Wholesale growers fight nursery thefts - Southern California - Brief Article

Owners in Southern California have lost thousands of dollars worth of plants and containers

SAN GABRIEL, CALIF. -- Thieves who broke into Norman's Nursery this summer took a few plants, tools, stakes and $10,000 worth of one-gallon containers. Nursery owner Nancy Webb never discovered the thieves' identities, but the destination of the plastic pots was no big mystery. Who else but another commercial grower could use 18,000 empty plant containers, she asked.

Theft is a fact of life in the wholesale nursery business, given its acreage and its tendency toward operating in remote locations. But in Southern California, the problem escalated beyond a few plants here and there. Commercial growers, frustrated by continued losses, are coordinating investigative efforts with police agencies and each other. But many feel stymied by the precise nature of the thefts, which often bear the marks of someone working within the industry.

"They knew exactly what they were stealing," said Mike Jensen, owner of Parkway Nursery in Carlsbad, Calif. Jensen lost 26 boxed Kentia palm trees last June, each one valued at about $350. It happened in the middle of the afternoon at his new 11-acre growing facility. A week later, thieves visited Parkway's other location and helped themselves to $1,000 in Queen palms. These trees were yanked out of their 15-gallon containers.

Jensen figured he might be able to recover the Kentia palms, so he called on other nurseries to see if they'd been been approached by the thieves. His search turned up nothing. "I ran around like an idiot for three days, trying to find them," Jensen said. "[Now] I think they went right into the ground."

Landscapers supplying job sites top the suspect list of several growers interviewed for this story, as do swap-meet vendors and guys who drive through new housing developments in Southern California, selling palms out of the back of their pick-up trucks. The spike of incidences in Orange and Los Angeles counties has led the Nursery Growers Association, a group of 70 nursery owners throughout California, to consider the possibility of an organized ring. The NGA has formed a task force and plans to offer a reward program. A meeting addressing the problem was held by the organization on Sept. 24 in Orange, Calif. More than 40 growers attended, many of them targets of recent thefts.

"Every week, somebody is getting ripped off," said Webb, the grower who lost 18,000 plant containers. An NGA board member, Webb is trying to persuade other nursery owners to be on the lookout for unfamiliar suppliers offering terrific deals. The NGA is also working with local law enforcement agencies that investigate nursery thefts. But Webb admitted that most cases stand little chanceof being solved.

"The police have a hard time helping us," Webb said, explaining the difficulties of tracking stolen live goods. "How do I prove that it's my plant?" she wondered. "It doesn't have a serial number."

Prevention efforts inadequate

Jackie Cruz, a crime-prevention specialist with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, faces a related dilemma. "Law enforcement does make [stolen plant] recoveries, but how do we know where they go?" Cruz asked. The sheriffs department must also deal with evidence storage, a complicated task if recovered goods happen to be a dozen or more palm trees.

Mostly, Cruz tries to coordinate efforts among regulatory and police agencies on a state and local level. She also advises nursery owners on theft prevention, a particular challenge for nursery owners. Many are located in isolated areas where fences serve as a mild deterrent to theft. Security guards would be an expensive option, especially for growers that use multiple locations. Bright lights that would be left on at night would invariably draw complaints from nearby neighbors.

The thieves who stole $6,000 in palms from Lockyer Growers this summer brought their own illumination with them. Owner Lynn Lockyer, who lives on the Bonsall, Calif., property with his wife, heard about the floodlights from his neighbor, who saw several men loading trees onto a white flatbed truck. She assumed that the nursery had a crew working late that Saturday night. The Lockyers slept soundly while the thieves emptied their grounds and shade houses of Kings, Queens, Sagos and Pygmy Date palms.

"These guys were pretty clever but not too intelligent," said Lockyer, referring to all the empty containers that they left behind. "Two-thirds of what they ripped off can't be barerooted for more than an hour."

Law enforcement takes notice

Like other growers interviewed, Lockyer ticked off a list of local nursery thefts that he's heard about. Since thieves typically come back a second and third time, Lockyer installed a $6,500 alarm system that, so far, has protected his stock. He also did a little spade work when he learned of a Riverside County supplier selling palms. Really cheap palms.

"The place had no signs, and it was hard to find," Lockyer recalled. The owner wasn't on the premises, but there were plenty of palms around. Lockyer also noticed a white flatbed truck that matched the description of the vehicle at his place. He reported it to an investigator at the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, which has begun a surveillance operation, according to Lockyer.

In Los Angeles, a special detail from the Paramount sheriffs station shut down at least one group of Southern-California plant thieves. A license-plate number copied down by a nursery employee led law-enforcement officers to an empty lot in Ontario, Calif. "We did surveillance for a week in the rain," recalled Detective John Snapper, whose patience paid off when a truck finally showed up. Investigators watched as containers of flax (a ground cover) were unloaded and bare-rooted palms were replanted into trash bags. The plants were later taken to a "rundown nursery" in Riverside County, according to Snapper. Sheriff deputies arrested both the thieves and the nursery owner who received the stolen goods.

Nearby growers who had filed theft reports were brought to the Riverside nursery; several identified their plants by color, size and type of dirt. Snapper admitted that, prior to the investigation, he didn't know much about plants or the wholesale nursery business. Unfortunately, the knowledge that he gleaned is of little use at his current assignment. Shortly after he turned the Riverside case over to the district attorney's office for prosecution, Snapper was transferred to narcotics.

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