Wholesale growers fight nursery thefts - Southern California - Brief Article

Home Channel News, Oct 8, 2001 by Brae Canlen

In Los Angeles, a special detail from the Paramount sheriffs station shut down at least one group of Southern-California plant thieves. A license-plate number copied down by a nursery employee led law-enforcement officers to an empty lot in Ontario, Calif. "We did surveillance for a week in the rain," recalled Detective John Snapper, whose patience paid off when a truck finally showed up. Investigators watched as containers of flax (a ground cover) were unloaded and bare-rooted palms were replanted into trash bags. The plants were later taken to a "rundown nursery" in Riverside County, according to Snapper. Sheriff deputies arrested both the thieves and the nursery owner who received the stolen goods.

Nearby growers who had filed theft reports were brought to the Riverside nursery; several identified their plants by color, size and type of dirt. Snapper admitted that, prior to the investigation, he didn't know much about plants or the wholesale nursery business. Unfortunately, the knowledge that he gleaned is of little use at his current assignment. Shortly after he turned the Riverside case over to the district attorney's office for prosecution, Snapper was transferred to narcotics.