Neighbor concerned about possible illegal pot grow in her neighborhood
There is a house on Amelia Way in Palm Springs that doesn’t look out of the ordinary from the curb, but if you walk just little closer you can smell something in the air.
“It smelled really strong of marijuana. Like amazingly strong,” said a concerned neighbor who reached out to KESQ and CBS Local 2. She did not want her name used.
The neighbor said the house on her street is being used for an illegal cannabis grow. The smell of pot is pungent and a person can hear the sounds of fans blowing air on the inside. The blinds on the windows are drawn and the windows are also covered with plastic on the inside.
The neighbor said no one lives in the house and the only person who ever comes by is the pool man. So she decided to contact the Palm Springs Police Department.
“I spent two hours just going back and forth and I thought if I went to the police station it would be better than calling but it went nowhere,” she said.
KESQ and CBS Local 2 reporter Joe Galli spoke with Sgt. William Hutchinson with the Palm Springs Police Department.
Hutchinson said cannabis grow investigations can take a long time, especially if it’s not obvious that the house is not being lived in.
“We will look at it. If we smell something and we think it is abandoned, we will try to contact the property owner on-site, and we will make all the attempts to make a call and say, ‘hey something is going on in there,'” Hutchinson said.
If there is an obvious safety issue, police can act accordingly to make sure no one gets hurt. With cannabis about to become legal for recreational use, illegal pot grows might not be the number one thing narcotics teams go after.
“Marijuana has fallen on such a low-priority scale, when we turn these types of investigations over to narcotics investigators, that might not be a huge priority it might not be something that we can get to right away,” Hutchinson said.
The Palm Springs Police Department is now investigating what is going on in the home.
If you think that there might be a marijuana grow in a house on your street, Hutchinson said you should give police a call and be patient with the investigation.
