[420 Girl]

Officers could smell the marijuana outside Tuesday afternoon as they prepared to raid Lincoln's seventh grow house uncovered since March 5.

Hours later and about two blocks away, police served another search warrant and discovered an eighth suspected growing operation.

Police recovered nearly 1,000 marijuana plants from both houses.

Inside the seventh house, at 2902 Starr St., members of the Lincoln/Lancaster County Narcotics Task Force found 232 marijuana plants, Police Sgt. Mike Bassett said.

"It's not the biggest one and it's not the smallest," said Sgt. William Koepke, comparing the operation with the others police had uncovered.

But, he said, "it's connected."

The second bust Tuesday occurred two blocks away at 2910 Orchard St., said Officer Katie Flood. The task force served a search warrant at about 7:30 p.m., seizing 731 plants.

After swarming the one-story house on Starr Street -- about a block from Clinton Elementary -- just after 2 p.m., plainclothes officers and members of the county's clandestine laboratory team pulled ventilation tubing, heat lamps and plastic pots from the back doorway.

They also took bags of harvested and live marijuana.

Bassett, head of the lab team, said the task force busted an "extensive, sophisticated grow operation."

The task force has found similar techniques -- electricity diverted around meters, rigged ventilation systems -- in the first seven houses, police said.

The sole purpose of the 2902 Starr house was to grow and harvest marijuana, Bassett said.

Bao V. Cao is listed on the Lancaster County Assessor's Web site as the owner and resident of the Starr Street house. He has not been implicated in the bust and could not be reached Tuesday evening.

"It's hard to tell who was living at these places at any given time," Koepke said.

Not including Tuesday's busts, police have seized more than 4,600 live marijuana plants from houses in Lincoln since March 5. Over the past decade, police had busted 34 marijuana growing operations, yielding 1,218 plants, according to Chief Tom Casady.

The plants would produce between $1.2 and $2 million if sold in one-pound quantities at Lincoln prices, Casady estimated.

Chien H. Nguyen of Lincoln, one of six people arrested in the recent busts, is part owner of a pickup parked behind the 29th and Starr house Tuesday. Cao also is listed as a part owner of the truck, according to the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles.

Neighbors said the truck often is parked behind the house. But, they say, they rarely see its residents.

On Halloween, the residents of 2902 Starr left candy on the front porch but didn't hand it out, said Kitty Abbott, who lives across the street with her family and grew up in the neighborhood.

"You never hear anything out of them," she said.

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