LOVE COUNTY, Okla. — Shortly after sunrise on July 22, a dozen or so police officers from across Oklahoma descended on a property about 15 miles north of the Texas border. They moved past the fence with the “No Trespassing” signs and the pink building with the aluminum roof toward a collection of hoop houses. They didn’t know much about the occupants, although the cops strongly suspected they were of Chinese descent.
“We pulled in like gangbusters,” recalled Love County Sheriff Marty Grisham, on a recent weekday afternoon. “The guy who spoke Mandarin got on the loudspeaker, and I don’t know what he was saying, but I'm sure: ‘Come out with your hands up,’ or that sort of thing.”
Ultimately, officers confiscated more than 2,300 marijuana plants with an estimated street value of $3.5 million, and about $65,000 in cash. Two men — Zhimou Chen and Chong Chen — were taken into custody and officials charged Zhimou with cultivation of an illegal controlled substance. Officials said the farm didn’t have a valid license, rendering otherwise legal marijuana into illicit goods.
Scenes like the one in Marietta have become routine in south central Oklahoma and other rural parts of the state in recent months. There have been similar raids in the nearby farming towns of Tishomingo, Gene Autry and Pauls Valley. In fact, the July raid on the Love County property was among the smaller enforcement operations in the area. The June raid in Gene Autry, for example, netted approximately 27,000 plants with a street value of $50 million. They also discovered about 45 workers living on the property, in what Carter County Sheriff Chris Bryant described as “horrible conditions.” Altogether, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics estimates that there have been at least five dozen raids of illegal marijuana cultivation operations since the crackdown began in April, a phenomenon that was largely nonexistent up until that point.