Coming soon to California parks: pilotless drones

The Forest Service is taking another step in surveillance of marijuana-growing operations: two pilotless drones that will scan for farms and prepare officers with surveillance information.

I did a story on the CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Plating) state teams that do surveillance and bust up farms, and I am sure the drones will help them... one of the team told me that the fly their helicopters overhead right now, virtually ensuring that growers bail on the farms before law enforcement actually comes in.

The concern about the farms has risen in recent years as the Mexican mafia has increasingly become involved in the pot trade, employing poor Mexicans to tend the crops. One officer told during an operation where they nabbed a grower at a site in Central California, the grower told authorities his boss had told him he was being assigned to a site in Arizona.