Operation Sweet Leaf

After most of a year investigating, police arrested sixteen people around the Denver metro today for involvement in a drug trafficking ring, and more arrests are expected. Officers, including SWAT personnel, raided a total of twenty-five houses (fifteen in Adams County, three in Broomfield, four in Denver, and one each in Weld County, Erie and Breckenridge. Unfortunately seven children were found during the raids and had to be placed in children protective services. North Metro Drug Task Force Commander Jerry Peters said, "the illegal pot trafficking crackdown did not involve medical marijuana. The probe targeted illicit growers who were shipping the pot out of state using the U.S. Postal Service."

Due to medical marijuana being legal in Colorado, a growing amount of people have used the low level of laws to hide operations such as this, pretending to grow for legal purposes, but then smuggling the product to other states. This was by far the biggest operation seen. Some of the homes raided, had nothing in them except for the marijuana plants and the required growth facilities, clearly having been bought purely for the purpose of this organization. The homes were located in upscale neighborhoods, in an attempt to avoid any kind of notice.

Operation Sweet Leaf, as it was called, was aided by the joint forces of the North Metro Drug Task Force, Drug Enforcement Agency, Internal Revenue Service, United States Postal Service, South Metro Drug Task Force, Boulder County Drug Task Force, Adams County Sheriff’s Office, Weld County Sheriff’s Office, Denver Police Department Narcotics Unit and Summit County Sheriff’s Office.