Police Crash Local Grow Operation - One Detained

East Bay Regional Parks police, supported by the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department, have located and raided a "sizable" marijuana growing operation in a remote portion of Las Trampas Regional Park.

A special enforcement team raided the camp this morning, detaining one man and sending another fleeing from the area. Police identified the man arrested at the scene as Policartio Gallegos, 63, a Mexican national living in Pittsburg.

Gallegos was booked into Santa Rita Jail on suspcion of cultivation of marijuana and is being held without bail on an immigration hold, according to Park Police Lt. Dave Dubowy.

Law enforcement officers siezed a little under 2,000 "high quality" plants with an estimated street value of about $250,000.

Police said a second "tender" is believed to have slipped through a net of approaching officers and was last seen in the Bollinger/Hunsaker Canyon area, possibly heading toward Moraga.

No weapons were found though the two men had hooked up a generator to a pump siphoning off water from a nearby stream. The grow site was spotted during an aerial overflight of the area in August, police said.