.
If I understand you correctly, any marijuana sold at Dutch coffee shops must then have been either grown illegally or smuggled into the country?
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
That is correct. Like I said, an utterly silly state of affairs. So the output of these coffeeshops is legal (provided they respect the weight limits, don't sell to underage visitors, etc) while their inputs aren't.
The way it is now (but this is being debated constantly) we are basically not enjoying the major potential benefit of decriminalisation, which is taking the wind out of the sails of organized crime.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Actually, if you read the original story this is just one man talking, and there's a pretty good chance he could just be spinning a yarn for a journalist. Drone aircraft are rare here in Britain, and thermal cameras are similarly rare and expensive to buy (the thermal imagers fitted to high-end BMW cars are about the cheapest such units).
All UK police forces which operate helicopters (which is pretty much all of them) have a stated policy of keeping the thermal image camera turned on whenever the helicopter is in flight, and the operator has standing orders to note the location of any unusually warm buildings for later assessment by ground units. This is likely where this man has got his idea from, but I seriously doubt that he is actually putting it into practice.
Something like this?
THE SHROPSHIRE SLASHER!!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I wish. That one is short wave infrared sensitivity and doesn't help looking for heat, you need long wave infrared sensitivity, I think something in the range 8-14nm wavelength. You need something like this one used in the FLIR one. The FLIR Lepton cores.
http://www.flir.com/cvs/cores/...
The people who are the real problem are the criminals. The only way to resolve that issue is by cutting them out of the market.
The only other problems are a public health issue. You'll have more cases of people driving under the influence, and smoking in general increases the cancer risk of the population. Now whilst those are credible issues, they're no worse than the legalisation of tobacco & alcohol. In fact, you could argue that tobacco & alcohol are worse due to their higher incidence of addiction & the latter's habit of causing an increase violence.
Drugs would no longer be grown by organised criminal gangs.
They would be grown by respectable businessmen who have no problem with killing 50% of the people who buy their products while deliberately making them more addictive.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I've seen a number of indoor hydroponic installations. They all seem to have gone to LEDs. And these are for food production (exotic herbs, vegetables, etc.). What with the big money in pots grows, the extra investment should be a no-brainer. So much for the heat signature giving the location away to thieves or the local constables.
Yeah, I've heard the arguments that LED lighting isn't 'natural'. But some of the food farmers using these are on the cutting edge of holistic organic naturaopathic bullshit. And they don't seem to have problems with it. Stuff grown for sale to the local highscholl stoners should be a no-brainer.
Have gnu, will travel.
AFAIK you can grow hemp for fiber legally in the Netherlands. I would not be surprised if that is how people got the cannabis in the first place.
Is the law on cultivation actively enforced or not? If the law is only on paper but not enforced it might as well not be there.
I'm not a fan of marijuana, but I also don't see the point of locking people up. They're stupid yes, but dangerous? Maybe if they were already unstable to start with or have a history of disregarding the law. People who simply sit in their homes smoking pot and occupying the couch don't hurt anybody and it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay for their incarceration.
Drug war rhetoric aside, most of the people sitting in their homes smoking pot do not end up incarcerated if caught. For simple possession, in most cases the offender is cited and released. They go to court, pay a fine and probably have to go to a mandated drug class. It's great for the police and courts - a bunch of revenue and seized property which they can use to arrest more people to shakedown.
Enigma
AFAIK you can grow hemp for fiber legally in the Netherlands. I would not be surprised if that is how people got the cannabis in the first place.
Possibly so, at first. However, these days the strains used for industrial use (rope, clothes, paper) are almost a different species from the ones for, um, recreational use. In fact, some of the mom and pop growers specifically do so because they find the stuff from the coffeeshops too potent.
Is the law on cultivation actively enforced or not? If the law is only on paper but not enforced it might as well not be there.
Yes, it is actively enforced. Everything over 5 plants constitutes a rather serious offense, and people do get caught.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
and in England, where this story obviously hails from, the Acme Boobytrap Catalog will start getting a lot more orders. I should think scimitar installation and bear traps will be big. yes, new technology creates business!
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
If they were able to increase their profits from other drugs at a whim, why would they wait to incur marijuana losses before doing it? Why wouldn't they just do it now?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
For all of the badness of Philip Morris, I think I'd still rather they be running the show than the guys who kidnap busloads of people, rape them or make them fight to the death, and then bury them in the desert.
I don't think that's just personal squeamishness talking. It may very well be that the sociopaths who did bad stuff for the cigarette companies are just as evil as the sociopaths who run the cartels. But they do seem to control themselves a little better when they can make tons of money by staying in the law's good graces.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
And they do. Except on drugs. And media regulation. And pornography. And abortion.
The only one of those things that most people "leaning to the right" I know disagree about ever, is abortion. That's still a hot topic which society has not figured out an answer that pleases everyone, and probably never will.
But all of the other things? Please. Modern libertarians are not not for heavy regulation on anything, much less drugs... I personally think legalizing all drugs is the only sensible thing to do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think abortion should be allowed twosome degree. But this argument has a problem:
it should be possible for everyone to at least agree that it can't happen before there is brain with some level of function. No brain, no problem!
When you buy a lamp without a bulb, do you throw it away before you plug it in because it's not emitting light?
Or instead is some value placed on the container before it's switched on, because of inherent capability...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Philip Morris and the others sell a product that kills large numbers of the people who use it. They know this, but attempt to prevent other people finding out.
They research how to make their product more addictive, and sell the more addictive versions as being "low tar" while knowing they are just as dangerous as the old versions. They simultaneously deny that their product is addictive.
They have a history of deliberately aiming their product at children,
When governemnts attempt to convince people not to use the product by taxing it they engage in illegal smuggling to make tax-free product available to addicts.
How do you measure evil? In terms of the number of dead the tobacco companies make the drug cartels look like girl guides.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Let's say we go after the bastards, then. Make tobacco illegal and drive them underground. We could outsource the production and distribution of tobacco to Los Zetas and it would be a net win, right? At least that terror Philip Morris would be out of the picture.
To some extent, I measure how threatening they are by how dangerous they are to me as a bystander. I'd much rather see a major cigarette outlet near my house than an illegal marijuana distribution center. I can avoid most of the problems with a cigarette outlet by simply not going in. Not so much with the drug import hub.
We seem to have managed to neuter them pretty effectively by taxing cigarettes and making the public aware of just how bad they are for us. It looks like smoking is down about 60% in the US just due to minor regulation and social trends. Our approach with other drugs doesn't seem to be following the same trend.
Finally, measuring "evil" in absolute numbers is fraught with problems. If all we care about is number of dead rather than how they died and why, we'd be pounding on GM's door too. And of course, I don't think we Americans would be so unconcerned about the drug war if it was our country that they were turning into a failed state. Deaths notwithstanding, the total collapse of law and order in a democracy is something that should be talled on the "drug cartels are bad" side of the ledger, even if it's not our country they're doing it to. Duffel bags full of the heads of police officers and elected officials in some foreign country aren't a really big deal for us, so we tend to turn down the knob on "evil" when we assess it.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
For the same reason corporations wait until being fined before passing it on to their customers: they're just too nice to try and profit more than their fair share.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Water cooled lights. End of problem.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Exactly. I've got a 55 gallon freshwater, using a single 50w 6500K panel (I'm only driving it at half power.) Everything is well-lit and the plants grow so quickly I'm having to remove an entire jungle every time I'm changing the water.
And anyone with half a brain knows they can just go to the manufacturer direct in most cases and get what they need. They have no qualms selling to you at the price they give to wholesalers and retailers. None.
On the other hand, finding someone that knows EXACTLY what you need (my job) per a given situation is not easy, which means most people are still stuck listening to the marketing of fly-by-night ebay companies and less than reputable LED grow light companies that claim to have patents when they're just reselling stuff from China.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Cops are just thieves with uniforms.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The cops go looking just before dawn. When the lights have been on all night and the air is coldest. Only a moron would go looking in the middle of the afternoon.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Opportunity costs, mostly.