‘Plague’ of black market marijuana resulting in violence, San Bernardino County sheriff says

The only anomaly in this month’s slayings of six people during a marijuana deal gone wrong in the San Bernardino County desert, Sheriff Shannon Dicus said, was the number of people killed.

“Anytime you have six people who are murdered, that’s shocking to your conscience,” Dicus said Monday, Jan. 29, in announcing the arrests of five people who he said gunned down the six before setting four bodies ablaze. “But I can tell you that since we’ve been investigating illegal marijuana grows, there have been a number of body dumps related to this across our county. … This is a problem and this is a problem that is not really being talked about.”

The suspects were arrested as investigators served search warrants in Apple Valley, Adelanto and a portion of Piñon Hills that is in Los Angeles County. They were taken into custody at a compound close to what authorities believe was going to be a marijuana grow.

All five were booked on suspicion of murder and were being held without bail.

They were identified as brothers Toniel Baez-Duarte, 34, and Mateo Baez-Duarte, 24, of Apple Valley; brothers Jose Nicolas Hernandez-Sarabia, 33 and Jose Gregorio Hernandez-Sarabia, 34, of Adelanto; and Jose Manuel Burgos Parra, 26, of Adelanto.

A 911 call from a man who said he had been shot but didn’t know where he was drew law enforcement to the remote crime scene north of Adelanto about 4 miles west of Highway 395 on Jan. 23, Dicus said. Dispatchers used cell phone data to locate the victims.

Four victims were identified as Baldemar Mondragon-Albarran, 34, of Adelanto; Franklin Noel Bonilla, 22, and Kevin Dariel Bonilla, 25, of Hesperia; and a 45-year-old man whose identity officials are withholding until his family can be notified. The two other victims have not yet been identified. Franklin Bonilla was identified as the 911 caller.

Dicus said the area of the crime is known for illicit marijuana. The department served 11 search warrants close by in 2023 and 40 just to the west in the Shadow Mountain area, he said. Beyond the growing, crimes associated with these farms include theft of water and electricity and threatening motorists who stumble upon the compounds.

Several factors have contributed to the violence that is not limited to San Bernardino County, law enforcement officers and other experts say.

California voters approved Prop. 64 in 2016, legalizing recreational marijuana and allowing the private growing of up to six cannabis plants for personal use. This law reduced the penalty for illegal cultivation from a felony to a misdemeanor, with a maximum penalty of $500. As a result, it has been difficult for law enforcement officers to discourage illegal pot farming.

Dicus for years has urged legislators to strengthen penalties for illegal cultivation, to no avail.

“By allowing that, we’ve unleashed a plague in California,” Dicus said. “And that plague is the black market of marijuana and certainly cartel activity by the number of victims that are out there. … We need to prevent these types of senseless murders from happening. We have it in our power. We just need to make an adjustment.”

The black market can exist because legal cultivation of marijuana has not kept pace with the new demand. Some farmers have said that’s because not enough cities and counties issue permits.

In San Bernardino County, only five cities allow cultivation, according to the state Department of Cannabis Control website: Barstow, Adelanto, Needles, San Bernardino and Colton. Cultivation is prohibited in all unincorporated areas.

In Riverside County, cultivation is permitted in 14 cities (but not the largest, Riverside) and all unincorporated areas, the website says. That didn’t prevent the fatal shootings of seven people working at an illegal growing operation in the rural community of Aguanga in September 2020.

Meanwhile, illegal growing has increased.

Ignacio Nuñez, San Bernardino County’s code enforcement chief, said in a presentation in 2022 to the Board of Supervisors that in 2019, there were less than 200 active code enforcement investigations of illegal outdoor growing. That figure increased to 800 in 2020 and 1,200 by mid-2021, Nuñez said.

Peter Hanink, an assistant professor of sociology and criminology at Cal Poly Pomona, compared the marijuana troubles to an escalation of crime when New York state increased taxes on cigarettes in the late 2000s. Merchants began illegally importing cigarettes to avoid paying taxes. Hanink recalled someone being accused of hiring a hit man to wipe out a dealer who was competing with his wife for business.

“You saw almost overnight this explosion in black market cigarettes. Why is this happening with something that you can get at a 7-Eleven?” Hanink said. “Whenever you have a high-priced commodity and you can’t meet demand, you are going to have some kind of black market, and you are going to have violence.”

Hanink said cartels are not necessarily violent and that illegal marijuana growers are probably not looking to cause trouble, at least initially. The strict definition of a cartel is an association of merchants that conspires to keep prices high and competition low.

“There will either be violence or you will have cartels,” Hanink said. “You can kind of reach some kind of peace where the different suppliers will agree. (They say) ‘You stay in your area and we stay in our area.’ Before that equilibrium is reached, you have a lot of push and shove.”

That could have led to the massacre near El Mirage, Hanink said.

“You certainly see people trying to send a message, trying to deter other competitors from entering the market, or you could be literally trying to eliminate your competition,” he said.

Dicus said the county is trying different strategies to knock out the illegal growers.

Operating honey oil labs, where THC — the ingredient in cannabis that makes a consumer high — is extracted; and bypassing electricity meters can be prosecuted as felonies, resulting in longer jail sentences than for illegal growing. Crimes for polluting the environment with pesticides can be prosecuted as well. And farmers can also be fined for violating county codes.

“Hitting them in the pocketbook has really been much more beneficial,” Dicus said.

Source: Orange County Register