Detective Marshall Kanehailua prepares to be lowered to the ground during a helicopter exercise.

Arrest of relatives is a reality Narration by Advertiser Staff Writer Dan Nakaso Grower's arsenal Some of the weapons used by marijuana growers to protect their crops

HILO, Hawaii — As a boy, Marshall Kanehailua remembers dropping off his father at the old Hale Nani police academy on the outskirts of Hilo for a secret police operation.

Kanehailua saw dump trucks, Vietnam-era Huey helicopters, 50 to 75 federal and state drug enforcement officers and police from every island. At the end of the day, they would come back with tons of marijuana plants the size of Christmas trees they found growing in the open, spread across miles of Big Island land.

Today, Kanehailua is a Big Island vice detective who flies through the skies in smaller, quicker Hughes 500 helicopters, searching for small patches of 2-foot-tall marijuana plants sometimes hidden by foliage.

Kanehailua represents a bridge between the all-out, paramilitary assault of Operation Green Harvest and the leaner, modern version called the Counter Cannabis Field Operation. Where dozens of officers used to hike for miles following helicopters, 15 now fly in three helicopters, moving in and out to quickly destroy patches of pakalolo.

“In my father’s days, it was a big secret,” Kanehailua said. “Today, everyone knows when we fly. Word spreads pretty quickly in this community.”

Dale Fergerstrom, a Big Island police captain, was one of the original members of Operation Green Harvest when it began in 1976. In 1982, he was assigned to the Hilo vice unit as a detective. In 1991, he returned as the lieutenant in charge.

Each time he was assigned to the vice unit, Fergerstrom saw major changes in the growers’ tactics.

During the 1980s, as the population of Puna began to grow, growers went indoors and designed elaborate light, water and heat systems to cultivate millions of dollars’ worth of marijuana.

Some of the growers who stayed outdoors moved onto other people’s property to avoid having their own land confiscated. Volcanoes National Park soon became dotted with pakalolo patches guarded by armed growers.

“Workers couldn’t even get in, let alone visitors,” Fergerstrom said.

Federal sentences of five to eight years for growing in a national park pushed the growers back onto state, county and private land.

“You could literally fly over the national park and tell where the park boundary was because all of the marijuana plants were outside it,” Fergerstrom said.

Parts of the Big Island’s Puna district “were totally full of marijuana,” he said. “Every week we’d get calls from landowners, from Realtors, from hunters, saying they were confronted by someone with a gun while they were out there in the forest.”

Even his brother-in-law gave up picking maile after being shot at on three occasions.

By the late 1980s, federal, state and local narcotics officers were seizing more than 1 million plants each year. They were cutting into the industry, but large, sophisticated operations continued.

One was built into lava tubes in 1992, shielded by a series of lattice work on the outside. Two 100-amp diesel generators powered more than 100 lights and fans to exercise the plants. Police also found propane-burning heaters, systems for insecticides and photosynthesis and $1.5 million worth of marijuana.

In 1995, a group of Hungarian nationals designed a growing platform that held hundreds of plants and moved along a track system. When eradication helicopters flew overhead, growers simply pushed the platform into a shed and out of sight.

“We didn’t stomp out marijuana, but we have made the area safer,” Fergerstrom said. “There’s still marijuana being cultivated, but not nearly the volume. And the violence isn’t nearly the same. It was nasty.”

Growers have turned to smaller plants they can hide easily and move quickly. From April 1997 to June 1998, the Counter Cannabis operation seized 331,109 plants on the Big Island and made 100 arrests.

Today, police are focusing on arrests as well as seizures.

“We’ve got to send the message out: Not only will we pull your plants out, but we’re going to bring you to court,” Kanehailua said.

With growers hiding their plants on other people’s property, it’s difficult to figure out whom to arrest, said Lt. Henry Tavares. He is in charge of marijuana eradication for the eastern half of the Big Island.

“Nine times out of 10, the property owner doesn’t even know that marijuana’s growing on their land,” Tavares said. “So the investigations are a lot trickier.”

Police officers also are trying to win over residents who complain about the noise and intrusion from helicopters searching for marijuana. Paula Helfrich, president of the Hawaii Island Economic Development Board, says it’s about time.

“The marijuana advocates have the floor to themselves,” she said. “The police do not have either the funds, the support of the media or the money for a publicity campaign.”

Officers talk about spring-loaded animal traps and crude devices that can fire bullets and shotgun shells. They remind residents of the 1970s and 1980s, when telephone and power workers were fired upon, and innocent people were threatened by growers.

Kanehailua has dropped out of the sky and into marijuana patches littered with sharpened guava and ohia branches designed to maim drug enforcement officers like him. Still, Kanehailua sympathizes with the marijuana growers.

Some are just trying to earn extra money. Some are his friends. Some are his relatives.

“Not all of them are bad people,” Kanehailua said. “You’ve got guys who grow just to try and make their mortgage.”

Being raised on the Big Island and becoming a vice officer means that marijuana investigations will lead to friends and family. It’s part of living in a small town that has become Ground Zero in Hawaii’s 24-year war on marijuana.

Officers such as Kanehailua say it doesn’t stop them from doing their jobs. Three years ago, he arrested a cousin who grew up with him like a brother.

“I got no problem arresting my family if they’re doing illegal activities,” Kanehailua said. He was 8 or 9 when his 12-year-old cousin came to live with him after being caught growing marijuana.

Marijuana was everywhere when Kanehailua was a boy. But as the son of Mitchell Kanehailua, who eventually become a Big Island police inspector, “you knew where the line was,” the younger Kanehailua said.

Three years ago, his cousin crossed it.

Kanehailua served a search warrant on a house and discovered his cousin lived there. The cousin wasn’t home, so Kanehailua put the word out that he expected him to surrender.

“He called and came down, and I arrested him,” Kanehailua said.

Capt. Fergerstrom knows what it’s like to arrest family members caught up in the marijuana industry. He believes he’s related to every Fergerstrom in Hawaii.

“We all go back to the original Swedish guy who jumped ship in the late 1800s and married a Hawaiian lady,” Fergerstrom said. “No matter what I do as a policeman, I’m always going to come into contact with someone I’m related to.

“Just because I arrest somebody, if I can treat them with respect, and I do it according to procedures, I’ve got no problems.”