Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden is proud of his box.
Dominick Dijullio
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His box, a solid two-foot-by-two-foot cube, is a smorgasbord of drugs; clear plastic baggies loaded with pot, bundles of psilocybin mushrooms and tiny envelopes of cocaine.
"Even got some black-tar heroin," the sheriff says, disgust clinging to his voice.
The box is filled with the loot from one of the largest drug raids in Larimer County history. On August 23, Alderden led ten agencies and more than 150 officers who snuffed the 25th annual Colorado Invitational (better known as the Bongathon), a smokeout of epic proportions.
More than 2,000 hemp fans attended this year's event on a 35-acre ranch near Red Feather Lakes that belongs to Michael Davis of Lakewood. The weekend-long extravaganza, its organizers and attendees argue, was a private party cut short by over-zealous cops who still haven't received word from the frontlines that the war on drugs is over. "There were cops with their dogs running through, screaming, 'Pack your shit and go home,'" says Matt Zeisler, one of eighteen people who spent the weekend in the clink, charged with felony drug possession. "It was total delirium."
But the delirium began long before the first joint was sparked.
On August 20, the day that the Bongathon was to begin, Sheriff Alderden went to Larimer County court and requested an injunction to kill the party. Alderden argued that the thirty to forty portable toilets that had reportedly been delivered on flatbed trucks to Davis's Elk Meadows Ranch indicated a gathering of gargantuan size. And, he said, neighbors had complained mightily about previous Bongathons, which had flooded the area with people. Davis, along with co-organizer Christopher Lopez of Littleton, also appeared at the courthouse, where they acknowledged that a party was in the works but that everything was cool: All attendees had to be over 21 and in possession of a personal invitation. The county judge agreed with Davis's right to hold a private party, no matter what the number of guests. If Alderden wanted to stop the shindig, the judge said, he'd better prove it was open to the public.
"He left it to the discretion of the sheriff's office," Alderden says, "and we acted on that."
That night, Alderden dispatched three undercover officers to the front gates of Davis's ranch. Two officers were in their twenties; the third was in his fifties. Alderden waited in a squad car two miles down the road while his scouts got cozy with strangers. Within thirty minutes -- and after allegedly paying $40 per person at the door, which police say proved it was a public party -- Alderden says the trio of narcs found themselves grooving at what could have been an open-air Grateful Dead concert. Bands jammed from a stage, hippies dozed in bivouacs, and the undercover officers were, allegedly, offered hits of pot from a bong and helpfully advised that "the LSD will be here in the morning."
The three officers viewed the cordial offerings as illegal and quickly retreated to Alderden's squad car. What's more, they reported that alcohol was being sold from a booth near the stage and that their admission fee included "all the beer they could drink."
The distribution of alcohol without a license alone was enough to shut down the Bongathon, Alderden says. "The question was, do we do it when we have 2,000 drunk and stoned people in the dark, or do we wait until morning, when we have at least a semi-sober crowd to deal with?"
Alderden rushed back to his office and informed every enforcement agency throughout Weld and Larimer counties. "We didn't know how many people would respond until morning. It's a real remote area -- it's an hour and a half from town."
Meanwhile, revelers like Zeisler and his wife were unaware that eager cops were setting their traps. As night fell, a steady stream of cars, trucks and RVs entered the ranch. Zeisler, who is 29, works as a chef in a Washington Park restaurant and moonlights as a bartender. He and his wife were enjoying their only summer vacation. "I told my mom we were going camping," he says.
Zeisler picked up the free invitation through friends in the restaurant biz. Each year the underground invitations are printed and dispersed on the same basis and theory that dictate most party invitations: You invite people who are fun. Zeisler's laminated ticket, the size of a playing card, sported a rainbow and an identification number. At the ranch entrance, Zeisler says, doormen matched the ticket number to a master list to ensure its authenticity. Then he and his wife were ushered in past a sign posting the weekend's only rules: "No weapons, guns, or dogs without leashes." But Zeisler noticed that security was more lax than it had been two years earlier, when he attended his first Bongathon.
"It just wasn't as professional this year," he says.
That night, the Zeislers drove their red Ford Ranger pickup onto Elk Meadows Ranch, pitched a tent with about thirty other campers and set up for a good time. Zeisler smoked a little weed, listened to a parade of bands and drank some booze. He and his wife hit their sleeping bags at about 4 a.m.; he woke up four hours later, when his wife shook him and said, "You'd better check this out."
