CHICAGO, Ill.--Chicago police confiscated up to $10 million dollars worth of marijuana plants.
From a helicopter, Chicago police and a Cook county sheriff's tactical flight officer spotted the plants covering the span of two football fields; some as tall as Christmas trees.
"We dropped altitude,” Ofc. Ed Graney, with the Cook County Sheriff's Office, said. “Next thing we know, we looked at what we thought were about a couple of hundred plants.”
It turned out to be a lot more.
Chicago police said they found more than a 1,000 of these marijuana plants in two different fields, just about ready to harvest.
Police also said that it's the largest bust in the city in years possibly ever.
The plants were about six feet tall, police said. “At this point, the estimated value of this is somewhere between seven and ten million dollars,” Lt. Michael Ryle , Chicago Police, said. “
Police said that they guess the crops were probably planted sometime in the spring.
A peek through the trees and the marshy area shows a campsite where a grower and dealer slept and ate, police said, to protect the scene.
Now the city will begin the task of pulling out the plants and burning them.
"The plan is going to be once we have a good path back there, streets and sans is working on a plan then to cut the plants down.” Supt. Garry McCarthy,
Chicago Police, said.
“We're going to have to bring them back out here, load them into trucks, and then take them to a spot where bomb and arson has --where it'll be destroyed; it'll be burned there."
