The use of stash houses in Arizona has residential robberies on the rise. Drug traffickers set up houses around Tucson, making neighborhoods the target of violent crime. This stash of marijuana, totaling 3,335 pounds, was seized by police in a home near Ina and Thornydale roads in February.
Residential robberies in metro Tucson are on a record-setting pace.
Funded by the growing trafficking of Mexican marijuana, smugglers are setting up stash houses throughout the metro area. Rival drug traffickers may target those homes, looking to steal cash or pot or to recover stolen marijuana that can be sold on the street for as much as $500 a pound.
What that means, law officers said, is that more innocent people are at risk of being hurt or killed because traffickers may mistakenly break into their home.|||111565412100540802|||Tuscon Home Invasions/Burglaries Jump
"You have incidents when the bad guys hit the wrong house, or the target moved out a month or so ago ... that's the real danger," said Pima County sheriff's Lt. Michael G. O'Connor, head of the crimes against persons section.