Cartels in the Mendocino Forest or Not?

PBS Newshour has a new report based in Mendocino. It is well worth the 7 1/2 minutes that it will take to watch.

http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf
Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.  For some reason they’ve taken off the video only the audio is available.

Here is an excerpt of the audio.

And Sheriff Allman says the Fernandez case is part of a wider pattern. A month later, his men were involved in another shooting, leaving Angel Farias, also from Mexico, dead…

MICHAEL MONTGOMERY: But Fernandez’s widow, Jessica, who grew up in Mendocino, says the cops overreacted. Mariano was just doing what everyone else does in these parts of California.

JESSICA WAGGONER, widow: Mariano didn’t have any ties at all with cartel or gang or anybody but to make money for his family. He was up there doing it by himself. He is not involved with any of that. And neither are any of the other guys that he was with.

MICHAEL MONTGOMERY: Ron Brooks, who leads a federally-funded drug task force in Northern California, doubts that. He says the scale and sophistication of the marijuana growing operations point to something more sinister.