Cane fields, Cannabis and Mosquitoes

Ever had a mosquito buzzing in your ear? It’s annoying right? So, imagine a few thousand mosquitos buzzing in your ears, that’s what I was dealing with. The buzz and screech so loud that you can’t hear anything else.

Sugar cane farmers like to flood irrigate their crops; it makes it so easy for them. But if you find yourself sitting close to a cane field at night then you don’t appreciate the ease that their irrigation method brings. Mosquitos also like the flood irrigation because warm weather and water makes a perfect breeding ground for them.

Now there are things you can do to minimize the impact of mosquitoes, like insect repellent or mosquito netting. These were both things that we had expected Detective Dave Craddick to grab when we were preparing for this job, but he didn’t.

So here I sat, with Dave and Detective Brendan West unable to think because of the constant “wheeeeeeeee” in my ear. Why are three drug squad detectives sitting in an irrigation shed next to a cane field without mosquito netting or insect repellent? Well that’s an easy question to answer.

A week earlier a local Detective had contacted me, knowing that I had worked this area when I was in uniform. A local farmer had come across a heap of cannabis plants in his sugar cane and he had seen a well-known drug grower coming to his cane field at 7 o’clock every night.

The name of the drug grower was Darren Possetto. I knew Darren, I knew of his previous criminal history where he had sold a suitcase of marijuana to an undercover agent. I knew his sons, because I had arrested them all in the past for numerous offences, including once where I ran down one of them on a motorcycle. Ok that is a slight exaggeration, by my partner on the night would recount the story to impress women, sometimes it even worked.

So, David, Brendan and I drove down and walked through the cane field during the day, we found a lot of plants, they were big! They were also getting close to needing to be harvested, because the sugar cane was getting close to needing to be harvested. If you’ve never walked through a sugar cane field, you probably don’t know how sharp their leaves are, but walking through them is like getting a few hundred paper cuts. So, you have to wear long sleeves and if you don’t want to look like you’re the worst shaver in the world, you wear a balaclava. So in stinking hot temperatures you’re wearing long sleeve clothing and have a balaclava on, a sure fire recipe to drop a few pounds.

As nighttime fell, and under cover of darkness, yes I said cover of darkness because that makes it sound a lot more tactical than “we waited till it would be hard to see us”, got dropped off at the field. Out of the three of us, David had the most experience in tactical situations, he had done about eight years in SWAT and then another four years in covert surveillance. His words were “If we were in SWAT, we’d be scattered through the cane fields, but I reckon that we just sit in the that irrigation shed over there”.

So here we are, sitting in an irrigation shed three of us, wearing full camouflage clothing, and balaclavas smoking cigarettes. Each of us had our Glock 9mm pistol, and I had the Ruger Mini-14 .223 rifle, the closest thing to a tactical weapon that our Police Force would give us. Certainly not the best weapon to have in a fire fight, but it did the trick when it came to intimidation value.

I looked at my watch and saw that the time was five minutes to seven. The informant had told us “He comes to my cane field every night at seven”. Now over my years in the drug squad I had learnt lots of things, but the most important was that informants are rarely spot on. If an informant said “it’s a green house” that meant the house could be any color from pink to black. If an informant said “It was a man in his early 20’s”, they could be aged anywhere from 15 to 70. Also, the most inaccurate word used by informants was “every”. I was not expecting Darren Possetto at 7 o’clock if he showed up at all.

We sat there in the dark, smoking cigarettes and talking about what I would best describe as crap. We talked about women, and Ken’s crappy keithy caps for cats (a brand we thought would take off), and we spent a lot of time paying out on David for forgetting the insect repellant and the mosquito netting. But then amid some of the most cerebral conversations known to man, Brendan put his finger up to his mouth in a “sshhh” motion and when we fell silent said “What was that? It sounded like a car door”.

At first I thought he was being funny, I glanced back at the hands on my watch and it was exactly 7pm. I peered around the side of the irrigation shed to spot an old orange Toyota, the car that Possetto owned, and walking from the recently closed driver’s door to the back of the car was David Possetto. What do you know? An informant that was bang on the money! Then the realization of “Crap, what do we do? How the hell did he manage to park right beside where we were hiding?” Obviously, he had turned off his engine at the road and coasted in.

We very quietly started to pick up our kit. Making minimal noise and getting to a new place of concealment was the goal. I led the trio and started to walk around the side of the shed, one step, two steps. Then as I got to step three, I realized I was standing face to face with our target. He had stopped, frozen still, faced with a man in full camouflage, a balaclava and a very big gun. In the few seconds we both stood there I wasn’t sure if it was his heart, I could hear beating over the mosquitoes or if it was mine.

I reached for my badge slowly and held it up. “Darren, Police.” I heard him breath for the first time and say, “Oh thank fuck!” I guess he had been thinking we were other people there for another purpose. It was not ideal finding him going in, it would have been much better if he was on his way out with freshly harvested plants, so we would have to build a strong case. So, we set to work searching him, the bag he was carrying and his car. In his bag we found torch, electrical tape, rope and secateurs. This seemed cut and dried.

But Darren Possetto wasn’t an amateur. After reading him his rights, I started the questioning, “So Darren, what were you doing here tonight?” Quick as a flash he responded, “I’m here to meet a woman to have sex with her”. Ok I was not expecting that. “Ok, who is this woman?” I followed up. Quick as he retorted “I don’t want to say, she’s married so I want to protect her privacy.” Ok this was going to earn my money. When I wanted to know why he had the rope and tape, it was “because she likes to be tied up”. Why the secateurs? “Sometimes I can’t undo the rope, so I cut them off.” I have to give it to him; he had his story lined.

Eventually he said he wasn’t going to answer anymore questions and I had to back myself so placed him under arrest. We got him back to the station and arranged for some uniform cops to guard the crop until we could pull it the next day. Lodged everything on him into evidence and got a couple of hours sleep.

The next morning, I woke looking like the Elephant Man, the mosquito bites certainly left their mark. When we went back to the cane field it was already getting hot. The plants were not in one clump, they were scattered so we had to basically go row by row to find them. It was only in the cold light of day that I realized that the plants had electrical tape on them, similar to the tape we took off Darren.

Not only was Darren quick on his feet when it came to answering questions, but he was quite the horticulturalist. His plants were some of the best bush weed I had seen in a while. You could squeeze the resin out of the giant buds. I would say years and years of practice to grown quality weed. David and I spent most of the morning pulling the crop. Brendan didn’t help, because he had a unique affliction for a drug squad detective, he had an allergy to cannabis. Even being in the room of someone who had been smoking a spliff his eyes would water, and his nose would run. In the end we had 45 pounds of quality dope to destroy. As the first match was thrown on the pile, I had images of a Cheech and Chong movie.

When all was said and done, Darren got convicted and did two years inside. What brought him undone? The tape in his bag was a perfect match to some of the tape on one of his plants, and when I say perfect match, I mean it was like fitting two jigsaw pieces together. At trial he tried to blame one of his sons. He claimed under oath that it was his sons bag, so his son must have been responsible for the crop. I know, Father of the year material right there. Alas, the jury bought none of it.

I ran into him a few years ago, I asked him if he’s still using tape on his plants. He didn’t say anything and just walked away.