The grow house next door: not popular with the neighbors
  • Andrea Bauer
  • The grow house next door: not popular with the neighbors

I first got the sense that the 10000 block of South Exchange wasn’t a good place to set up a grow house about three minutes after arriving.

I was there with two colleagues to look into the story of a professor and a school librarian prosecuted for growing nearly 200 marijuana plants in the basement of a modest single-story home. We noticed it was a neighborhood of neat frame houses and low-cut lawns and singing birds—the kind of place where home owners obviously take care of their property.

As if we needed confirmation, a huge barking dog burst out of a home on the corner, followed by a pug of a man—short and strong, with his hands on his hips. “I was about to shoot you,” he announced.