San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus spoke about Project Hammerstrike in Joshua Tree yesterday (February 28). His appearance was part of San Bernardino Board of Supervisor Chair and local Third District Representative Dawn Rowe monthly open house meeting series at the Joshua Tree Community Center.
Dicus discussed a wide-range of topics, including growing up in Morongo Basin. But of particular note to our area was his thoughts on the effectiveness of Operation: Hammerstrike, an initiative that sought to dismantle illegal marijuana grows throughout the county, with many of them in Landers and Wonder Valley.
Sheriff Dicus: “We got completely inundated with illegal marijuana grows. Especially in this community, right? The board funded me for Hammerstrike and a number of things, we were able to knock it down. I can safely say that we actually had it knocked down to zero not too long ago, and it hasn’t gotten above double digits or anything like that. We’re mostly in the single digits because the board funded me for two other marijuana teams. It’s not perfect and I still play ‘whack-a-mole’ about knocking down some of these big grows, but it is not nearly as much proliferation of those grows that we were experiencing not long ago.”
