I-Team: Security a high priority for Illinois pot business

CHICAGO (WLS) -- With the marijuana industry set to boom in Illinois, questions of public safety are being asked from the coming legal sale of a long-illicit drug.

It is expected that Illinois' first licenses are will be issued to grow and sell medicinal marijuana this week. That raises questions of high security, how the so-called medicinal marijuana industry will be protected with 21 state-approved growers and 60 licensed dispensaries, 13 of which will be in Chicago.

Training will begin next month in Illinois by Blue Line Security, an upstart company that would provide protection to dozens of Prospective marijuana licensees.

Blue Line is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, where recreational marijuana became legal this year and medicinal marijuana has been for nearly five years.

In unmarked armored vehicles, the kind that will soon be seen on Illinois streets, Blue Line teams come to non-descript marijuana growing factories to make daily pick-ups of marijuana. The product is in zip-locked, serial numbered buckets.

The I-Team accompanied state-licensed delivery teams, most ex-military and former law enforcement, hand-carry the buckets into retail outlets that sell recreational or medicinal marijuana, and many are licensed to sell both. Some of the marijuana is displayed like a salad bar, with catchy names such as "Green Crack," or in a candy store setting, featuring marijuana-laced chocolate, cookies, gum drops and suckers.

The delivery buckets are unzipped and the contents checked. Store clerks and the armed guards then sign off on state paperwork.

"We verify everything that is manifested is actually in the buckets," said Matt Karr, Blue Line Protection operations manager. "We take it off, we transport it. It's in the same container we haven't touched it; we haven't manipulated it in any forms and it's ready to go."

A small fortune of weed stacked and locked in safes and from many marijuana retailers, security also picks up the proceeds; truck-loads of cash, sometimes $1 million a day on each run. And therein lies the security risk.

"There still could be someone coming in to rob this place, there certainly could be a mass shooting inside a grow that has 2 to 300 people in there. It's a target rich environment," said Blue Line Protection Group's director of training Grant Whitus.

A 25-year SWAT commander, Whitus is in charge of their training and will oversee security hires for his company in Illinois, where marijuana is a multi-million dollar business on the brink.

One unknown according to authorities: Are Mexican cartels curtailing their marijuana production as legal sales expand in the United States? And could cartel hit squads begin targeting American marijuana businesses?

"We've heard that, but haven't seen anything like that and hopefully we never do," Whitus said.

"The biggest threat of course is what do you do with those large amounts of cash," said Blue Line's VP of Operations and Compliance Ricky Bennett.

Bennett, a former Aurora, Colorado police chief, said Illinois will reap the benefits of security lessons learned in Colorado.

"The biggest mistake I have seen in Colorado is that folks didn't come into this thinking about the long term-the amount of cash and how were going to handle that," he said. "I would say that coming into Illinois, if you have a place where we can get the money safely and it can be handled and tracked just like any other legitimate business then I think our society overall is more safe and we will have fewer problems."

The problem with marijuana cash, Bennett says, is that most banks don't want to touch it. Even though some states have legalized marijuana, the federal government hasn't, and banks are federally regulated.

Until that is addressed, in Illinois and elsewhere, millions in marijuana profits will have to be stored by security companies.