{"id":15035,"date":"2025-09-11T01:47:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T01:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/15035\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T01:47:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T01:47:08","slug":"hastings-cannabis-growing-operation-busted-by-police-who-say-it-was-just-about-to-be-harvested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/15035\/","title":{"rendered":"Hastings cannabis growing operation busted by police, who say it was just about to be harvested"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cThere\u2019s just over 200 well-propagated, well-produced plants. You can see they\u2019re coming into production now.\u201d<\/p>\n
James said inside the building were three different rooms used for growing, with 72 plants in each room, at different stages of growth.<\/p>\n
What remains of the grow operation in a commercial building in Hastings. Photo \/ Jack Riddell<\/p>\n
James said Hawke\u2019s Bay police were seeing this kind of activity more often and warned property owners to be \u201cmore mindful about who your tenants are, and what are they actually doing in your buildings?\u201d.<\/p>\n
The property had been leased three months earlier and the alleged perpetrators had built the rooms, and a loft, to grow the plants in that time, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly, these guys have modified the building, put in a mezzanine floor, filled it up with their equipment,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a huge cost to build it, and it wasn\u2019t here three months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
James said he believed police had busted the operation right before the growers were able to harvest their first crop.<\/p>\n
There was also evidence at the property to suggest the growers were \u201cstealing\u201d electricity to power lights and fans to aid the growing process, he said.<\/p>\n
How the grow operation was powered, police say they assume the growers were stealing power. Photo \/ Jack Riddell<\/p>\n
James said two people had been arrested after Thursday\u2019s discovery and charged with cultivating cannabis.<\/p>\n
A man who lived nearby, who did not wish to be named, said he had no idea anything suspicious was happening in the commercial building.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go past here every day, had no idea about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDesperate times, eh?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere\u2019s just over 200 well-propagated, well-produced plants. You can see they\u2019re coming into production now.\u201d James said inside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1443,74,5195,17287,3595,17285,3088,17290,226,17288,5194,1976,17289,702,5511,3242,17291,111,139,69,17286,9769,675,814,5659,213,17294,17292,165,61,17293,1455,6736,1299],"class_list":["post-15035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-about","tag-after","tag-be","tag-busted","tag-by","tag-cannabis","tag-commercial","tag-detective","tag-growing","tag-harvested","tag-hastings","tag-hawkes","tag-highranking","tag-it","tag-just","tag-large","tag-mindful","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-operation","tag-owners","tag-police","tag-property","tag-say","tag-sports","tag-suburb","tag-tenants","tag-their","tag-to","tag-uncovered","tag-warning","tag-was","tag-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}